Search

This article presents ideas relative to the definition of 'social reality' and 'the social' developed by the social scientists Norbert Elias and Bruno Latour. The presentation of these ideas is guided by the following questions: what is the criticism that the authors make to the sociological assumptions of which they move away?; How do they understand the social reality, society, the social?; What is the discussion and proposal that they do about the relationship individual - society?; What are the differences and similarities between the two proposals?. With the response to these issues, this article makes a connection to the main theoretical suppositions of the Elias's Sociology of figurations and to the Latour's Sociology of associations, as well as makes a presentation of the contributions of the authors to the contemporary sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with discourse based on two previous studies with newspaper texts that interpret not only the discourse process but also the political aspect concerning the linkage of language with history and ideology. Thus, it evaluates the theoretical-methodological principles and procedures of the French Discourse Analysis (DA), based on its use in the Social Sciences field, especially byPolitical Science. It shows that the connection between the social scientist and DA allows the awareness that it is not a field exclusive to Linguistics, but is formed by both Psychoanalysis and Marxism, with close relation to the Social Sciences. Guided by Althusser's analysis of Marx, it reviews concepts of ideology and subject as well as the relation that is established between them in the subjectivation process. The use of this methodology, which is also a theory, places the social scientist, during the process of understanding the studied object, up against theoretical-methodological challenges that may lead him/her to review this reflection based on his/her own education and disciplinary fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]