Individual funds of dispositions: for a sociology on an individual scale

Abstract

In this article, the author presents a scientific programme for a sociology on an individual scale, calling for the study of behavioural variations between and within individuals, in a crossing of the plurality of incorporated dispositions and the plurality of contexts of action. To develop a sociological analysis on the scale of socialized individuals is, among other things, to study the make-up of social dispositions, the forms of interiorizing and exteriorizing dispositions, and the identity effects of incorporating heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory dispositions. This sociology on an individual scale, which responds to a double need (historic and scientific), in no way sets itself against statistical and generalizing methods but simply seeks to provide sociology with suitable (conceptual and methodological) instruments for grasping the most singular ties of the social.