Che cosa unisce Weber, Bachtin e Vygotskij?

Abstract

As the title suggests, the main focus of the book edited by Bruno Maggi, Interpretare l’agire: una sfida teorica, is on human action and theoretical challenges of interpreting it. The volume is a remarkable contribution for at least two reasons, which are also its purposes. First, it shows that an interdisciplinary approach is more useful and required in order to analyse human action. In this perspective, thirteen researchers, from various nationalities (French and Italian), age (younger and elder), disciplinary frameworks and approaches (sociology, psychology, economy, etc.) present their point of view on different aspects of human action. Second, it points out that they share a common epistemological orientation, alternative to the classical conceptual dichotomies (objectivism/subjectivism, system/action, etc.): Maggi calls it the «third way». It had been identified by Weber within the Methodenstreit and can be found in the thinking of many authors, like Simon, Giddens, Elias and also in Vygotsky’s psychological and Bachtin’s sociolinguistic contributions. The «third way» is a unitary conception of acting, it denies the opposition between explanation and understanding, as it regards them as complementary parts of the same cognitive process. Interpretare l’agire is a volume by many hands but it has unity, in its plan as well as in its execution. Maggi organizes the exposition in the following way: the first part of the book deals with the epistemological, theoretical and methodological principles of elder researchers’ approaches (Clot, Faïta, Maggi, de Terssac); the second part is made up of young scholars’ essays (Albano, Bournel Bosson, Fabbri, Masino, Prot, Salento, Saujat, Thoemmes, Zamarian) illustrating the heuristic potential of previous theories in the analysis of a heterogeneous variety of phenomena (from the processes of family socialization to the dynamics of teaching or job training; from a sociological study of labor law to organizational learning).