Observers Observed: Personal Notes by a Participant of the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association

Abstract

An attempt to summarize the main trends in contemporary sociology is based on the authors observations and the published reports of the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association. The work provides an understanding of the concept of turbulence, as formed by the conference participants, which defined the general orientation of the conference in particular, as well as for modern European sociology in general. The article covers the specificities of basic areas of modern theoretical sociology manifested in the concepts of actor, pluralism, and postmodernism. The state of contemporary French sociology (particularly the works of L. Thevenot) is discussed as a representative example.