Mediations and Critical Theory

Questions and Current State of a Sociological Project
By Olivier Voirol
English

MEDIATIONS AND CRITICAL THEORY Questions and current state of a sociological project

Paud Beaud's La Soci?t? de connivence outlined a sociology of the media and social communication that was designed to be a sociology of mediations. This research programme drew on the concept of mediation stemming from critical theory, which was itself closely linked to the concept of totality. After a reconstruction of this approach, this article considers its critiques with a view to identifying the features of its possible renewal. Thinking mediations today amounts to envisaging the forms of articulation between isolated phenomena and modes of totalization, by designing a semantic and normative horizon of appreciation from which the narrative form stems. Its modes of constitution are the subject of a sociology of mediations which endeavours to describe their anchorage in social relations of power.

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