Social network research is widely considered atheoretical. In contrast, in this article I argue that network analysis often mixes two distinct theoretical frameworks, creating a logically inconsistent foundation. Relationalism rejects essentialism and a priori categories and insists upon the intersubjectivity of experience and meaning as well as the importance of the content of interactions and their historical setting. Formalism is based on a structuralist interpretation of the theoretical works of Georg Simmel. Simmel laid out a neo-Kantian program of identifying a (...) priori categories of relational types and patterns that operate independently of cultural content or historical setting. Formalism and relationalism are internally consistent theoretical perspectives, but there are tensions between them. To pave the way for stronger middle-range theoretical development, I disaggregate the two approaches and highlight the contradictions that must be addressed or resolved for the construction of any general and inclusive theory. (shrink)

It has become customary since Foucault to present Canguilhem as a man whose work is voluntarily restricted to a particular domain of the history of science. Yet the current edition of his Complete Works reveals that Canguilhem has never considered himself a true historian of science. If he traced “the history of the formation, deformation and rectification of scientific concepts”, it is above all to nurture his profession of professor of philosophy with “unknown material”. On the assumption that Canguilhem subordinates (...) the history of science to teaching, this article will try to make a further step and show that its inter-regional approach of knowledge can serve as a paradigm in educational sciences, when the knowledge to be transmitted is a-disciplinary and has a strong normative dimension. (shrink)