Micro-micro-sociology
It just happens that Jon Elster’s Explaining Social Behaviour book (2007) uses the same painting in its cover as Diego Gambetta’s Trust volume (1988). Both are, mutatis mutandis, analytical sociologists, who speak French and have taught at the Collège de France in the last two years. I personally discovered Elster before Gambetta.
The implications for social inquiry are, naturally, obscenely intimidating.
Add. Because of their interest in all social things analytical, I was expecting both of them to be members of the September group. I knew Elster to be a member already, but was disappointed not to find Gambetta in the Wikipedia list. However, this comes from a 2005 seminar by Gambetta:
And a force that brought me to become a social scientist was my dissatisfaction with Marxism, the dominant approach of the 60s and 70s. It was hopelessly naïve when it came to making its macro views match with a plausible notion of individual actions. When I discovered the existence of analytical Marxists, who became known as the No bullshit Marxis[m] group, which included scholars like Jon Elster, Adam Pzreworski, Jerry Cohen, I felt the world was a saner place. The analytical revisitation of Marxi[s]m was a major step forward for the social sciences.
So now, your job is to connect analytical marxism with a predisposition to enjoy the artwork of Georges de La Tour.
