Towards a Sociology of Loss: Disposals and dead-ends in Lineages of Social Innovation and Change

Description du projet

Aperçu critique de l’interaction entre la perte sociale et la résilience

Dans un monde marqués par de constants changements sociaux, notre compréhension de la manière dont les pertes, les aliénations et les impasses influencent le cours de la transformation est très lacunaire. Si les sociologues ont largement étudié la manière dont les individus et les communautés réagissent aux crises, ils ont fortement négligé l’impact profond de ce qui est jeté ou perdu dans la formation des trajectoires futures. Dans ce contexte, le projet LINLOSS, financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, mettra en lumière les dynamiques négligées de la transformation sociale. Il explorera la manière dont la perte catalyse le changement à travers diverses dimensions sociétales: des transformations culturelles au fil des générations à l’évolution des configurations relationnelles. La recherche se déroule dans le cadre d’une étude communautaire transnationale couvrant des districts d’Irlande et de Pologne. L’analyse mettra en évidence les liens entre les pertes et les modèles sociaux partagés.

Objectif

This study aims to provide a new understanding of how losses, disposals and dead-ends shape the direction of social change at moments of rupture, and to develop a formal theory of social loss. Sociologists have shown that people respond to crises by reconfiguring cultural understandings, narratives of self and social relationships. However, we have not paid sufficient attention to how what is disposed of shapes future pathways. LINLOSS will address this gap in the sociological imagination. It will develop new explanations of how loss generates change at multiple, intersecting societal scales: in the transformation of cultural and institutional patterns across generations; within changing configurations of relationships across genealogies and social networks; and in the reconstruction of pasts and futures within biographies. The research will be a comparative, cross-national community study of two ‘exurban’ districts in Ireland and Poland. The main form of data collection will be mixed biographical interviews, combining unstructured and formal elements, connected within genealogical support networks. The analysis will take place across two iterations: a comparative analysis to trace the effects of breaks and losses within and between social lineages at multiple scales; and a thematic analysis to identify how instances of loss are tied together by a common social pattern. We live in ‘unsettled times,’ when it is essential that sociologists provide insights on how pathways of social loss and renewal lead to variations and resilience to new challenges, for individuals, families and communities. If successful, the study will make a significant contribution towards this goal. It will deliver a methodological breakthrough in pioneering methods for the analysis of dynamic, multi-scalar social processes and will make a major theoretical contribution to scholarship on social change.