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This paper argues that the French Revolution constituted the basic metaphor through which Pierre Bourdieu perceived and analyzed gender hierarchies; that the class structure of the ancien régime and the mechanisms of its legitimation were the major metaphors he used through his scathing critiques on the order of the sexes; and that the ideals of liberté, égalité and fraternité were always his reformatory aims for a just, gender-neutral society. The paper shows how this preoccupation with the Revolution of 1789 structured Bourdieu's analysis of gender relations and sexual identities in contemporary society. It exposes the ways in which he identified men with the nobility and women with the third estate; it presents his analyses of the role that traditional ideologies and state bureaucracies play in legitimating this arbitrary order of masculine domination; and it analyzes his proposals for a sexual revolution while exposing the counter-revolutionary forces that persistently negate attempts to reform gender hierarchies. Fundamentally, this new reading of Bourdieu's exegeses on gender suggests that he was working with a ready-made interpretive scheme, a model of society that he was inclined to see as always reproducing itself: the ancien régime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julien Freund (1921–93) was a French sociologist and political theorist who taught at the University of Strasbourg in the 1960s and 1970s. Although he is the author of over two dozen books, Freund remained throughout his lifetime something of a marginal figure in his own country. Yet, strangely, Freund is now receiving more scholarly attention in France than ever before. The question is why? This paper attempts to provide an answer by looking at Freund's attempt to establish an alternative intellectual canon in France that was heavily indebted to the German tradition of political realism. The story begins with Freund's early relationship with Raymond Aron, and suggests, perhaps provocatively, that Freund is responsible for luring Aron back into his studies on Max Weber dating from the 1930s. It then moves on to explore Freund's relationship with Carl Schmitt. Freund became Schmitt's closest French friend and, for forty years, exhibited a veritable obsession with disseminating Schmitt's work in France. Finally, it suggests that recent attempts by those who wish to place Freund within a current tradition of French liberalism are mistaken. Instead Freund must be placed within a German Neue Rechte context, and specifically his desire to introduce the German tradition of political realism into France. In the end the article argues that the French Nouvelle Droite—with its stress on the cultural and ethnic foundations of the nation-state—pushed Freund's political thought in a decidedly anti-liberal and seemingly pseudo-fascist direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of the state in the development of French Sociology after 1945. This role was important in the institutionalization of the discipline. It favoured the creation of research teams, resarch centres or laboratories. The State favoured the funding of french sociology too. This funding, in the form of research contracts with various public bodies, has contributed to the emergence of the figure of the expert and, more broadly, to the involvement of sociologists in sectoral policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the efforts to extend the ideas of the French sociologist Émile Durkheim following his death on November 15, 1917. It is noted that some of the latest works of Durkheim were retrieved by his nephew, Marcel Mauss, from a depository of Durkheim's papers held by his daughter, Marie. Marie's second son Étienne Halphen got interested in his grandfather's works, particularly in the circumstances surrounding the life of the sociologist. A booklet titled "Hommages à Émile Durkheim" was published in 1988.

This article presents the author's comment on researcher David Sciulli's paper about the continental sociology of professions. According to the author, Sciulli wanted to set a standard for the study of the professions. It is easy to follow Sciulli's arguments on the deficiencies in the earlier studies on professionalism, and a person can easily grasp what he understands as the shortcomings of this research. Sciulli states that certain European languages, particularly French, have not developed a word for professionalism and that French researchers therefore have not bothered with studies of professionalism. The reason for this omission seems not to be that Sciulli regards the French society to be without professionalism in his sense, as he makes a French institution from the 17th century, the only example of the usefulness of his own definition. Sciulli seems to think that French sociologists neglect the phenomenon--or he thinks that it does not matter if they have opinions if it is not possible to translate them directly into a theory of professionalism.

This essay provides information on the translations of books or articles, reviews published by the main French journals about U.S. work in sociology, as well as quotations from and references to U.S. texts which are all indications of U.S. influence on French sociology. The focus of this essay is U.S. texts translated into French or reviewed in French, in other words, texts available to a wide audience of non-English readers. Other channels of exchange and direct quotations from original texts deserves analysis, but many French sociologists are unlikely to read the original works in English. The bulk of this essay is limited in scope to translations of books over a very long period. Then the range of our observations will be broadened to reviews of U.S. books and articles by U.S. sociologists published in a selection of main nonspecialized French journals over the last two decades. While books often reach a wider lay audience, these journals are mainly meant for specialists. Selecting such a corpus implies determining who is a U.S. sociologist. In this paper, United States refers to the author's usual place of residence, a criterion sometimes difficult to apply, whether because of lack of information because some sociologists are often on the move. The choices made also imply defining sociology, and that is a more difficult issue; social and cultural anthropology are included whenever fieldwork takes place in industrialized societies; historical sociology is excluded when its main concern is about societies in the past. Approximately one hundred first translations of sociology books can be listed over the 1880-1998 period. The risk of omissions in listing these books is higher for years before 1970, since computerized library catalogues are of little help before that date. The median delay between original and French publication is nine years. The number of translated books reached its peak in the early 1970s.

