What is it that Exists?

The current approaches denoted by the notion of pragmatic sociology have started approximately twenty years ago in France, at least partly as a reaction against the structuralism inspired sociology that was popular in the 1960s and 70s. Th ese structuralist works—that set out to uncover the hidden structures that, in their view, determine social actors’ behaviour—were criticised for underestimating the amount of uncertainty in social interactions, hence for oversimplifying the problematic of action. Luc Boltanski extends his theory on the exercise of criticism by placing the problematic of uncertainty into the centre of his theoretical framework, incorporating reflections of two decades. Furthermore, he raises questions that were either only implicitly present in his theory or were missing entirely.