Une antinomie durkheimienne… et au-delà

For sociologists, time has always been an intellectual enigma. Lately, another concept – temporality – has been preferred in contemporary sociological research. To understand this evolution, this paper sketches a very short history of the sociological theories of Time. The Durkheimian school, which played a pioneering role in the sociology of knowledge, failed to analyze time as a social fact. Later, two types of theories evolved. The first one regards time as a collective construction, without paying attention to the different representations of time social groups build. On the contrary, the second one provides theories of the social based upon notions of segmentation and differentiation. In order to surmount this antinomy, we need a general theory of temporalities. The sociological framework proposed by W. Grossin is a relevant way to attain such a goal.