Valérie Gauthier-Fortin et Simon Laflamme
« Tribute to Ali Reguigui (1958-2023) » (p. 13-24)
On the theme «Tomorrow»
Editor: Denis Martouzet
Denis Martouzet
Foreword (p. 27-30)
Magali Boespflug, Carine Dutei-Mougel, Claire Lefort, Cécile McLaughlin, and Petra Pelletier
«Crisis of COVID-19: Breakdowns and Transformations of Humans’ Trajectories in Uncertain Times» (p. 33-66)
Abstract: Crisis of COVID-19 has led to important breakdowns in human existence. The methodology has been adapted from research conducted following Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident in 1986. An invisibility-based analogy between radioactive contaminations with caesium-137 and SARS-CoV-2 viral contaminations highlights that lay people need to construct the meaning of the crisis, cope with negative emotions and uncertainty, and hope for a better future. The participants (n = 784) completed a questionnaire, entitled “Me: yesterday, today and tomorrow”, describing their living experience during the pandemic lockdown in 2020. The main results demonstrated participants’ loss of landmarks, experience of fear, and need for positive change in the future. This research indicates the complementarity of global emotional orientations of fear and hope that transcend individuals and society in uncertain times of the COVID-19 crisis.
Keywords: COVID-19, Sanitary Crisis, Uncertainty, Existential Trajectories, Emotions.
Mathieu Bonnefond, Sofia Guevara Viquez, and Mathilde Gralepois
«Pluralizing Knowledge to Think about the Future in the Face of Uncertainty. The Case of the Collapse of the Cliff of Ault (Picardy, France)» (p. 67-111)
Abstract: The central place of knowledge in public policy choices is being challenged by climate and hydrological phenomena that turn out to be unpredictable and irreversible. This is the case with the retreat of the coastline of the cliffs in Picardy. For a long time based on a scientific and technical approach known as “average retreat”, the national government now has to reconstitute its methods of action in the face of extreme and sudden risks. But it’s not just a question of changing the technical approach, or promoting new prevention tools to build strategies for reorganising coastal areas. The case of the collapse of the cliffs at Ault illustrates the urgent need to integrate multiple forms of knowledge about the effects of climate change into public action, both in terms of alternative and scientific knowledge and in terms of knowledge rooted in sensitive, personal, or aesthetic experience.
Keywords: Knowledge, Public Policy, Climate Change, Uncertainty.
Karine St-Denis
«Anthropology of catastrophes. Toward future as events?» (p. 113-132)
Abstract: Disasters and catastrophes are cultural facts, they are created by our practices, our convictions and our collective aspirations. Anthropology of catastrophes is a pertinent disciplinary field for studying disasters and catastrophes that will be more present in our future. This article presents research interests and main notions of this anthropology. We are demonstrating how our occidental cultures construct disasters and catastrophes as events and how these cultural constructions are insufficient for a real understanding of our future.
Keywords: Anthropology, Catastrophe, Disaster, Event, Culture.
Nicolas Hervé and Nathalie Panissal
«When High School Students Address Future Generations via a Time Capsule…» (p. 133-168)
Abstract: This article is aimed at understanding the images of the future that high school students form about the digitization of society. To this end, we carried out a time capsule experiment in an agricultural high school. The time capsule consists of videos produced by 18 groups of high school students on their images of the future about digital society in 2040, addressed to students who will be in their position in 20 years. Analysis of the videos shows that the students’ images of the future are mostly critical of the social transformations induced by digitization, in a context of climate change. The possibility of a political takeover of the issues raised is absent. Our results point to the importance of developing teaching methods that can help students formulate images of futures that are both possible and desirable, and enable them to envisage individual and collective levers for action.
Keywords: Time Capsule, Images of future, Agricultural Education, Digital, High School Students’ Representations.
On the theme «Guy Bajoit and the notion of relation»
Editor: Claude Vautier
Claude Vautier
Foreword (p. 171-174)
Guy Bajoit
«To Complete My Conceptualization of the Notion of Social Relation» (p. 177-188)
Abstract: In 2009, Guy Bajoit presented relation as a form of collaboration between social actors. He associated this collaboration with notions of goal, contribution, retribution, inequality, and domination. In this article, he returns to this position and completes it by bringing into play new notions such as collective identities and otherness.
Keywords: Social Relation, Social Exchanges, Solidarity, Collective Identity, Collective Otherness.
