Paper's abstract

Frédéric Zenati, The Trial, a Place for the Social
The trial appears at a certain level in the evolution of societies under the form of a rite, the way used by the group to heal the violence that go through it. But its essence is not to be look for there, if one is to believe the deritualisation that carry with it the extension of the trial phenomenon in modern societies. The structural social dimension of the trial must be searched in its function of elaboration of values on a rhetorico-dialectical and argumentative mode. An atomised society cannot only do without this function, but this function tends to irradiate the whole social activity by providing it with a new form of genesis of morality.

Key Words : trial, sociology, violence
t. 39, 1994 : p. 239-247