The terrorist attacks that struck France in 2015 had reverberations throughout the country’s intellectual fields. Among the most significant was a widespread polemic that turned around whether sociological explanations of the attacks amounted to excuses and justifications for terrorists. When prominent politicians and pundits made allegations of this nature, sociologists reacted in three main ways: most denied the allegations, others reappropriated the derogatory label of excuse, while others still accepted criticism and called for a reformation of sociology. These epistemological stances can be properly understood only by studying the long history of debates around ‘sociological excuses’ in France and by analysing French sociology as a field of forces and struggles.

2015年袭击法国的恐怖袭击在整个法国的知识领域都产生了回响。其中最重要的是广泛的争论，它绕开了对袭击事件的社会学解释是否构成恐怖分子的借口和辩解。当杰出的政治家和权威人士提出这种性质的指控时，社会学家以三种主要方式作出反应：大多数人否认了这些指控，另一些人重新使用了贬义的标签，而另一些人仍然接受批评并呼吁对社会学进行改革。只有通过研究法国围绕“社会学借口”的辩论的悠久历史，并通过分析法国社会学作为力量和斗争领域，才能正确理解这些认识论立场。