Fluxes and Structures: Which Relational Gaze?
Fluxes and Structures: Which Relational Gaze?

Summary/Abstract: Many scholars today share a view of relational sociology as a processual-transactional approach whosebasic tenet is the fluid, relativistic, contingent, transactional character of social relations. They invite sociologiststo see our so-called objects (societies, institutions, social patterns, conflicts, social movements, social classes,etc.) in a processual way. In this contribution the author objects that relationalism offers a reductive vision ofsocial reality, because it supports a flat social ontology rather than a stratified social ontology. Relationalism reducesrelationships to pure flows, considering structures as purely contingent, while relational sociology attributesa structure to relationships and gives autonomy to structures, even if they are produced by processes. We haveto distinguish between different orders of reality: the processual-interactional (relationalist) and the relationalorders. To see all of this, it is necessary to assume a relational gaze that is only possible if a supra-functional,morphogenetic framework is adopted

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