Christian de Montlibert. An inventive and iconoclastic thought

Abstract

THIS paper is focusing on the contribution of C. de Montlibert’s work to the foundation of a cumulative, reflexive and critical sociology. Combining in an inventive way the Durkheimian, Weberian and Marxist traditions, de Montlibert starts his reasoning with the principles that: social reproduction can be sustained only if it is supported by mechanisms of social domination; and transformations of modes of domination, which are related to social structures, result in the transformation of the social structures themselves. He manages thus to clarify the way in which the various systems of domination both structure and are structured by: the systems of relations between institutional functions; the organized relations between institutions, practices and strategies of social agents –i.e. social spaces–, and the systems of reproduction of social positions.