Nota's over de betekenis der dieptelagen in de theorie van G. Gurvitch

Samenvatting

An evaluation of the depth sociology of Georges Gurvitch. This sociology claims to describe social reality in all its aspects. But its description seems unsatisfactory, for 2 reasons. (1) It only permits guesses on the religious, economic, legal, etc nature of the facts studied. It is necessary to introduce a distinction between kinds and forms of social facts, a distinction which is, indeed, employed in the study of social control. (2) It is not possible to describe the forms of sociability with the aid of the concept of layers in depth, because the criteria used for such a description have nothing to do with the content of social reality. The scope of depth sociology is therefore more limited than Gurvitch would seem to indicate. This is due to the fact that Gurvitch's pluralist point of departure condemns him to pass by the nature of social phenomena and to deal only with their modes of appearance. I. Langnas.