On Critique: A Sociology of Emancipation

“With surprising sociological imagination, Boltanski shows how the critique of institutions is based on the everyday experience of a discrepancy between reality and the world, between what is socially defined and what could be possible in an undefined way. Without intending to, Boltanski revitalizes Adorno’s insights in a sociological manner. This book is to be read by everyone interested in the future of critical theory.”
Axel Honneth, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt

In critical sociology, description in terms of power relations underscores the potency of mechanisms of oppression, the way the oppressed passively endure them, going so far in their alienation as to adopt the values that enslave them. Pragmatic sociology, by contrast, describes the actions of human beings who rebel but who are endowed with reason. It stresses their ability to rise up against domination and construct new interpretations of reality in the service of critical activity.

Boltanski develops a framework that makes it possible to reconcile seemingly antagonistic approaches – one determinist and assigning the leading role to the enlightening science of the sociologist, the other concerned to stick as closely as possible to what people say and do. This labour of unification leads
him to rework such notions as practice, institution, critique and, finally, ‘social reality’, all with the aim of contributing to a contemporary renewal of practices of emancipation.