Michel Maffesoli

Michel Maffesoli (born 14 November 1944 in Graissessac, Hérault) is a French sociologist.

He is a former pupil of Gilbert Durand and Julien Freund, and an emeritus professor at Paris Descartes University. His work touches upon the issue of community links and the prevalence of "the imaginary" in the everyday life of contemporary societies, through which he contributes to the postmodern paradigm.

Michel Maffesoli has been a member of the Institut Universitaire de France since September 2008, following a controversial nomination.

More generally, he has been the subject of several controversies, both scientific and professional, the most widely known of which concerns his supervision of the PhD dissertation of astrologer Élizabeth Teissier.

In 1972, Michel Maffesoli was co-director the ESU urban sociology research team in Grenoble. He developed a reflection on space which he continued in his work on nomadism (Du Nomadisme, Vagabondages initiatiques, La Table ronde, 1997). His work was influenced by Pierre Sansot and Jean Duvignaud, who were members of his PhD board in 1978. Maffesoli gave space a founding importance in social linkage and in the expression of subjectivity.

In 1978, Michel Maffesoli became the teaching assistant of Julien Freund, a conservative political theorist and follower of Vilfredo Pareto, while he as lecturing in Strasbourg. Freund offered him to host the Institute of Polemology, which shows in his later works, under the themes of the "founding conflict" (La violence fondatrice, 1978), the "conflictual society" (PhD dissertation, 1981), and the use of the myth of Dionysus as "regenerating disorder" (L’Ombre de Dionysos, 1982).

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