Frère, B. (2004). Genetic structuralism, psychological sociology and pragmatic social actor theory: Proposals for a convergence of french sociologies. Theory, Culture & Society, 21(3), 85-99. doi:10.1177/0263276404043621

Silva Corrêa, D., & de Castro Dias, R. (2020). The critique and its critical moments: The recent pragmatic turn in french sociology. Current Sociology, 68(6), 721-737. doi:10.1177/0011392120914702

 Two poles stood out in fashioning this new turn in French sociology. At the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI), Bruno Latour and Michel Callon renewed the sociology of science and technique by focusing not on finished scientific facts but on science in the making, exposing raw facts and entities still in a ‘hot’ state by presenting the controversies and moments of uncertainty. Some scientific facts were then treated as ‘black boxes’, which could be opened to reveal the ordinary work done by scientists in their respective laboratories. Conversely, in the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale (GSPM), Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot changed the analytical approach on social agreement, no longer considering it the result of the internalization of normative expectations (Parsons) or objective structures (Bourdieu), but rather as the result of an axiological process of enquiry by the actors at critical moments.1

In order to identify the kind of regime in which the agent acts, we haveto take the agents’ discourse into account when they locate their behaviourin  a  given  justification  register.  For  each  given  regime  in  which  an  agentacts, some (socially incorporated) dispositions may be activated or cancelled depending  on  whether  they  correspond  to  the  kind  of  behaviour  that  isappropriate. Some dispositions turn out to be more appropriate than othersin such or such social context. In other words, I will use some rather thanothers depending on the specific context in which I currently find myself. Ihave  several  sets  of  habits  and  skills.  They  vary  according  to  the  socialcontext and the action regime in which I have to act. In order to understandwhat these dispositions are, how I acquired them, and in what way I imple-ment   them   involves   the   agent’s   justifying   discourse   (Boltanski   andThévenot).  This  takes  us  back  to  common  speech  (Wittgenstein)  and  to  apsychological  definition  of  the  various  kinds  of  incorporated  dispositions,so  to  a  contemporary  psychological  approach  inspired  by  Freud  whichBourdieu completely left out.

would dispositions fade away progressively or would they disappear through a  lack  of  actualization?  Is  it  possible  to  destroy  them  through  counter-socialization when they become consciously known?

  the  questionwhy  some  of  our  dispositions  operate  and  are  updated  in  some  socialcontexts  and  not  in  others.  Bourdieu  does  not  allow  us  to  understand  howan individual lives in a plurality of social worlds nor his own internal plural-ity:  which  dispositions  does  he/she  invest  in  the  various  universes  he  hasto explore? Bourdieu thinks that the dispositions of an individual’s habitusare designed only to adapt to the sphere they come from.

 how is it possible for various socializing experi-ences  to  inhabit  the  same  body?  How  do  they  intervene  later  in  anindividual’s life?