Diversity and unity of sociology
Résumé
Even before it became a science or a kind of science, sociology was established as the social philosophy of modern societies. Indeed, sociology has been an ambiguous reflection on modernity and its disenchantment, and on a solidarity that is always threatened by individualism, conflicts, anomie, capitalism itself. But the fact remains that social thought clung to the idea of society. Today, sociology denounces exclusion and unemployment, the crisis of institutions, the weakness of the State under capitalism, individualism, everything that weakens society. Contemporary sociology seems to respond to the weakening of the idea of a society with the fragmentation of its paradigms and objects. The role of sociology probably depends less on the intentions of sociologists than on the nature of the vectors and “markets” that establish links between sociology and the public to which it addresses itself. One way to resist the fragmentation and marginalization of sociology may be to rethink student training.