Sociologies and Methodological Cosmopolitism

Methodological reflection in sociology is linked to the development of the Western society which saw its birth. If the process of pluralisation of contemporary societies questions even the idea of society as a narrative attached to that of modernity, and in particular that of European modernity, European thinking has continued through methodological nationalism to see itself as universal mediator of all the other narratives (Chinese, Indian, Arabic, African, Brazilian and so on). Certain forms of scientific hegemony  have marked the development of sociological thought.  The most pressing task, however, is to produce methodological cosmopolitism in which continuities and discontinuities, connections and disjunctions are constructed between different places in the world and potentially capable of bringing to light the multiplication of « regimes of alterity », the different ways of being with Others. The Others became a major methodological and epistemological scientific issue. Here, a methodological cosmopolitism is based on a multisited ethnography of recognition, in which all Others are regarded and recognised with their experience, their competence, and his fluctuating, reversible and varied identities anchored in a diversity of locations and temporalities. Methodological cosmopolitism is a way to access to the multivocality and the polyphonies of the plurality of narratives.  Here methodological cosmopolitism allows for a universal sociology, which means integrating different points of view, which European, Asian, American, Arabic, African societies construct together. We propose to create a transnational intermediate space of knowledge in sociology by favouring an harmonisation between different theoretical, epistemological and methodological traditions from Asia, Europe, Africa, North and South America and Arabic countries. Methodological cosmopolitism is related to a conceptual space based on the articulation between a critical sociology and a pragmatic sociology where structural processes, collective and individual action, interaction orders are thinking together in different places in the world and different temporalities.