22

This article will examine the place of popularization in the public communications of scientific institutions, as well as its relationship to a positivist order of knowledge. The narrative of the social world conveyed by popularization is based on a hierarchy of social fields in relation to the institutions of scientific knowledge construction, but also implies a hierarchy between disciplines. More than just a homogeneous literary genre or a simple category of science mediation devices, popularization can appear as an institutional, common-sense narrative, bringing together and structuring the trivial practices of researchers as well as mediators, as a sociodicy helping to legitimize political domination, in both the public and scientific spheres.