Michel Maffesoli

Michel Maffesoli (born 14 November 1944 in Graissessac, Hérault) is a French sociologist.
He is a former pupil of Gilbert Durand and Julien Freund, and an emeritus professor at Paris Descartes University. His work touches upon the issue of community links and the prevalence of "the imaginary" in the everyday life of contemporary societies, through which he contributes to the postmodern paradigm.
Michel Maffesoli has been a member of the Institut Universitaire de France since September 2008, following a controversial nomination.
More generally, he has been the subject of several controversies, both scientific and professional, the most widely known of which concerns his supervision of the PhD dissertation of astrologer Élizabeth Teissier.

In 1972, Michel Maffesoli was co-director the ESU urban sociology research team in Grenoble. He developed a reflection on space which he continued in his work on nomadism (Du Nomadisme, Vagabondages initiatiques, La Table ronde, 1997). His work was influenced by Pierre Sansot and Jean Duvignaud, who were members of his PhD board in 1978. Maffesoli gave space a founding importance in social linkage and in the expression of subjectivity.

In 1978, Michel Maffesoli became the teaching assistant of Julien Freund, a conservative political theorist and follower of Vilfredo Pareto, while he as lecturing in Strasbourg. Freund offered him to host the Institute of Polemology, which shows in his later works, under the themes of the "founding conflict" (La violence fondatrice, 1978), the "conflictual society" (PhD dissertation, 1981), and the use of the myth of Dionysus as "regenerating disorder" (L’Ombre de Dionysos, 1982).

In 1982, he founded with Georges Balandier the Centre d'études sur l'actuel et le quotidien (CEAQ), a research laboratory in the humanities and social sciences at the Paris Descartes University, where he led a doctoral seminar until his retiring in 2012.

Maffesoli Michel was awarded the Grand Prix des Sciences de l'Académie française in 1992 for La transfiguration du politique.

Michel Maffesoli is the director of the Cahiers Européens de l'imaginaire and Sociétés journals, as well as a member of the editorial board of Space and Culture and Sociologia Internationalis.

Michel Maffesoli called to vote for Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential election of 2012., which he later denied.

Michel Maffesoli is sometimes associated with freemasonry, although there is no way to prove that he ever was a member of it.

Within the scientific community of French sociologists, the scientificity of Maffesoli's works is often questioned, especially since the furore concerning the thesis of Elizabeth Teissier "has created great controversy within the community [of French sociologists and beyond], and has led many sociologists to intervene in order to challenge the legitimacy". On this issue, Maffesoli presented arguments on his methods, in particular through a new edition of his epistemological book, La connaissance ordinaire, in 2007. An opposition currently exists between Maffesoli's positions on "sensitive thinking" and supporters of a sociology embedded in the criteria of systematic and transparent scientificity. The conference "Raisons et Sociétés", held at the Sorbonne in 2002 following the Teissier controversy to debate the broader issue of methodologies in human sciences identified differences between the various sociological traditions relating to this case.

Other controversies have led to challenges to Maffesoli's institutional position: the scientific community protested against his appointment to the board of the CNRS and against his appointment at the Institut Universitaire de France. On the other hand, Maffesoli's theories have been the subject of counter-inquiries, such as survey by Laurent Tessier on free parties in France and England.

Maffesoli's work has achieved acclaim from authors including Serge Moscovici, Edgar Morin, Patrick Tacussel, Philippe-Joseph Salazar or Patrick Watier who regularly cite him. His influence can also be seen in various foreign journals. It is probably his book Le Temps des tribus (1988, 1991), translated into nine languages, which made his notoriety outside France. Universities in Brazil, Korea and Italy request him for conferences. He has received a chair that was named after him in Brazil, and a honoris causa doctorate from the University of Bucharest.

His reception outside France is ambivalent. In a 1997 article in the Sociological Review, sociologist David Evans concluded that Maffesoli's theories were not a positive sociological paradigm, criticising his work "incoherent" and "biased". The accounts of books written by foreign sociologists were less forthright, but sometimes stressed that Maffesoli's approach was subjective and had a lack of reflexivity. One sociologist even stated that Maffesoli's sociology was a "sociology of club".

Élizabeth Teissier controversy

Maffesoli came to the attention of the general public in April 2001 when he defended the thesis of Élizabeth Teissier about the ambivalence of the social reception of astrology, highly contentious theory that he directed and whose jury was chaired by Serge Moscovici at the Paris Descartes University.

The attribution of a doctorate to Teissier "created great controversy in the [scientific] community, and led many sociologists to intervene to challenge the legitimacy". The thesis immediately aroused criticism in the field of French sociology, particularly that published by Le Monde by Christian Baudelot and Roger Establet on 17 April 2001, and the petition of 30 April 2001 for the President of the Paris V University, and signed by 300 social scientists. Many critical comments were published in the national daily press, along with less radical comments. Beyond sociology, four French Nobel Prize winners (Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, Jean-Marie Lehn, Jean Dausset and Pierre-Gilles de Gennes) also protested against the title of "doctor" awarded to Élizabeth Teissier in a protest letter addressed to the then Minister of Education, Jack Lang.

