Amongst the forms of ‘active minority’ whose typology he has so convincingly established, Moscovici (1979) locates the category of ‘orthodox minorities’. Compared to traditional social psychology's frequently demonstrated taste for excessively simple concepts, Moscovici introduces a dialectical and paradoxical notion here. The term ‘minority’ contains a flavour of deviance, untimely initiative, and indeed anomy; the term ‘orthodox’ conjures up social functioning characterised by absolute conformity.

I have been led to operationalise the concept of ‘orthodoxy’ and to attempt to relate it to empirically demonstrable social functions, using experimentation in a natural social milieu. I have thus embarked upon a study of ideological processes from the very opposite direction to that taken by Moscovici, and in taking this path I have been able to consider the issue of the existence of ‘minority’ phenomena that are internal to orthodoxy systems themselves (Deconchy, 1971, 1980). Approaching from this direction we uncover social strategies as paradoxical and dialectical as those that initiated the quest, that is, those relating to the concept of an ‘orthodox minority’. We are therefore concerned here with a scientific journey in an opposite direction from that made by Moscovici but finally converging with it.

Our principal interest has been in the study of complex social systems which are, in institutional terms, highly organised and strongly oriented ideologically and whose models of functioning are inherently dependent on the conditions of their historical development.