L'espace à trois dimensions des phénomènes sociaux

• Main Author: Michel Grossetti
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française 2011-04-01
• Series: Sociologies
• Subjects: level of analysis; generality; mass
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sociologies/3466

Confronted with a diversity of theories, epistemological positions and sociological methods, it is useful to have some conceptual tools in order to get one’s bearings. From this point of view, the question of the levels of analysis is primordial because it can direct the aspects of the different ways to undertake sociological work. The classical micro-macro opposition is not sufficient to reflect the complexity of social phenomena and the ways to grasp them. It is inserted here in a larger space of which the three dimensions are the mass, the duration and the generality. After presenting the dimensions and the scales that can be associated with each of them, this article presents the operations allowing one to circulate in such a space, as well as “changing the scale” towards other dimensions.