ANR Project ‘SOCIOMA’

The aim of the Collaborative Research Project ‘SOCIOMA – For a Medieval Sociology’, funded by the French National Agency for Scientific Research (2024-2028), is to write a history of sociological knowledge in Latin Europe from the 12th to the 15th centuries. This research differs from other works of social history by focusing on the study of classificatory thought, in order to show that such thought is not merely descriptive, but that it is a performative intellectual tool, a repertoire of social forms available to actors, a ‘technology of power’.

This research project has three main topics: 
1/ a lexicographical study of Latin and vernacular vocabulary for social categories in the Latin West;
2/ the study and editing of scholarly theological, legal, philosophical and medical corpuses that convey a discourse on the architectonics of medieval society;
3/ the analysis of the use of social taxonomies in pragmatic literature, in order to reveal the resulting social dynamics.

Within a very long history of categorical social thought, which largely overlaps with that of the forms and modalities of State domination, and which extends from the first lists of socio-professional categories written in cuneiform (ED Lú A, c. 3200 BC) to the most advanced statistical tools – such The National Statistics Socio-Economic classification (NS-SEC of 2010) – the medieval period certainly deserves to be studied as an important stage in the development of tools for social identification and categorisation, and the promotion of a form of sociological rationality.

Project coordination: Antoine Destemberg

Partners:

Aude -Marie Certin (Université de Haute-Alsace / Cresat)

Joël Chandelier (Université de Lausanne)

Carole Mabboux (Université Paris 8 Vincennes–Saint-Denis / MéMo)

Sandrine victor (Institut Universitaire Champollion / Framespa)

Website: https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-24-CE27-4902

Duration: 48 Months – December 2024-December 2028

ANR funding: 435,214 €

The MFO is a partner of this project hosted by the Centre de Recherche et d’Études Histoire et Sociétés (CREHS – Université of Artois) <http://crehs.univ-artois.fr/programmes-anr/programme-socioma>

Illustration: Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou tresor (Londres, British Library, Add. Ms. 30024, fol. 1v, vers 1260-1299)