Guest seminar with

Francis Chateauraynaud and Josquin Debaz

Groupe de sociologie pragmatique et réflexive – GSPR (EHESS)

Aux bords de l’irréversible

Sociologie pragmatique des transformations

 

Introduction to the discussion by Sophie Tabouret and Émilie Perault

From climate change to terrorism, in a few decades the risk map has undergone a series of major reconfigurations, and there are countless discourses warning against global threats. By following the dynamics at work in health, environmental and technological issues, this book outlines a model of transformation that breaks with catastrophism and favors three fundamental dimensions of action and judgment: the critical scope of evaluation and regulation models; the making of scenarios and visions of the future; and the creativity of interacting environments

By exploring multiple figures of irreversibility, the authors show how bifurcations or alternatives develop at the heart of critical processes whose destination is never fully determined in advance. Spaces of possibilities or openings for the future take shape in the way in which individual and collective grip on the world are gained in context. With a look that is both pragmatic and critical, the authors question the strategies of resistance or displacement facing forms of government whose hegemony is contested.

By restoring the turbulent history of major alerts and highly controversial issues, such as air pollution, nuclear energy, GMOs or nanotechnologies, the book provides a reflection on contemporary sociologies, here reassessed in terms of pragmatism. One of the key questions concerns the sets of scales used to capture, in their complexity, apparently endless critical processes. How to articulate the analysis of public devices and the description of practical activities, where the production and anchoring of knowledge and values are at stake?”

 

Editons Pétra, coll. Pragmatismes, 2017

The Guest Seminar Series is organized collectively by the CSI PhD students. It is open upon registration.

 

Contact and registration : Mathieu Rajaoba or Nassima Abdelghafour