La metáfora del lazo social en Jean-Jacques Rousseau y Émile Durkheim

Abstract

This article is a theoretical contribution for the comprehension of the social bond metaphor. In a wide sense, social bond refers to the union among the individuals and the different forms of the collective identity ("Sate", "nation", "people", etc.) within a given society. In the last decades, it has become a central trope in the field of social sciences and the humanities even though its first apparitions date from many centuries ago. In this article we propose the following objectives: on the one hand, to analyze comparatively the different uses and meanings in the pioneer discourses of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Émile Durkheim —two authors that, beyond using it frequently, they gave to this concept a fundamental role in their respective theories—; and, on the other hand, to inquire into more general implications of this metaphor in three differentiated analytical levels: the axiological or evaluative, the epistemological and the ontological.