Ritrovare la società. Oltre la dicotomia individuo società

Abstract

This article traces the reasons for the current marginality of sociology in the lack of discussion on the theoretical foundations and boundaries of the discipline. One of the main gaps is the lack of clarity about what sociology is concerned with. I try to show in what sense it can still be said today, as happened in the sociological tradition, that society is the object of sociology. Society must be found in the frames in which the subjects of the action enter into a reciprocal relationship of recognition, without neglecting how it has historically developed. I believe that in order to theoretically reconstruct society as the object of sociology we must address the central theoretical node of the individual-society relationship. The two terms, generally understood as dichotomous, are not in themselves opposites. What makes them conflicting is the use made of them in the different versions of the doctrine of individualism.