The sociological enigma consists of two volumes. This second volume offers a dialogue on three anthropological dimensions of the social. Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2022

Following on from the first volume, which reviewed a number of debates opposing the different schools of sociology in France, this second volume explores the complexity of the sociological object through three anthropological dimensions of the social: the symbolic function, temporalities and social spatialities. The author discusses the currents of thought that are currently being debated. To address the symbolic function, he draws on the social neural sciences, rationalism, sociological constructivism and epistemic capacity. To explore social temporalities, he calls on sociology as a historical science, socio-history, historical sociology, the question of the relationship between regularities and social change, the problem of the event with the concepts of transitions, bifurcations and repetitions. In considering social spatialities, he draws on the concepts of field, world and stage, methodological nationalism, the question of the local and the global, and globalisation. The book concludes with the proposal of a Maussian-inspired sociological ontology, different from sociologies based on observation - a processual and relational ontology: relations connect ongoing activities with other, earlier, lateral social processes; they thus reconstitute the partial totalities that give them coherence or meaning, as well as their links to the more global social and spatial environment. The sociological object is thus endowed with a complexity that the survey will make visible. It requires the introduction of knowledge built up by other social sciences and humanities.

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