Università Roma Tre

The course aims to provide students with historical and theoretical tools concerning the development of sociological debate in France from the 1960s to the present day.

It will run over two semesters and will mainly deal with the problem of the relationship between reflexivity and critique in postwar French sociology.

It will be divided into five sections.

An initial introductory section will focus on the historical-intellectual premises that have made, since Saint-Simonism, the links between epistemology, reflexivity and critique a central theme in the French sociological school. In particular, we will emphasize how this paradigm diverges from the philosophical tradition headed by Immanuel Kant and German idealism. In addition to Saint-Simon, the authors we will refer to are Auguste Comte, Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. In parallel, also in this first part we will introduce some elements of the historical epistemology current and especially some aspects of Gaston Bachelard's thought.

A second section will be devoted to Pierre Bourdieu's sociological reflection. In particular, we will be concerned with the development of the theme of sociological criticism in light of two historical phenomena that have profoundly influenced this author's thinking: the experience of French colonialism in Algeria and the French May riots of 1968. In light of these two events, we will question concepts such as those of reflexivity, sociology of sociology and critical sociology.

A third section will be devoted to the thought of Luc Boltanski. In a first part we will deal mainly with the novelty that this author has imposed on sociological reflection by questioning the critical paradigm of his master Pierre Bourdieu through the valorization of the critical resources of social actors and the shift from “ critical sociology ‘ to ’ sociology of criticism.” In a second part we will devote ourselves to the extension of Boltanski's critique of neo-liberalism and his partial return to a Bourdieusian-inspired conception of sociological criticism.

A fourth section, will be devoted to some aspects of Bruno Latour's thought. A first section will reconstruct the beginnings of his reflection and his “ethnography of the laboratory” that focuses on the problem of the social conditions of knowledge. A second section will reconstruct the developments of this reflection through a social ontology that, questioning the nature/culture couple, breaks with the concept of society in favor of a conception of the social understood as an assemblage of humans and non-humans. Latour's critical ecology will be exposed in this context.

A fifth concluding section will be devoted to some of the approaches that have characterized the French sociological debate of the past 20 years and have developed in light of these issues, seeking to enhance the concept of critique through a dialogue between sociology and philosophy.

La quasi totalità dei testi sono reperibili in lingua inglese