Ricerc@Sapienza

What does drive a person to risk his life to help others? What does prompt a social worker to spend time with a needy person beyond his standard duty? Why does person give a suspended good for a complete stranger?
In the every-day life there many social phenomena based on un-conditionality, disinterestedness, surplus. Often such phenomena remain outside the field of sociological explanation.

This article centres on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of social critique and its political potential. It first examines important objections to his view of the way in which critique works, particularly from those scholars who claim that it implies an objectivist notion of people’s cognition and agency. It continues by clarifying that this objection rests on a misplaced understanding of Bourdieu’s idea of the levels at which critique takes place.

This article intends to juxtapose (in an unprecedented way) the Robert K. Merton sociological approach to that of Pierre Bourdieu, within a systematics framework, and with the aim of overcoming canonic oppositions. The analysis is not proposed as schematically comprehensive: a detailed reconsideration of each consonance between Merton and Bourdieu will not be provided, nor are all the inevitable differences which run between the two authors examined.

This book’s main purpose was to outline some of the theoretical and practical implications of the recent technological revolution, referring to contemporary human/non-human relations, for social researchers and for readers of sociological analysis. The main hypothesis is that the rising entanglement of human and non- human elements, but also an increasingly common awareness of the limitations of human development, require an adaptation—if not a regeneration—of epistemological and methodological tools for the interpretation of current social processes.

This paper explores theoretical and methodological strategies for rethinking some principles of sociological theory in the light of the fact that the basic sociological concepts—for instance, time, space, and relations among individuals and groups— could facilitate better observation and understanding of contemporary societies.

This book’s main purpose was to outline some of the theoretical and practical implications of the recent technological revolution, referring to contemporary human/non-human relations, for social researchers and for readers of sociological analysis. The main hypothesis is that the rising entanglement of human and non- human elements, but also an increasingly common awareness of the limitations of human development, require an adaptation—if not a regeneration—of epistemological and methodological tools for the interpretation of current social processes.