François Dépelteau and the generation of a relational intellectual community

Abstract

François Dépelteau is a major figure in the contemporary rise of relational scholarship. His untimely passing casts a shadow over the relational research community, particularly those with close ties to the Canadian sociological association research cluster. This paper seeks to honour the contribution and legacy of François through a relational analysis of a relational research community. Mobilising Eacott’s relational approach, this paper turns relational scholarship upon itself to argue that the relational research community is organised around two fundamental questions – the explanatory and the empirical. François was not only embedded in, but embodied, this relationality. His approach to scholarship serves as an invitation, an invitation to think with, through and where necessary against relations in the pursuit of offering generative insights. François generated the conditions for many previously disparate researchers to come together and the challenge has now shifted to us – the relational research community – to honour him and continue this research agenda.

A sociological imagination for a clumsy world: François Dépelteau’s relational sociology

“…This point is reiterated by Jan Fuhse in his combination of a more general relational theory of social fields (2021a) and sketch of an analysis of the field of relational sociology (2021b). Scott Eacott (2020) takes up a relational analysis of François Dépelteau's role in embodying relational community by initiating creative controversies and not presuming one single understanding of "relational" approach.…”