A sociological analysis of subjectivity.

Combining speculative reflections with investigations into society's lower, middle and upper classes, Nicolas Duvoux shows how feelings about the future constitute a precious and irreplaceable indicator of social position. The subjective ability to project oneself into the future in a positive manner is no less than a key to comprehending society, in two ways: it permits us to describe the social hierarchy but also to observe the inegalitarian relations that form and how they are reproduced. In facing the crisis of the future, not everyone is in the same situation. The more fortunate are also better equipped to master futures both individual and collective, which in the middle classes creates anxiety and fear of demotion, and at the bottom of the social ladder, dispossession and radical insecurity.
Without giving up on the scientific goal of objectivity—in fact, to the contrary, refining its instruments—Nicolas Duvoux shows how subjectivity can reveal inequalities, especially of social class. He highlights the importance of economic inheritance beginning with the security procured by possessions—and the endemic social insecurity to which their absence condemns us.
Basing his work on philosophical, psychological, and epidemiological research, he deploys an approach to the social world that combines present, past, and imagined futures, the objective and the subjective, the individual and the collective, all without pitting them against each other. This book offers a sociological perspective of the world, taking into account the richness of lived experience to assess asymmetry and forms of social domination more efficiently, and aiming to reintegrate sociology into a more global scientific project.