Alain Touraine on Sociology after Sociology: From Society to the Subject Introduction: The Crisis of the Classical Paradigm Alain Touraine (b. 1925), one of the leading French sociologists of the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, in his later works ("Sociology", "Critique of Modernity", "Thinking Otherwise", "After the Crisis", and others) put forward a radical thesis on the necessity of overcoming "classical sociology", whose intellectual mission, in his opinion, has been exhausted. This classical sociology, based on Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, was, according to Touraine, "sociology of society": it considered social facts as things, studied institutions, structures, and systems, explaining individual behavior through the action of external social forces (class, norms, rationalization). Touraine asserts that in the conditions of late modernity (or postmodernity), society as a whole, integrated system, governed by clear laws, no longer exists. In its place have come fragmented, globalized flows of information, capital, and cultural models. Therefore, sociology must find a new object and a new method. Key Thesis: From "Society" to "Social Action" and "Subject" The core of the project "sociology after sociology" is a change of paradigm. Critique of "society": Touraine believes that the concept of "society" has become a meta-social ideology, a myth that hides real conflicts and processes. It assumes a common culture, centralized institutions, and clear boundaries — all of which are eroded by globalization, multiculturalism, and the information revolution. The sociologist can no longer study "French society" or "industrial society" as monolithic entities. New object: social movements and cultural conflicts. The focus should be on not order, but the production of society by actors themselves in conditions of conflict. For Touraine, the main actors of modernity are not classes in the Marxist sense, but social movements (environmental, feminist, minority righ ... Read more