Social relationships and critical realism in Pierpaolo Donati’s work

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the theoretic nucleus of relational sociology. Relational sociology begins with the observation that contemporary society is characterized by a progressive distancing between the human and the social and consequently the social is no longer conceived as a place for the human to inhabit. The human can be found outside of what constitutes the social context, in the internal being of individuals, tastes, preferences, individual feelings, or in the imagination and collective representation. Faced with such an historic outcome, relational sociology demands the presence of the human in social relations. The new theoretic paradigm shows the necessary links —even if critical— between the human and the social in concrete daily life. The making of society, that is the emergence of social forms, is interpreted as the dynamics of the continual differentiation and reciprocal integration between the human and the social.