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In the human sciences the researcher is part of the society he studies, producing a circular situation, which threatens the objectivity of sociology. However, certain groups oriented toward a global structuralization of society are privileged. A rigorously objective study of society is however impossible, & the values guiding social research are not universal as those guiding physical research, mastery over nature, are. Problems for sociologists include delimitation of objects of research, & choice of relevant schematizations of an impossibly complex reality. Focusing on groups oriented to a global structuring of society leads to a concept of the maximal potential consciousness of an era. In this approach, understanding & explanation are the same process related to two reference points, the englobing structure & the thing englobed. This dialectical approach contrasts in fundamental ways to positivistic & mechanistic ones, which cannot explain why social conditions ultimately change. W. H. Stoddard.

The study of THEORY OF THE NOVEL by G. Lukacs & MENSONE ROMANTIQUE ET VERITE ROMANESQUE by R. Girard, point to sociological hypotheses concerning the homology between the classic novel structure & the structure of exchange in the liberal economy, & to certain parallels in their evolution. For Lukacs, the novel is the history of a degraded search for authentic values in a world which itself is degraded. He delineates 3 schematic types of 19th century Western novels: (1) the novel of abstract idealism, (2) the psychological novel, & (3) the educational novel. Both Girard & Lukacs believed that the novelist must be able to surpass the hero's consciousness, but each viewed the nature of this surpassing differently: Girard felt that he must lay aside the world of degradation to regain authenticity, while Lukacs believed that to do this was to make the history of this degradation a mere news item. For the sociologist who studies literature, a major problem is the relationship between the novel form itself & the structure of the social milieu in which it developed. A central hypothesis relating to this is that the novel form is the transformation on the literary plane of everyday life in individualistic society born of production for the market. But most works in literary sociology focus on the relationship between literary words & the collective consciousness of a specific group from which they come. A Marxist analysis would stress that in societies producing for the market, collective consciousness gradually disappears. Until this point, no great literary manifestations of bourgeois consciousness existed since society linked to the market defines the artist as problematic & thus critical of & opposed to society. Reified bourgeois thought has thematic values which are represented in the form of an individual story, as opposed to an authentic novel. A. Karmen.