French Sociology

French Sociology offers a uniquely comprehensive view of the oldest and still one of the most vibrant national traditions in sociology. Johan Heilbron covers the development of sociology in France from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century through the discipline’s expansion in the late twentieth century, tracing the careers of figures from Auguste Comte to Pierre Bourdieu. Presenting fresh interpretations of how renowned thinkers such as Émile Durkheim and his collaborators defined the contours and content of the discipline and contributed to intellectual renewals in a wide range of other human sciences, Heilbron’s sophisticated book is both an innovative sociological study and a major reference work in the history of the social sciences.Heilbron recounts the halting process by which sociology evolved from a new and improbable science into a legitimate academic discipline. Having entered the academic field at the end of the nineteenth century, sociology developed along two separate tracks: one in the Faculty of Letters, engendering an enduring dependence on philosophy and the humanities, the other in research institutes outside of the university, in which sociology evolved within and across more specialized research areas. Distinguishing different dynamics and various cycles of change, Heilbron portrays the ways in which individuals and groups maneuvered within this changing structure, seizing opportunities as they arose. French Sociology vividly depicts the promises and pitfalls of a discipline that up to this day remains one of the most interdisciplinary endeavors among the human sciences in France.

No history of the discipline has ever articulated so finely the evolution of its institutions, an interpretation of the trajectories of its central actors, and the presentation of its main theoretical, methodological, and empirical results., Reading Heilbron’s study affords an unusual degree of intellectual satisfaction. It is thoroughly researched, up-to-date with the latest scholarship, and, although Bourdieusian in method, appropriately detached and non-partisan in its intellectual judgments. It tells a coherent overall story, continuing the author’s fine The Rise of Social Theory, of the consolidation and subsequent reconsolidations of Comte’s projected discipline across two centuries and tells that story in a sequence of stages whose periodization is well-motivated by reference to the distinctive dynamics of each., French Sociology is a striking illustration of the relevance of an historical sociological approach to the social sciences that succeeds in articulating intellectual history and sociology of science. One can only hope that it will inspire other works of the same type., Heilbron paints a deep sharp picture that allows new insights into the complex genealogies and institutional contexts of French sociology. His recapitulation of about two centuries of () French social science impressively demonstrates the usefulness and necessity of a historiography that consciously starts off from national scientific traditions., With French Sociology Johan Heilbron - European sociologist if ever there is one – provides further evidence of his ability to use in his work on the history of sociology, not only the whole range of research techniques, but also the most demanding conceptual tools of the discipline he has taken as his object of study.

Johan Heilbron is Director of Research at the Centre Européen de sociologie et de science politique de la Sorbonne (CNRS-EHESS) Paris and is affiliated with Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is the author of The Rise of Social Theory and coeditor of The Rise of the Social Sciences and the Formation of Modernity: Conceptual Change in Context, 1750–1850.