Antonio Gramsci’s Contribution to a Critical and Historical Sociology

The work of Antonio Gramsci is characterized by its interdisciplinary nature, addressing issues and problems typical of the human and social sciences. Nevertheless, sociological studies have given little space to the significant theoretical and methodological contribution of Antonio Gramsci. This essay aims to reconstruct this scholar's relationship with sociology and then to examine the main social and sociological issues that recur in his texts. The first part examines Gramsci's explicit views on the social sciences and sociology. The critique of sociology is powerful. It should not be overlooked, however, that the remarks concern the sociological production that he was able to witness, and therefore predominantly the positivist sociology that was dominant in Italy in those years, which was considered as a press-technical attempt to overcome the Philosophy of Praxis. However, as the second part of this work shows, it is possible to perceive in the Philosophy of Praxis a Gramscian science of society, for which the historical subject plays a decisive role in the process of social transformation and, beyond this, any law of equilibrium or social evolution. Antonio Gramsci's critical social theory does not stop here, but goes further: the analysis and criticism of social reality is followed by a political project for the realization of a possible alternative society. A project that, in a time of great transformations, still deserves to be considered, but which is still full of deep contradictions.