The critique and its crossroads. From critical social research programmes to the social field of the critique

Abstract

Is there unanimity regarding what is understood by critical perspective in sociology? Is there not rather a plurality of critical viewpoints in sociology? What is at stake in the ‘struggles’ for the legitimate definition of what criticism is in the field of sociology? Based on these questions, we raise the problematic nature of the concept of ‘criticism’ and formulate a hypothesis about what is at stake in determining the possibilities and limits of critical practices, whether social or sociological. The struggle between an anthropological and a sociological view of the question of ‘criticism’ is established between two different ways of approaching the problem of the system of social inequalities that characterises our historical societies. We propose a sociological reflection on the levels and modalities of criticism in sociology. Using the conceptual systems and research principles of Foucault, Bourdieu and Adorno, which are based on the complex research projects of Nietzsche, Kant and Marx, we approach the construction of a research object, that of criticism as a social field, of which we outline a first cartography.