The journal New Perspectives in Social Sciences (NPSS) aims to accompany researchers who wish to explore new venues in social sciences. Within this frame, innovative analyses may emerge which make it possible to overcome the obstacles faced by established models without sacrificing rigour. The Journal does not represent a departure from these models. It recognizes their significance. But because all power bears its weaknesses and can thus propel as well as cripple, foster as well as hinder new discoveries, this recognition is not sufficient to prohibit one from confronting, bypassing or breaking free of these models.

In noticing the limits of established models in social sciences, we clear the way to various avenues. If criticism of utilitarianism is one of the limits, there are others. NPSS seeks to explore from these other avenues, including, but not limited to, complex systemic and relational analysis. The fertility of modeling in terms of complex systems is well established in many areas of scientific knowledge. It is time for it to express itself by going beyond the hasty challenges and even the stigmatization that it often suffers in the social sciences. The relational approach, at the micrological level, represents one of the only ways in which it is possible to approach the relationships between people outside a phenomenological logic where the essential is explained by reference to the intentions of the actors. At the macrological level, it constitutes one of the ways of understanding social phenomena other than in an anthropocentric perspective, where the whole social is built around the human subject.

This dual theoretical orientation is by no means exclusive. The openness to any innovative and rigorous reflection must be a rule, because it is unlikely that the territories that reveal themselves give to the observer anything but the plurality, the objects of analysis as well as the way of approaching them.