Durkheim Pragmatist and other constructions

Everything is only invention or manufacturing, including what seems the most natural ? This question for a long time opposes the proponents of constructivism and naturalism within the social sciences. For the former, phenomena do not exist independently of social work accomplished to constitute them. The latter, on the other hand, affirm that social facts can be explained from natural processes, products of biological evolution. It is then a question of connecting social phenomena to their natural causes, starting by naturalizing the human mind. Renewed by cognitive sciences, the opposition between constructivism and naturalism is frank but often sterile. The number ofInvestigation that Michel de Fornel and Cyril Lemieux coordinated confronts the two antagonistic options and opens up a debate on the possibility of their mutual fertilization. To do this, the number takes two different paths, quite largely independent. One of them confronts naturalism and constructivism dating back to XIX^e century, and revisit the terms of an opposition which appears in many superficial respects. The other way explores the foundations of sociological thought from a new reading of Durkheim, proposed by Anne Rawls. Beyond the technicality of the debates – which will not fail to appear quite abstract to certain readers – are played out essential trips for contemporary sociological theory.

Socialize naturalism ?

Recusizing any binary opposition between constructivism and naturalism, one of the two parts of the number sheds light on the diversity of the articulations between sciences of the living and social sciences. Denouncing a recurring confusion between the use of references to biology and the defense of unequal theses, even worse, Dominique Guillo recalls that the reflections on notions like that of organism have been the subject of scientific conflicts so diverse since the XIX^e A century that it was simply impossible to consider borrowing from biology by the social sciences in a homogeneous way: few common points, in fact, between references to a reductionist, causalist and physicist naturalism, and those which mobilize naturalism on the contrary to underline by analogy the irreducibility of the social to the living, as Durkheim does. At the same time, Luc Faucher and Édouard Machery criticize the uniformity of conventionally constructivist readings of racism, which reduce the race to a pseudo-biological construction. These authors offer a more nuanced approach, making the racialist thought derive from an evolution of cognition in large human groups. Other contributions, such as those of Laurence Kaufman and Fabrice Clément, defend non -reductive naturalism, accounting for the intuitive understanding of the social world. Etienne Anheim and Stéphane Gioanni show how the classic analyzes of Ian Hacking on constructivism, enriched with a Wittgensteinian contribution, allow to come out of sterile oppositions between naturalism and constructivism.

Returns in Durkheim

The other part of the volume returns to Durkheim, who explicitly asked the question of the articulation between the living and the social, to make the social an area sui generis. The separation between the fields is not however strict, as the references to biology remain significant. In a series of contributions, Anne Rawls – to the work from which the number offers a remarkable introduction – proposed an innovative reading of Durkheim, placing the question of practices at the forefront. Rereading Durkheim in terms of ethnomethodology, it indicates a path to consider social facts as facts of nature, sketching what fornel calls a “ social naturalism “, Who “ opposes reductionist and individualistic naturalism that characterize cognitive research (P. 32).

Using them Elementary forms of religious lifeAnne Rawls considers that they are not limited to a simple sociology of knowledge before the letter. They more radically offer a real social theory of knowledge, responding to the debates which oppose rationalists and empiricists since the XVII^e century. A DURKHEIM “ neglected “Would have overcome this dichotomy by showing, on the one hand, that the categories of understanding are not so individual as social and, on the other hand, that they are not so much ideal as practical. Durkheim would make categories “ The practical result of concrete social practices “, Closely associated with perception and senses. According to Rawls, Durkheim should therefore be stored among the heirs of empiricism, even a radical empiricism, rather than among the neo-Kantians with which it is usually associated. The error having led, for almost a century, to see in Durkheim an idealist would result from a constant confusion between his theory of knowledge (resolutely empiricist) and his sociology of knowledge, by definition on beliefs and representations.

For a dozen years, Anne Rawls’ arguments have been the subject of passionate discussions, the work of which reportedly reported, through a series of exchanges. His reading appears innovative but questionable. In addition to the fact that the notion of practices probably did not have for Durkheim the meaning – eminently modern – attributed to him Rawls, the role thus attributed to practices also tends to relegate other elements of the thought of Durkheim, which contradict the alleged importance of practices. Appreciating the debate from an ethnomethodological point of view, Rod Watson and Wes Sharock, underline that Durkheim founded a method located immediately the learned sociologist in a report external to practices, far from the ordinary postures recommended by ethnumethodology. Albert Ogien at the same time underlines that the importance recognized to practices minors that of institutions, which lead to thinking about history and normativity much other than from only practices. Bruno Karsenti, finally, finds a reading “ idealistic From Durkheim, emphasizing the importance of the faculty of idealization, in the very practices of religious life. If Durkheim is distinguished from pragmatism it is therefore not only because he apprehends the empirical experience in collective terms, offering a “ socio-empiricism »Where pragmatism sticks to individual experiences, it is also because it values ​​idealization processes, rather than simple practices. Beyond the debate on Durkheim, the reading of Anne Rawls takes place in a more general debate on the contemporary state of the social sciences.

