Abstract
This paper claims that contemporary sociology is in crisis because there is a growing difference between reality and its intellectual representation. If this situation characterizes every scientific theory as long as it is a mere attempt to approach reality, it became problematical since the 1970’s. The theories, concepts and methods proposed by sociology are not as useful as they were to understand society in its complexity. The reasons of this crisis —revealed by the absence of unity, the limits of a coherent vision of society, and the feebleness of its influence on society— must be searched in the partiality and the unidimensionality of sociological paradigms. Indeed, because of sociological, institutional and scientific mutations (society is changing, system and sub-systems are coming apart and the actor is coming back), contemporary sociology is disoriented. The theories built against classical sociology (in particular, symbolic interactionism and ethnometodology, methodological individualism and strategic analysis, actionalism and genetic structuralism) all make the same mistake. They make a choice between actor and system, change and permanence, a kind of social organization and another, or deduce one from another, without considering the relations amomg them and without searching their integration. Precisely, it is necessary to do the contrary in accordance with two principles : every paradigm proposes relevant theories, concepts and methods and there is more proximity amomg them than many researchers think. Therefore, it is necessary to elaborate a theory of complexity trying to integrate different views.
Published Version
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