The Social Scientist, the Public, and the Pragmatist Gaze

Although diverse and sometimes diverging, different approaches, from “pragmatic” to “pragmatist” to “praxeological,” have an important feature in common: the social order is said to be the practical accomplishment of ordinary agents who constitute and maintain in common the world they live in. After presenting the milestones of the main sociological version of pragmatism, that is, pragmatic sociology (sociologie pragmatique), initiated by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, this paper will dwell on the complicated relationship between a pragmatic framework, centered on the insider point of view of agents and social critique, which apprehends the social world from the external point of view of the critical sociologist. To tackle such problematic relationship, we will dwell on two groundbreaking contributions to the “pragmatic turn” in the social sciences, that of Jeanne Favret-Saada’s work on contemporary witchcraft, and Michel de Certeau’s study on 17th Century possessions. They will allow us to show that the revival of the epistemological break is not a necessary step towards political awareness and that pragmatic sociology as such can be fully critical

La prédication « nostrologique ». Quelques réflexions sur la nature du politique

Le politique est généralement conçu comme l’ensemble organisé des procédures nécessaires à l’élimination ou à la résolution des conflits qui opposent les intérêts particuliers et l’intérêt général, les individus et la cité. L’enquête ontologique, conformément au cadre analytique qui est le sien, fait d’une telle assomption son objet d’investigation principale. Elle se penche sur les processus formels qui transforment des particuliers hétérogènes en un Nous relativement homogène et des élaborations linguistiques en des institutions contraignantes. Le but de cet article consiste ainsi à montrer, étape par étape, que la double conversion des faits sociaux en « choses » publiques et des individus en agent collectif constitue l’essence même du politique

Entre ficción y realidad. La opinión pública en la Francia del siglo XVIII

En la cultura política pre-revolucionaria que caracterizó a Francia en el siglo XVIII, la opinión pública oscilaba entre la ficción del discurso y la realidad social, entre la palabra y el objeto. Desde un punto de vista descriptivo, la opinión pública es, ciertamente, una realidad plural y heterogénea que tiene que ver tanto con los rumores populares como con el uso público de la crítica. Por otro lado, desde el punto de vista normativo, la opinión pública es un concepto ideológico, cuyos presuntos portavoces, principalmente abogados, magistrados y escritores, tratan de transformar en una autoridad singular, única, de legitimidad, paralela a la del rey. Utilizando los recursos de la historia socio-cultural así como de la historia conceptual, se intentará mostrar que esta doble vertiente, descriptiva y normativa, es inherente al propio concepto de opinión pública

Entre ficción y realidad. La opinión pública en la Francia del siglo XVIII

En la cultura política pre-revolucionaria que caracterizó a Francia en el siglo XVIII, la opinión pública oscilaba entre la ficción del discurso y la realidad social, entre la palabra y el objeto. Desde un punto de vista descriptivo, la opinión pública es, ciertamente, una realidad plural y heterogénea que tiene que ver tanto con los rumores populares como con el uso público de la crítica. Por otro lado, desde el punto de vista normativo, la opinión pública es un concepto ideológico, cuyos presuntos portavoces, principalmente abogados, magistrados y escritores, tratan de transformar en una autoridad singular, única, de legitimidad, paralela a la del rey. Utilizando los recursos de la historia socio-cultural así como de la historia conceptual, se intentará mostrar que esta doble vertiente, descriptiva y normativa, es inherente al propio concepto de opinión pública

Sur The Fall of the Public Man de Richard Sennett

Le grand intérêt du livre, pionnier à bien des égards, de Richard Sennett, The Fall of the Public Man (1977), est de concevoir l’espace public comme le lieu de la régulation impersonnelle de la juste distance entre « étrangers » et d’anticiper les conséquences négatives de sa dérégulation, induite par les « tyrannies de l’intimité » et le rejet des médiations qui leur est corrélatif. L’article déploie les réflexions étonnamment contemporaines de R. Sennett sur la tension moderne entre les affects privés et les comportements publics ainsi que sur la « communauté incivile » et l’essor des « leaders charismatiques » que dessine la lecture du monde social en termes de personnalité individuelle et collective. Après un retour critique sur le statut pour le moins problématique que l’ouvrage accorde à l’expérience et au self, l’article esquissera quelques réflexions « sennettiennes » sur deux phénomènes contemporains, le « quantified self » et les théories du complot, afin d’en tester les apports et limites.The great interest of Richard Sennett’s pioneering book, The Fall of the Public Man (1977), is to see public space as the place of impersonal regulation of distance and proximity between strangers and to anticipate the negative consequences of its deregulation, induced by the “tyrannies of intimacy” and the rejection of mediations that these latter generate. This article dwells on R. Sennett’s astonishingly contemporary reflections on the modern tension between private affects and public behaviors, as well as on the “uncivil community” and the rise of the “charismatic leaders” induced by the interpretation of the world in terms of individual and collective personality. After a critical review of the book’s problematic take on experience and the self, the article will sketch some “Sennettian” reflections on two contemporary phenomena, the “quantified self” and conspiracy theories, in order to test their contributions and their limits

Wired for Society: Cognizing Pathways to Society and Culture

While cognitive scientists increase their tentative incursions in the social domains traditionally reserved for social scientists, most sociologists and anthropologists keep decrying those attempts as reductionist or, at least, irrelevant. In this paper, we argue that collaboration between social and cognitive sciences is necessary to understand the impact of the social environment on the shaping of our mind. More specifically, we dwell on the cognitive strategies and early-developing deontic expectations, termed naïve sociology, which enable well-adapted individuals to constitute, maintain and understand basic social relationships. In order to specify the way in which the demanding character of typical social relationships can be recognized in situ, we introduce the concept of "deontic affordances”. Finally, we shed light on the continuum that might relate a primitive naïve sociology, dedicated to the processing of invariant properties of the social life and a mature naïve sociology, necessary for dealing with the variable properties of cultural forms of life

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Interventions to Reduce Diarrhoea in Less Developed Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

The authors developed a comprehensive research strategy designed to identify all peer-reviewed articles, in any language, that presented water, sanitation, or hygiene interventions. Out of 2,120 publications, ultimately 40 studies were judged to contain relevant evidence. Most of the studies confined their study groups to children aged under 5 or 6 years. The identified studies were done in a wide range of settings, in many countries, and over many years. All of the interventions studied were found to reduce significantly the risks of diarrheal illness. The results generally agree with those from previous reviews, but water quality interventions (point-of-use water treatment) were found to be more effective than previously thought, and multiple interventions (consisting of combined water, sanitation, and hygiene measures) were not more effective than interventions with a single focus