Michel Maffesoli, The Protestant Of Western Sociology: From Protest To Proposing An Alternative
Auteurs : Sebai Lakhdar .
Résumé
Abstract: This article examines Michel Maffesoli’s critique of orthodox Western sociology and the epistemological and methodological alternative that emerges from it. It asks in what sense Maffesoli may be described metaphorically as the “Protestant” of Western sociology and whether his protest develops into a coherent alternative. Using a critical analytical reading of his central concepts, alongside a comparative approach, the article traces his critique of classification, excessive abstraction, the marginalisation of common sense, the assumption of a single truth, and the transformation of rationality into epistemological orthodoxy. It then examines Maffesoli’s alternative as a “playful sociology” centred on presentation rather than representation, an epistemology of connection, the recovery of the lived, the imaginary, the sensory, and the everyday, a reformulation of objectivity, and passionate or Dionysian thinking. Finally, it considers the principal methodological tools of this approach: description, intuition, poetry and metaphor, and myth. The analysis shows that Maffesoli’s project seeks not merely to criticise modern sociological rationality but to reconstruct the relationship between sociological knowledge and social life by emphasising proximity, multiplicity, and attentiveness to symbolic, sensory, and affective dimensions.
Mots clés
Michel Maffesoli ; Western sociology ; sociological reason ; playful sociology ; Dionysian knowledge
