Dialogue posthume avec Alfred Gell

Abstract

Presented as an imaginary dialogue with the author of Art and Agency, this paper displays a number of methodological shared positions: the contextualist nature of his epistemology, his focus on relations rather than on objects, his sense of pragmatism, his proximity with the notion of “person-objects” such as developed by the author of the present paper, his attention to the meso-social level and, eventually, his neutral standing in front of research objects. In spite of a few disagreements, all these properties bring to light a convergence between Gell’s anthropological approach and the kind of sociological methodology presently practiced in certain trends of French sociology.