Sylvain Pasquier is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Caen-Normandy and a member of CERREV (Center for Study and Research on Risks and Vulnerabilities). He is also a member of MAUSS (Anti-Utilitarian Movement in Social Sciences). His research is part of a relational sociology that favors a phenomenological approach. The general hypothesis is that people present to each other conceptions of their singularity and of humanity in general in the social situations in which they participate.
His theoretical work draws on authors such as Erving Goffman, Georg Simmel, Claude Lefort, and Hannah Arendt, as well as a Maussian perspective that emphasizes theories of gift-giving and recognition. His work has focused on associations and professional recognition. In recent years, it has focused on the various reconfigurations of social reality, new approaches to cosmopolitanism, and the emergence of a “new regime of otherness” in the context of globalization.