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The present paper is intended to be a humble attempt to redeem sociology, a discipline unjustly perceived as a handmaiden among the human sciences, from the secondary role to which it is inappropriately relegated in deference to an evergrowing trend of technicalization and formalization, even algorithmic, of economics and law and even of certain specialized branches of sociology itself. On the contrary, an attempt is made to demonstrate, keeping in the background the great work of Mireilles Delmas-Marti, that it is precisely the most general, historically-anthropologically compromised and culturologically oriented part of this discipline that is the one most capable of accounting for the complexity underlying the local/global dynamics in progress, deciphering the asynchronic and destabilizing forces that corrode the effectiveness of the rules redesigning scenarios and destinies of social actors, and partially motivating the reasons involved. It seems all the more significant and urgent to us to push academic reflection towards a revival of the "great sociology" traditionally understood, in a season of disturbing juridical nihilism and worrying déshistoricisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dilthey has no place in sociology because his Verstehen method was accused of psychologism. He fell into the trap of scientism, a positivist ideal of science to which even the German sociological tradition wanted to belong. The paper attempts to extend the sociological canon to the interpretive categories of 'life' and 'thought' theorized by Dilthey, and to demonstrate the valid application of his method, particularly in understanding human suffering and social needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will try to understand the "conceptual" perspective of sociology as one of the possible lines drawn within the cultural horizon of the social sciences. And this can be easily understood if we understand by "sociological culture" a knowledge that is not reducible to a scientific disciplinary sector or to an analytical technicality (an instrumental apparatus) aimed at data collection, but as a conceptual process capable of developing a cognitive orientation aimed at grasping the existential situation of man starting from his historical, concrete and social condition. The aim of this work is therefore, more than anything else, to grasp the process of conceptualisation of social experience starting from the cultural formations within which the relationship between thought and society, or rather, between mental structures and historical-social conditions, develops concretely and reflectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the work of Jean-Paul Sartre and of its relevance for contemporary sociology. Following the studies of existential sociology, this work wants to use the category of the practical-inert to analyze the construction of reality. Practicoinert is a notion coined by Sartre in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960), outlined the unit of practical activities and material structures. This paper uses this perspective to analyze institutional life, bureaucracies, theoretical construction and rationality in the human sciences. Focusing the analysis in a comparison with Max Weber's perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper's focus is on how sociology could support current humanism's rethinking contemporarily considering the present high degree of religious as well as cultural pluralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay refers to the evolving concept of agape in the sociological debate, placing it in relation to a study by Sennett (2006). More specifically, the paper focuses on paternalism and autonomy as two forms of "authority without love" and possible deviations of agapic action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a dialogue with Alain Caillè, founder and animator of the Anti-utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences on the topic of gift, love and anti-utilitarian actions. The interview is divided in three parts: the first one is about Convivialism, as common denominator of promoting the art of living together; The second part is about the commitment of social sciences; the third part is aimed to clarify the existing links among the concepts of gift, recognition and agape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writers' narrations of the city have always had a great and long-lasting influence on collective imaginaries and on people's urban experience. Sociology is debtor to urban novels that from XVII to XIX century anticipated the great themes of modernization process that deeply changed cities and urban culture. The analysis of the ways modern city has been narrated by writers take us to contemporary sociology and its major issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]