Andrew Abbott. Le ecologie interconnesse di una carriera intellettuale

In this contribution, I will inquiry Andrew Abbott’s intellectual career from an ecological perspective, the same the American sociologist applied to the study of occupations and organisations in several empirical studies. This will allow us to investigate the interaction between history and sociology through the biograph - ical-intellectual experience of one of the major exponents of the dialogue be - tween the two disciplines. In the first section I will briefly trace his intellectual career, contextualizing it within the theoretical-methodological debate of the last decades. The second section will illustrate how Andrew Abbott has interpreted the encounter between sociology and history, understood as disciplinary ecolo - gies that fractally reproduce some paradigmatic dilemmas that run through all te social sciences. In the third section I will address the methodological aspects of Abbott’s critique of general linear theory, i.e. of standard methods and their con- ception of social reality. Finally, I will illustrate how in his latest writings Abbott comes to define a convergent model of sociological theory and methodology called processual sociology. In conclusion, I will argue that the synthesis between history and sociology leads Abbott to follow a new sociological path to scientific cumulativity.