Sociology through Relation

Abstract

This book is an attempt to outline the structure of the theory underlying our work on the development of a relational scheme in sociology based on the example of key debates in the French tradition. We did not choose this starting point by chance, and we want to explain briefly why. A relational perspective in sociology is a controversial matter for reasons internally and externally related to sociology. On the one hand, “relation” and a “relational perspective” are very concrete events that everybody intuitively figures out in his or her daily life, and that are taken for granted, so that one could wonder why they should need to be explained. On the other hand, in sociology, they tend to be understood as general expres- sions for other more concrete, well-established terms, such as “interac- tion” or “process”, that are no less taken for granted. This makes it all the more difficult to show that, when we use the terms relation and relational perspective, we are not speaking only of an abstract theory with no practi- cal consequences, and we are not merely reinventing the wheel, using new terms to speak of interpersonal interactions, of processes regulating social actions, or of similar functions holding together social elements like a type of glue. This might be a surprise to some, but in our discipline, this remains the common way to understand and use these terms. To go beyond this common understanding is a difficult task, and could perhaps be seen as a useless one. What would another understanding of relation, and moreover a theory of society through relation bring about? This book aims to give one or two answers to this question.