The scientific, philosophical and sociological aspects of Teissier's thesis were studied by a group of scientists from several disciplines, including members of the Collège de France. The thesis was analyzed in detail by a group of astrophysicists and astronomers (Jean-Claude Pecker, Jean Audouze, Denis Savoie), a group of sociologists (Bernard Lahire, Philippe Cibois and Dominique Desjeux), a philosopher (Jacques Bouveresse), and by specialists of pseudo-science (Henri Broch and Jean-Paul Krivine). From this analysis, it appeared that the thesis was not valid from any viewpoint (sociological, astrophysical, or epistemological).

In an email of 23 April 2001 addressed to many sociologists, Michel Maffesoli acknowledged that the thesis included some "slippages". His email minimized the importance of these errors and denounced a fierceness against Élizabeth Teissier and him.

After this controversy, two symposia were held to discuss the thesis's content and validity :

• A discussion-meeting entitled "La thèse de sociologie, questions épistémologiques et usages après l'affaire Teissier" was held at the Sorbonne on 12 May 2001 by the Association des sociologues enseignants du supérieur (ASES). Maffesoli was present at this meeting and attended the accounts by Christian Baudelot and Lucien Karpik.
• A symposium entitled "Raisons et Sociétés" was organized at the Sorbonne on 18 December 2002 to discuss and propose a theoretical answer to criticism. Several intellectuals and scientists participated in the meeting to bring the debate on scientific issues raised by the controversy. Edgar Morin, physicist Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond, Mary Douglas, Paolo Fabbri, Franco Ferrarotti among others were present at this meeting.

This controversy was sometimes caricatured as an opposition between positivism and phenomenology. However, criticism of Michel Maffesoli came from both research schools, though positivist critics received more publicity.

Appointment to the board of the CNRS

Maffesoli's appointment to the board of Directors of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique caused an outcry in the scientific community. The decree of 5 October 2005 by which the appointment was established stated that the appointment was justified "because of [his] scientific and technological competence".

A petition entitled "Un conseil d'administration du CNRS doublement inacceptable!" was launched after Maffesoli's appointment. The petitioners protested both against the non-respect for parity and the appointment of Michel Maffesoli, deemed as disrespectful of "the need for scientific credibility of the board".

From October 2005 to February 2007, the petition received over 3,000 signatures, including these of Christian Baudelot, Stéphane Beaud, François de Singly, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Bernard Lahire, Louis Pinto, Alain Trautmann, Loïc Wacquant and Florence Weber. Ironically, and as an effect of the petition having two goals, it remains absolutely unclear whether the petitioners signed against Michel Maffesoli's appointment, or against the non-respect for parity.

Appointment to the Conseil National des Universités

In late 2007, when Michel Maffesoli was appointed to the Conseil National des Universités (CNU), section 19 (Sociology, Demography), the Association des Sociologues Enseignants du Supérieur (ASES) and the Association Française de Sociologie (AFS) protested against this decision, as well as many other social scientists.

In addition, in June 2002 and after the Teissier controversy, Michel Maffesoli himself proposed to delete the CNU, which he deemed "unnecessary". However, he participated in the work of the section 19 of the CNU, including the controversial self-promotion of its own members in June 2009.

Appointment to the Institut Universitaire de France

Maffesoli was one of the persons appointed to the Institut Universitaire de France by a decree issued by the Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, Valérie Pécresse, in August 2008. This decree was the subject of a controversy over the appointment of people not selected by juries from the institute, including Michel Maffesoli. According to economist Élie Cohen, president of the jury, Michel Maffesoli "would be never accepted by the jury even if there were more places".

Sociétés hoax

Manuel Quinon and Arnaud Saint-Martin, two sociologists who were students of Michel Maffesoli in the early 2000s, have taken inspiration from the Sokal hoax to demonstrate the lack of intellectual rigour in Maffesoli's work, as well as the absence of any serious peer review in one of the two journals that he directs.

Using a false identity, they submitted an intentionally inept and absurd article on the "Autolib'", a small rentable car in Paris, to the Sociétés journal. The article was deliberately incoherent and plastered with liberal quotes and references to Maffesoli and other postmodern thinkers. The article was duly "reviewed" by two people, before being accepted and published in Sociétés without any substantial editing.

The authors of the hoax published an article explaining their aims and methods in March 2015. The hoax article was then quickly withdrawn from the publishing platform on which it appeared.

The English-language blogs Crooked Timber and Retraction Watch have reported on the hoax.