Conference January 23, 2014 : Traditions, controversies and trajectories of sociologies in France and in China (2)

This approach will enable us to identify the points at which sociologies constructed in France and those produced in China meet, overlap and cross-fertilise each other (Roulleau-Berger, 2011, Roulleau-Berger, Li Peilin, 2012). As knowledge circulates and becomes globalised, so new centres and new peripheries are formed, giving rise in turn to new hierarchies that emerge discreetly and in which rivals compete to develop innovative knowledge. The centres in which new knowledge in the human sciences is being produced have shifted towards Asia, where intellectuals – and sociologists in particular – have reacted to Eurocentric fundamentalism and a methodological nationalism (Beck, 2004) that places non-Western theories in subordinate positions, banishing them to ‘the outer reaches of knowledge’. The challenge that has developed over the past 20 years is a major one, revolving as it does around the question of the international recognition of non-Western knowledge in order to make progress in the production of new knowledge about local societies and global society.

The project concerns paradigms and theoretical methodology in the field of sociology in France and in China. This choice also makes sense in the light of the reconstruction of Chinese sociology since 1979. In France, marxism has lost most of its dynamism, structuralism has faded in importance, critical thinking has become hypercritical, the need to conceptualise sociological objects ‘globally’ has been asserted, the Subject has risen to prominence, the Grand Theories have declined and the grand paradigms have fragmented (Wieviorka, 2007). In France since the end of the 1970s, the constructivist and hermeneutic hubs have become more visible, while the opposition between the objectivist hub and the constructivist and hermeneutic hubs has diversified and widened (Berthelot, 2001). Thus three major sociological ‘programmes’ succeeded each other and then coexisted in both the succession and coexistence phases, academic life was constantly beset by controversies ; symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, rational choice theory, communicative action theory, the theory of historicity and genetic structuralism all on occasions slowly accepted to recognise each other’s legitimacy. 

Sociology in China has been reconstructed since the end of the 1970s (Li Peilin, Ma Rong, Li Qiang, 2008 ; Roulleau-Berger, Guo Yuhua, Li Peilin, Liu Shiding, 2008 ; Li Peilin, 2012) around the ever greater importance attached to the effect of Chinese civilisation both past and present and the idea of producing paradigms free of any form of cultural hegemony and of the Western world’s birds-eye gaze on Chinese society (Zhou Xiaohong, 2010) . In China and in France , the historical genealogies of tradition have not been constructed continuously throughout the history of sociological thought. Chinese sociologists seem to accept several norms governing academic legitimacy, thereby facilitating the production of diverse and coexisting points of view (Xie Lizhong, 2008, 2009). Sociologies could be constructed differently depending on the status given to the following concepts : structural processes/practical actions/interactions/subjectivities : some approaches are emerging on the basis of sociological objects that necessarily bring focus to bear mainly on structural processes and social strategies (Li Youmei, 2007, 2012) ; some are focused on interactions and collective actions ; other sociologies give more space to the actor, an actor constrained by the State and the market against a background of transition but capable of reflexivity and forming himself into a subject (Zhou Xiaohong, 2012).

 (Texts here)

Program

 (Program here)

• 9h-9h30 : Speeches of
• Pascal Marty, INSHS/CNRS, Directeur-Scientifique Adjoint Europe et International
• Jacques Samarut, ENS Lyon President,
• Chen Guangjin, Director of the Institute of Sociology, CASS (Peking)
• Renaud Payre, Director of Triangle

• 9h30-9h45 : Introduction by Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS Triangle

Discussant : Michel Kokoreff, Professeur à l’Université Paris 8, Directeur de GTM

• 9h45-10h15 : Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS, Triangle, ENS de Lyon : Post-Western Sociologies and Methodological Cosmopolitism
• 10h15-10h45 :: Xie Lizhong, Professor and Dean of the Department of Sociology, Peking University : Post-Sociology and Classical Sociology : Ruptures and Continuities
• 10h45- 11h15 : discussion

Discussant : Stéphane Dufoix, Assistant Professor HDR, Nanterre University, Director of Sophiapol, HDR à l’Université de Nanterre

• 11h15- 11h45 : Shen Yuan, Professor of sociology, Dean of the department of Socioloy, Tsinghua University : Chinese Public Sociology
• 11h45-12h15 : Luc Boltanski, Research Director at EHESS, Emeritus, Paris : Critical Sociology and Sociology of Critic
• 12h15-13h : Discussion

Discussant : Frédéric Le Marcis, Professor of Anthropology, ENS Lyon, Triangle

• 14h30-15h : Chen Guangjin, Professor of sociology, Director of Institute of Sociology, CASS : Chinese society- Change and transformation
• 15h-15h30 : Ahmed Boubeker, Professor of Sociology, Saint-Etienne University, Max Weber Center : Post-Colonial Ruptures and new boundaries of French society
• 15h30- 16h15 : discussion

Discussant : Christine Détrez, Associate Professor in Sociology, HDR, ENS Lyon, Centre Max Weber

• 16h30-17h : Zhou Xiaohong, Professor in sociology and social psychology, Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University : Chinese Feeling : Social Mentality in a Transformation Society
• 17H-17h-h30 : Bernard Lahire, Professor of Sociology, ENS, Max Weber Center : Social differenciation and dispositional plurality

• 17h30-18h15 : General discussion