His work touches upon the issue of community links and the prevalence of "the imaginary" in the everyday life of contemporary societies, through which he contributes to the postmodern paradigm.

He developed a reflection on space which he continued in his work on nomadism (Du Nomadisme, Vagabondages initiatiques, La Table ronde, 1997).

[citation needed] In 1978, Maffesoli became the teaching assistant of Julien Freund, a conservative political theorist and follower of Vilfredo Pareto, while he was lecturing in Strasbourg.

Freund offered him to host the Institute of Polemology, which shows in his later works, under the themes of the "founding conflict" (La violence fondatrice, 1978), the "conflictual society" (PhD dissertation, 1981), and the use of the myth of Dionysus as "regenerating disorder" (L’Ombre de Dionysos, 1982).

The CEAQ is a humanities and social science research laboratory at Paris Descartes University, where he led a doctoral seminar until his retirement in 2012.

Maffesoli was awarded the Grand Prix des Sciences de l'Académie Française in 1992 for La transfiguration du politique.

Maffesoli is the director of the Cahiers Européens de l'imaginaire and Sociétés journals, as well as a member of the editorial board of Space and Culture and Sociologia Internationalis[citation needed].

The conference "Raisons et Sociétés", held at the Sorbonne in 2002 following the Teissier controversy to debate the broader issue of methodologies in human sciences, identified differences between the various sociological traditions relating to this case.

[16] The scientific, philosophical and sociological aspects of Teissier's thesis were studied by a group of scientists from several disciplines,[17] including members of the Collège de France.

[22] Maffesoli's appointment to the board of Directors of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique caused an outcry in the scientific community.

[25] The petitioners protested both against the non-respect for parity and the appointment of Michel Maffesoli, deemed as disrespectful of "the need for scientific credibility of the board".

[26] From October 2005 to February 2007, the petition received over 3,000 signatures, including these of Christian Baudelot, Stéphane Beaud, François de Singly, Jean-Louis Fabiani, Bernard Lahire, Louis Pinto, Alain Trautmann, Loïc Wacquant and Florence Weber.

Under the name "Jean-Pierre Tremblay", who was given a fictitious background as a Quebec-based sociologist, Quinon and Saint-Martin submitted an intentionally inept and absurd article on the "Autolib'", a small rentable car in Paris, to the Sociétés journal.