The social as text and action
This article seeks to identify the elements necessary for the construction of a hermeneutic sociology. A first approach (macro hermeneutics) involves testing the analogy of the textual world and the social world by objectifying their internal structures. A second approach (historical hermeneutics) involves historicizing meaningful social institutions in support of a sociogenesis. A third approach (micro hermeneutics) involves understanding the social world as action, as interpretation and as situational scenario. If “structure,” “historicity” and “action” are only perceptible, respectively, from a particular point of view and using different methodological tools (semiological, sociohistorical, ethnographic), it is nevertheless through their interplay that the social world can be seen in all its breadth. While meaningful social structures appear as stratified, stabilized and empowered, there is nothing ahistorical about them : meaningful institutions are born, become empowered and change (and sometimes disappear).