Complexité sociale et simplification rationnelle : dire la stratification au Moyen Age

Abstract

Any inductive method, starting from the individual and concrete and leading to the collective and the abstract, raises the problem of complexity. It's all the more true in history since the diachrony prevents from seeing social stratification in a set manner. In order to distinguish various categories, it's absolutly essential to dissociate the description that medieval people were themselves giving from that given by the medievalists today. On the one hand, the clerks used rather simple structures of binary, ternary or quaternary nature, but since the 12th century, they have increased the number of states to about a hundred, when they proposed more complete socio-professional analyses. Historians interpret today these medieval taxinomies from sociological, symbolical or rhetorical perspectives that endow some meaning to these medieval lectures of social reality. On the other hand, the classification made by medievalists today is based on a single criterion : blood or political activity for the nobility, for instance. But it's better to adopt a heterogeneous approach that multiplies views about the Weberian notion of « status » and its corollaries : rank and role. The outlook of the other and social recognition determine social codes and markers, which some documents, such as literary sources or oral investigations of the late Middle Âges, allow the reader to better comprehend.