Introduction: The Indiciary Paradigm in Sociology

Abstract

This Symposium engages Carlo Ginzburg’s indiciary paradigm as a resource for sociological analysis. The indiciary paradigm — a mode of knowledge that proceeds from marginal details, unintended traces, and anomalous signs toward the reconstruction of otherwise inaccessible social realities — has long circulated in sociology as a tacit practice rather than an explicit methodological framework. The central aim of this issue is to make that implicit reliance explicit, and to advance the paradigm as a distinctive cognitive posture for sociological inference. The Symposium makes three original contributions. Conceptually, it refines the indiciary paradigm as a structured mode of inference with identifiable epistemic properties and limits. Empirically, it shows how indiciary reasoning operates across historical sociology, ethnography, organizational analysis, and digital sociology, each time confronting distinct problems of evidence and explanation. Methodologically, it addresses the transformation of indiciary conditions under computational research, where sociologists increasingly work with digital footprints, algorithmic outputs, synthetic data, and simulations — materials that require the paradigm to be stretched and recalibrated rather than simply applied. The seven contributions taken together argue that the indiciary paradigm is not a relic of pre-quantitative social science but a vital stance for a world increasingly governed by indirect evidence, mediated traces, and contested truths.