Repenser la théorisation de la distinction sociale à partir des analyses comparatives

• Main Author: Jean-Pascal Daloz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Catholique de Louvain 2020-06-01
• Series: Recherches Sociologiques et Anthropologiques
• Subjects: social distinction; comparative analysis; inductive approach; ethnocentrism; middle range theory
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rsa/3778

A comparative analysis of the methods and logics of social distinction in a wide range of contexts leads to pointing out the limits of grand theorizations with universal pretensions. This article first of all underlines the reductive, often ethnocentric character – as well as a tendency to extrapolation – of many explanatory schemas having based their theories on the study of a particular situation in a certain period. It contends that taking varied scenarios into account facilitates the implementation of more satisfactory interpretation grids. Favouring original approaches (such as research on the priority vectors of distinction specific to societies) while at the same time returning to thematics that were dealt with in an overly dogmatic fashion (involving the rather unconscious or strategic character of the distinctive practices, for example), it insists on the virtues of an inductive approach avoiding a prioris. This contribution, which offers an unprecedented summary – in French – of the author’s The Sociology of Elite Distinction and Rethinking Social Distinction, concludes with considerations of an epistemological and methodological order.