Search

If there is a specificity of modern morality, it is that it is built on the human exception, on a set of presuppositions that ensured its justification: responsibility, autonomy, capacity, will, free will... and on a certain number of figures of the engaged individual who illustrated it: entrepreneur, citizen, activist... Analyzing the internal evolution of this anthropology of the moderns underlying their way of considering morality, the article first shows how the human being, placed at the top of the chain of beings because of his intellectual and moral capacities, sees his exceptionality progressively transformed into responsibility for the disasters of the anthropocene. It then shows how this internal evolution of our anthropological coordinates actually opened the doors to the gradual exit from this exception and the emergence of what the article calls a zoo-techno-anthropology continuum. On the one hand, anti-speciesism, the rise of vegetarianism, of veganism, of sensitivity to animal suffering, of the propensity to lend non-human animals capacities that were hitherto reserved for human animals... On the other hand, the trivialization of post- or trans-humanism, of artificial intelligence,... which leads us, for example, to wonder about the responsibility of robots. A radical transformation of the coordinates from which to think about morality.

How can one understand the recent rise of the concept of hospitality in a series of political debates, but also in theoretical questions, such as the urban one? To try to answer this question, the concept of hospitality is first recontextualized within the semantic universe - the one where it meets the concepts of vulnerability, care ... - within which it becomes the main concern, perhaps taking on meanings further to its original connotations. Within this process, the moral understanding of hospitality starts to take precedence over its political and legal meanings, whilst making incursions into political debates, particularly those about vulnerable populations (the homeless, refugees ...). The text then seeks to grasp the antinomies which run through the concept, the double bind in which its different accentuations move, the moral accentuations calling for legal and political concretizations that cannot honor them, but also the unconditionality of its moral accentuations which may be in conflict with the conditions imposed by coexistence and cohabitation in the long term.

The ancient division of beings as capable or incapable which prevailed up through the 19th century has gradually been replaced by the perspective of an anthropological continuum according to which every being is at once thought of as capable and incapable, as fragile and vulnerable but also as resilient, as endowed with resources and unexploited potentials. This article seeks to grasp the consequences of this “anthropological shift”, in focusing its attention particularly on what happens at the extrema of this continuum. On the side of those who can't take it anymore, but on whom intolerable pressures are exerted to get a grip on themselves, to assume responsibility, there too we see a dualization of the care provided, opposing traditional social policies and the humanitarian reference frame. But on the other side of the continuum too, where “normality” may be beginning to be seen as deficiency, the possibility and expectation of an “augmentation in the human” is emerging on the horizon.

Every engagement binds the one who engages himself or is engaged to what, with whom, for what, in what... he engages or is engaged. Through these links, it therefore contributes to making the collective, whether it builds on its previous consistency, adds to it or constitutes it. This article attempts to capture what the term "engagement" may mean by broadening the spectrum of engagement far beyond its most common meaning in its decision-making or intentional models. Commit by contract, marrying a cause, being attached to beings, living a passion, vibrating together, being engaged without having decided, perhaps without realizing it, answering a call, letting oneself be embarked by an atmosphere, following a movement... these are, with others, the forms of engagement that will be investigated and distinguished. In particular, we will seek to understand how we live and express our engagement to the collective when it responds, but especially when it no longer responds to the sole decision-making model. It will also be necessary to understand how, in these different forms of engagement, we relate to groups, populated by other actors but also by objects and devices..., trying to distance ourselves from the only model of the autonomous and responsible actor according to which we usually think of engagement. We will therefore also give ourselves the means to grasp collectives in a wide variety of forms, paying particular attention to the forms by which they invite themselves in language, to the forms by which the actors lend them an agency, at least grammatically, as when we make the market the subject of a proposal for action, or when we express our engagement by favouring the I, the We or the One.

This paper reveals the contribution made by the sociology of social transaction in the increased prominence given to sustainable development indicators in the urban policies of the Bruxelles-Capitale region. It focuses on three main transactions of the ecological injunction: mobility policies, combating unemployment and attractiveness. It demonstrates how “hardline” versions of the sustainability indicators find their way into public policy and dovetail with existing systems, by taking advantage of the path of least resistance and articulating with or complementing other “fashionable” indicators. These adjustments have an influence on the definition of problems and their solutions and in effect lessen the strength of sustainability policies.

This paper questions the transmission of sociological research. The authors suggest to think the underestimated link between epistemology, method and ethics. Sociological research is grounded in empirical data that connect the sociologist with his informants. He can also depends on the sponsors of his research. From the empirical data, he will construct a theory that might relate to actors engaged with him in a methodological cooperation. Then will appear the question of publishing of the research result in which the sociologist will face the scientific community and the public audience. He might have to think about the way his research results might be use by his informants, partners, scientific community and public audience. According to these observations, it appears that epistemology and methodology of the sociological research are linked to its political and ethical stakes. How to think these links? This is the question at the center of this paper. In order to proceed so, the authors depart from three assertions to question the fundamental “rules of sociological method” and rely on their previous research on sociological survey.

