Gibert, J. 2015. Perspectivismo y verdad en sociología: Bourdieu y Giddens. Cinta moebio 52: 69-78

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Perspectivism and truth in sociology: Bourdieu and Giddens

Dr. Jorge Gibert Galassi (jorge.gibert@uv.cl) Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad de Valparaíso (Valparaíso, Chile)

Abstract

From the traditional point of view, power and truth are not related. Since 20th century there has been a social and historical breach in conventional assumptions about the relationship between power and truth. On one hand, it is generally accepted that scientific facts are considered artificial, in the sense of being constructed. This assumption neither implied any kind of fraud nor did it mean that they could be created ex-nihilo. But the interpretation of Kuhn as well as the subsequent developments of the Strong Programme, successfully postulates that truth is merely a social issue. Since then, it has been increasingly suspected that any objective or neutral description of society is too difficult, rendering it completely illusory. That is why it is necessary to ask again for the relation between the structures of truth and the social structures of power and what kind of impact they have on contemporary sociological theory. In this paper, it is given two examples of that kind of enterprise related to two major leading sociologists: Bourdieu and Giddens.

Key words: perspectivism, truth, sociological theory, Bourdieu, Giddens.