Pathways: Ways of using sociology

Abstract

A brief digression on the potential sociological use of the concept of pathway, defined here taking into account three essential dimensions: mobility (individual and collective, biographical and structural, spatial and social), dynamics (something new is always produced in the interstices of social reproduction, since the socialising flow is continuous and diverse), and diachrony (adjustment between the past dimensions of socialisation, the contexts of the present and the imagination of possible futures). The journey through the concept ends by proposing... a new concept, the coefficient of singularity, in the footsteps of Pierre Bourdieu and Bernard Lahire.