Monique Hirschhorn
«Is a General Sociological Theory Possible? Historical Perspective of Guy Bajoit’s Project» (p. 189-197)
Abstract: With his desire to construct a general sociological theory, Guy Bajoit follows in the footsteps of most contemporary sociologists, some of whom are still in search of such a theory, while others have turned their backs on such a project, which is considered utopian and doomed to failure, or even undesirable. The “theoretical pluralism” that manifests itself as one of the aspects of the history of sociology provides capacities for elucidating the social by revolving around the object of study, but, according to the proponents of a general theory in sociology, prevents a unification of the discipline, which would be welcome. This article aims to show that if Guy Bajoit’s efforts to achieve this unification of sociology are legitimate and if their objective can be considered desirable, it is more in the context of a collective debate that such a project must be posed than in that of an essentially personal research based on the author’s past and present work.
Keywords: General Sociological Theories, History of Sociology, History of Philosophy, Theoretical Pluralism, Genetic Structuralism, Dynamic Sociology, Functionalist and Strategic Approach, Actionism, Schemas of Intelligibility, Reality, Structures, Meaning, History, Epistemology, Bajoit, Complex Methodological Individualism, Temporalities, Personal Project, Debate.
Michel Messu
«“For a Sociology of Combat,” says Guy Bajoit… But What Is the Combat That Sociology Should Pursue?» (p. 199-215)
Abstract: This communication aims to discuss the relevance of the title given to one of his books by Guy Bajoit. “For a sociology of combat,” he says, but what kind of combat are we talking about? Behind this title, however, lies a major challenge for sociology, both today and in the past. That of remaining the science of the social that it claims to be. The paper reaffirms the pre-eminence of rationality in the scientific process, its epistemological autonomy and the principle of axiological neutrality, all of which are threatened today by the proliferation of “Studies”.
Keywords: Guy Bajoit, Commitment, Science, Sociology, Axiological Neutrality, Studies.
Simon Laflamme
«The Place of the Individual, of the Subjectivity, and of the Action and the Role of the Macrological in Relational Sociology» (p. 217-239)
Abstract: As early as 1992, Guy Bajoit contemplated a relational sociology. Without having named it, my work naturally led me towards such a sociology. So, I was happy to come across this Bajoitian sociology; I saw in it an object other than the social actor or the social structures, I glimpsed relations that could be studied in themselves, there was the possibility of understanding the human being other than in terms of his autonomous subjectivity or what controls his actions externally. I heard the Bajoitian invitation to work within a new paradigm. But I had to distance myself from Guy Bajoit’s project because, on the one hand, his relationism closely involved the hyperrational actor of methodological individualism, and because, on the other hand, it seemed essential to me to distance the relation from the ontological order to make it a principle of modeling.
Keywords: Guy Bajoit, Relation, Relationism, Rationality, Methodological Individualism, Epistemology, Emotion, Psyche, Modeling, Sociology, Dialectic, Trialectic.
Claude Vautier
«Between Ontology and Epistemology. A Misunderstanding About the Concept or Notion of Relationship?» (p. 241-277)
Abstract: Guy Bajoit is one of the sociologists who very early on saw the benefit of introducing the concept of relation into the modeling of a society. In doing so, he opened avenues of reflection that pushed sociology to move away from the sterile quarrels between individualism and structuralism. His desire to construct a general theory of societies pushed him towards a welcome, enriching synthesis. However, we can think that this construction is not sufficient to grasp at least in part the complexity of the world. As a humanist, Bajoit is interested in human beings, but he makes them the center of his model. This position limits the scope of its construction. His general theory, although enlightening in the most widespread paradigm of our days, slides towards an interactionism where it is necessarily the individuals who are in relationship, between themselves or between themselves and others, living or inanimate. This article attempts to show that contemporary sociology must make an epistemic leap by modeling through relationships. Such modeling assumes that various categories are analyzed, not in themselves, but through their relationships. The GIP model (Goods, Ideas, People) of Laflamme or the RISE model (Relation, Individual, System, Event) of Vautier, taking a trialectic form (three integrated dialectical relationships), make it possible to achieve this objective.
Keywords: Relationship, Empirical Relation, Analytical Relation, Epistemological Relation, Concept, Conceptualization, Scientific Knowledge, Construction of the World, Model, Relational Model, Trialectic Model, Anthropocentrism, Rise in Abstraction, Epistemic Leap, New Paradigm, Generalized Reliance, Guy Bajoit, Simon Laflamme.