In today French Community of Belgium, we are still largely inheriting « labour » oriented cultural policies of the 1960s and 70s with no place for "urban" expression. Since then, the "urban culture" and the "street art" became relevant categories sustained by the private market and raising the concept of the "creative city". This paper examines this tension by focusing on the difficulties faced by cultural policies to integrate urban culture. It shows the risks of exclusion facing certain forms of urban expression that feature the creative city and the potential forms of appropriation of these urban expressions by the private market of art and culture.

In this article, we consider the epistemological dimension of surprise from two different angles: on the one hand, the readiness of the researcher to « welcome » the unexpected; on the other, the sociological paradigms in which the researcher inscribes her or his project. Both angles enable us to identify what one might term a certain readiness to « welcome » surprise. Our initial hypothesis is that certain sociological paradigms are more prompt than others to « welcoming » surprise. We will start by discussing sociological paradigms, which do not leave much space for surprise. We will then ourselves take a distance from those paradigms, in order to open the way for sociological paradigms, which give space for the unexpected to occur. That said, we do not believe that discussing the nature of the paradigms used puts an end to the discussion around surprise and the readiness to welcome it: we therefore argue that an understanding of the « heuristic productivity » of surprise presupposes acknowledging the pleasure or displeasure caused by the researcher’s confrontation with the unexpected, and leads one back to what one might call a certain « research aesthetic ».

Any critical sociology assumes a reference to a normative horizon based on the defense of critical positions. This normative horizon remains sometimes, or even often, implicit probably because its explanation seems to infringe the imperative of axiological neutrality which strongly influences social sciences’ epistemology, or at the very least because it drags the works of the sociologist on the field of political theory or activism. This contribution rather seeks to make explicit these normative horizons regarding the case of, central to critical sociology, social inequalities. Seven normative paradigms are thus identified, articulated, and linked to current issues related to justice theories. Their differentiation is built mainly from discussions on anthropological references that serve as critical supports (is autonomy the anthropological ideal of a fair society or is it vulnerability? What is autonomy?), on conceptions of justice (should equality be thought of as equal treatment, resources, opportunities…? Should it be thought of as redistribution or recognition?), on ways to consider the collectivization of responsibility (how far do we undertake the right to difference? Should it include future generations?), and on how to define what a good life is (should we challenge the relationship between autonomy and anticipation? Shouldn’t the aims of equality question firstly our conceptions inherited from the good life that were engulfed by consumption and waste?).

This article intends to somehow « take advantage » of the discussions raised by the rise of pragmatic sociology and the evolution of its positions on critical sociology in order to re-precise its epistemological issues, but also to try to re-instate the actual conflicts in epistemological quarrels that are central to the history of the sociological discipline, while attempting to enlighten them by relying on certain contributions of language theories.

The terms “competences” and “capacities” have occupied for a few years an important place in the vocabulary of sociology, in particular inside pragmatic sociology. One also finds them however in other theoretical fields (the capabilities developed by Amartya Sen) or in the vocabulary of the public policies which evoke policies of “empowerment”, or “thresholds of competences”. This article develops the assumption of a true anthropological turn whose explanation obliges to reflect on new expenses ambiguities of the anthropological frame on which the second modernity was built in the 18th century. Recalling to which point the vocabulary of the “capacity” was already present in the anthropological frame of 18th and the 19th centuries, then being based a strict disjunction of the beings, granting to the ones what they refused with the “incompetents”, the article suggests that we would today gradually think the human in the order of the conjunction, always fragile, always vulnerable, but never either without resources, “capacities” which it is then a question to equip. This assumption opens important perspectives that are likely to sketch the context of the specificity of pragmatic sociology and its current success, to seize the relevance as well as the limits of its theoretical and methodological tools. This article develops a conclusion exploring the situations where the actors are not able, then evoking two ways developed actually by pragmatic sociology to tackle this issue, an “agonistic” way and a “worried” way.

This article proposes to revisit the question of disciplinary autonomy that has accompanied the history of sociology. By focusing our attention on the question of autonomy in relation to values, morals and ethics, we will reflect on this autonomy both as a regulating ideal constitutive of the discipline, and as a requirement to which the experience of the practice of sociological enquiry never fully complies. The ambivalence of this status allows us to understand what we will call the "epistemological problematicity" of this demand for autonomy. This can be seen in the recurrence of controversies about research ethics, for example between defenders of axiological neutralisation and followers of critical sociology. To grasp this inherence of ethics in sociological work, we will draw on the resources of linguistic pragmatics. They will enable us to understand various quarrels that have affected the social sciences in recent years, to grasp the "ethical violence" involved in the investigative situation and, finally, to lay the foundations for rethinking the explain-comprehend quarrel by integrating criticism into it.