The internal and the external in the sociological explanation: continuities and discontinuities of realities and models

Abstract

Originally published in the Annals of a Colloquium held at the International Association of French-Speaking Sociologists (Geneva, Switzerland, 1993), this paper discusses, in the line of Georges Balandier, the need for an explanatory balance between internal factor and external factor, regarding the analysis of global societies, as well as the dynamics of North-South relations. From a theoretical-methodological point of view, it points out the risks and pitfalls that exist at the level of social reality, with reflections on the interpretive models of these same realities. This text, although dated, was written and presented during an international conjuncture in which various authoritarian regimes were transmuted into multiparty democracies, and yielded to pressures for a growing openness of their markets. Almost a quarter of a century later, there has been a resumption of the liberalizing pressures imposed by the centers of financial and military power. A resumption of the initiative, in reaction to the technicist and impositional discourses, then becomes necessary for those who do not abandon a utopian imaginary.