From the outset, sociology has faced various ways of understanding its relations with civil society. In addition to a reformist and participatory approach, a more critical sociology has emerged. Yet another trend sought to go beyond denunciation by witnessing to human misery. A neopositivist outlook seeks to lead sociology back to a more purely technical function. From the 1980s on, postmodernist questioning and the prevailing individualistic paradigms have induced divergent ways of relating to society together with a change in the ability of sociology to determine what the social is. For the future, sociology is likely to be confronted with dilemmas arising as much from dynamics internal to the discipline as to external factors such institutionalized financing.