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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]

This paper introduces the special issue on Law, Sociology and Cognitive Science. The underlying argument is that only if sociology of law goes beyond its epistemological confinement, it will allow formulating plausible predictions and explanations, and it will provide verifiable theories. It was precisely in the work of its pioneers that sociology was conceived of as an interdisciplinary science. We also believe to be scientifically controversial that disciplines belonging to the realm of social sciences offer visions that are inexplicably incompatible with the natural history of the world, and inconsistent with one another. As the epistemological wall separating the natural sciences from the human sciences is brittler than we used to think, a renewed cognitive (or sociocognitive) approach, in both its symbolic and its behavioural paradigms, may help sociologists to reconnect, and make sense of, the multiple levels of understanding that help explain social life and social normativity (including its “legal rules” subset). Finally, it is necessary to dwell on some of the main epistemological and ethical obstacles that prevent the establishment of an ongoing and permanent dialogue between social sciences and cognitive sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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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 focuses on the invention of a Proto-Latin language for the film Il primo Re by M. Rovere (2019). The language was created with the explicit aim of producing a barbaric and primitivistic effect on the hearer. The method used to invent it is summed up in the formula: back in time, but still in place. We started from Classical Latin and "antiquated" it exploiting the data from historical Latin and Indo-European linguistics, but we avoided mixing Latin with different languages. The result is a particular type of language ex inventione: the single chunks that compose it are all plausible reconstructions from the scientific point of view, but they are not attested and have never co-existed as such. Language science and the human instinct for creativity (verbigeratio ludica) are therefore the two sources from which the language of the film was created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss anthroposophy, which does not consider itself as a form of religion, but seems to suit some definitions of religion and spirituality prevailing within the academic studies of religion. Using Benthall’s methodology of analysis, it seeks to verify how far anthroposophy would deny its religious dimension, but nevertheless acts socially as a religion, which would characterize it as an implicit religion. Of the nineteen categories of analysis, fifteen were found distributed in the books we surveyed. This case is an example of the decline of the influence of religion in cultural spheres and can be seen as a possible pursuit for social legitimacy in response to a secular society, which treats knowledge derived from religious fields with suspicion.