Faire une sociologie de la transaction sociale ou de la transaction sociale une sociologie ?

Abstract

The publication of the article: “The notion of social transaction tested by time” (Fusulier/Marquis, 2008), has engendered a debate with Maurice Blanc, whose argued critique has led the authors to clarify the “version” of social transaction they defend and the role they would have it play in the universe of sociological concepts. This article proposes removing the ambiguity surrounding social transaction when it is simultaneously defined as paradigm and as a form of social exchange. For that matter, the sociological relevance of social transaction does not reside as much in a world it offers nor in the characterization of a type of interaction, but in its invitation to interpret social phenomena through a prism taking their multi-dimensional and processual character into account. In other words, social transaction reveals a sociological perspective which, in the analysis of a situation, invites us to gather the variables or dimensions far exceeding that situation for a finer understanding of both the conditions of its possibility, the play of actors, the social products and their productive or reproductive effects.