Retrospective filiations and sociological news

Behind the discussion around Durkheim is played out a discreet but essential theoretical rearrangement. Given from afar, the interest of authors close to ethnomethodology, pragmatism or more generally of the practical turning point relate to Durkheim has something to surprise. The sociologist is usually attached to another current of thought, of positivist and functionalist inspiration, of which Parsons generally appears to be an icon, or more exactly a dedicated regrowth. As most of the contributors point out, starting with Anne Rawls, the discussion around Durkheim does not only relate to her thinking, she also relates to the legitimacy of an inheritance, and consequently on the challenge of other, more devoted inheritances, within contemporary sociology. To follow Rawls, and against all odds, Durkheim therefore becomes a precursor of ethnomethodology. That such genealogy implies ? The implications are triple and deserve to be identified, because their scope far exceeds the obscure exegesis.

First of all – this is the most obvious gesture – Durkheim changes camp. After Anne Rawls, the sociologist can no longer be so easily seen as the patented precursor of functionalism “ positivist ” And “ conservative ». Honni, this current of thought, against which was largely the practical turning point in sociology, is thus deprived of one of its most respectable founders. In itself, this result is not quite negligible.

Secondly – and the thing is less obvious – the reference to Durkheim aims to rectify some contemporary drifts from sociology, to which ethnomethodology has not always remained foreign. The use of Durkheim signals a displacement within the very tradition claiming the practical turning point: it indicates the need for a return to solid foundations, leaning on the side of objectivity and institutions, even if they were requalified in the name of practices, rather than subjectivity, hermeneutics and individual action, with which the practical turning point has sometimes confused. Admittedly, the elements of this debate are not completely restored in the collection of texts gathered in the volume. But they appear in view of the whole, in particular through certain criticisms and answers formulated by the contributors, including Garfinkel, who defends himself from any subjectivism and calls to consider social facts “ like things “, As long as you see objective achievements. The concern for rebalancing appears more clearly when we refer to words of Anne Rawls not taken up in the work, which clearly signal her intentions: “ Instead of a sociology based on Durkheim’s theory of practices, which would make it possible to establish a solid link with the study of global practices in the fields of business, science, economy and communication, discipline turned to pragmatism and other conventional positions that place personal beliefs and motivations at the heart of social life. Consequently, the practices really at work, which are essential to understand science and economic life, prove invisible to researchers ».

Finally – and this is the last point – the criticism formulated against certain drifts of the practical turning point is severe, but loyal: it is in no way a conservative temptation, targeting through the figure of Durkheim a rapprochement with sociological orthodoxy. This rapprochement would appear as a regression, even betrayal, with regard to the intentions carried by the practical turning point. The fact remains that the return to objectivity is not without consequence: it requires a clear positioning towards yesterday’s enemies. To draw a new sharing line, reintroducing objectivity by referring to Durkheim, without returning to the old functionalist sociology of Parsons, Rawls must fight on two fronts. It must acclimatize the French sociologist to the practical turning point, to the point of considering him as a precursor of ethnomethodology, and in parallel a supported criticism of parsons, which serves – once again – essential rejecting.

This number ofInvestigation therefore does not only move the sharing line between naturalism and constructivist by investing in an unprecedented way the Durkheimian theory of knowledge ; He also questions certain major inflections of contemporary sociology. The proponents of the practical turning point, who renewed sociology from the sixties, can indefinitely prolong the initial gesture, at the risk of missing the upheavals of XIX^e century ? Or should they on the contrary stand out from their own tradition, returning to the classics ? This return requires the development of a new genealogy, was it largely rebuilt. We will certainly wonder if this genealogy can, without a certain theoretical and historical forcing, free themselves from part of the content of the works, whether they serve as references or repulsive. This is one of the many questions to which this issue ofInvestigation Invite to think, even if it means leaving for an ethnomethodologist Durkheim.