Sociologies (Oct 2011)
Régimes d’inégalité et injustices sociales
Abstract
Sociology of inequalities can be an endless abyss if we reason in terms of actor categories or in terms of inequality criteria. In order to escape the danger lead by a strictly descriptive understanding of inequalities, it is necessary to include sociology of inequalities in a general sociology aiming to propose analyses, interpretations or mechanism explanations and/or forms of awareness and actions that inequalities are, simultaneously, the causes, the frameworks, and the goals. Four themes will be discussed in this article: do inequalities form a structure and a system that is able to explain more than just inequalities? How are inequalities produced and reproduced in societies that, usually, refuse them? Why aren’t cognitive and normative experiences of inequalities a reflection of actual inequalities? And finally, why sociology must be useful and must participate to the public debate, and because inequalities are an issue of political and moral philosophy, the dominant political conceptions of inequalities and on the forms of “social contract” they imply.