The author presents a response to the articles "The Sociologist of Religion as an Expert Witness," by Bryan Wilson that was published in the March 1998 issue and "Discussing Wilson's Paper" by Raymond Lemieux that was published in the November 1998 issue. The author contends that sociologists are unable to act as witnesses in court proceedings based on French judicial tradition and discussed conditions under which sociologists may be able to circumvent the system.

This review had its origins in connection with the beginning of studies in industrial and work sociology in France, and with the activity of G. Friedmann who at the early beginning of the second post-war period was one of the major supporters of this sociological field of knowledge. The socio-historical orientation of the review has become more and more strong; deepnesa and flexibility of its investigation about the various industrial countries and the attention given to their historical process of evolution are its main characteristics. Besides the traditional industrial and organizational sociology topics, attention has been given to social movements, urban sociology, sociology of medicine. Sociology of development has been an area of constant interest, since the beginning of the review. The whole content of the first twenty years (434 articles and papers) has been ordered and classified into 17 classes which can be used both for systematic reading purposes and for having an overall evaluation of the contribution of « Sociologie du travail » to the development of industrial and work sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is a sociology based on interaction that visualizes and models relations between actors. Whereas interaction is approached by classical scholars, we had to wait until the 1970s and the birth of computer science to see social networks analysis develop. This article investigates the influence of SNA in France from the 1980s and wonder if there is a French school of SNA? To do so, we first resume social networks history and highlight its contribution to sociology. Second, we analyze the trajectory and profile of five 'disciplinary entrepreneurs,' whose role in the field is important as they master three necessary languages for SNA: English, Mathematics and Computer Science. Third, in order to put back those individuals in their social structures, we cross SNA with the different French sociological tradition(s) (according to topics and methods). Last, we wonder if the institutionalization process succeeded in the creation of institutions from which a French SNA would be able to expand? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theory of interdisciplinarity and examines relations between historians and sociologists in Germany and France over the course of the twentieth century, focusing in on several key moments of interdisciplinary activity. Interdisciplinary engagements are motivated by scholarly problems, field-specific interests and battles, and pressures and inducements coming from states, businesses, and scientific institutions. Analysis of the most productive moments of cross-disciplinary interaction suggests that they occur when disciplines are equal in power and when scholars are motivated by scholarly problems and disciplinary conflicts to move beyond their disciplines. More generative forms of interdisciplinarity are dialogic and processual, characterized by a fusion of perspectives; less productive forms are externally induced, involve asymmetrical partners, and are organized around division of disciplinary labor rather than an interpenetration of perspectives. The most productive interdisciplinary conjunctures result from serendipitous resonances and contingent synchronicities between subfields of semi-autonomous disciplines. It is thus impossible to produce the most fruitful forms of interdisciplinarity deliberately. The article examines three cases of symmetrical, processual interdisciplinarity involving sociology and history. Two of these cases were located in the French academic field, first between the wars, and then again after 1980. The other case of dialogic collaboration between historians and sociologists begins in Nazi Germany and continues after 1945 into the 1960s, leading to the formation of West German Historische Sozialwissenschaft. Examples of unbalanced interdisciplinarity include German “History-Sociology” during the Weimar Republic, in which sociologists’ opening to history was not reciprocated by professional historians and Historische Sozialwissenschaft after 1970. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Results from quantitative surveys enable historians, sociologists and demographers to describe and analyse the evolution of sport participation in France from 1967 to 2010. However, most of these social scientists use the results of these surveys to create very different methodologies without having studied the surveys’ empirical data or databases. In this article, we demonstrate how we have attempted to establish a basis for comparability of the surveys by analysing these databases. As a result of our work, certain affirmations on which the history of sport participation in France has long been based may be called into question or even changed. This comparison raises the question of the distinction between the work of statisticians on the one hand, and that of historians, sociologists and demographers on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine the idea of a politics of misrecognition of working activity. We begin by introducing a distinction between the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one's identity, and the kind of recognition and misrecognition that attaches to one's activity. We then consider the political significance of the latter kind of recognition and misrecognition in the context of work. Drawing first on empirical research undertaken by sociologists at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, we argue for a differentiated concept of recognition that shows the politics of misrecognition at work to be as much a matter of conflict between modes of recognition as it is a struggle for recognition as opposed to non-recognition. The differentiated concept of recognition which allows for this empirical insight owes much to Axel Honneth's theory. But as we argue in the section that follows, this theory is ambiguous about the normative content of the expectations of recognition that are bound up with the activity of working. This in turn makes it unclear how we should understand the normative basis of the politics of the misrecognition of what one does at work. In the final sections of the article, we suggest that the psychodynamic model of work elaborated by Christophe Dejours and others at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris can shed light on this matter; that is to say, it can help to clarify the normative significance and political stakes of the misrecognition of working activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a profile of the French urban sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe and an exploration into the development of his social philosophy. Discussion is given highlighting how Chombart de Lauwe's involvement with the working class evolved his activities in the discipline of sociology into a city-planning democratization advocate during the post-World War II era. Comments are given relating the various elements which influenced this turn in Chombart de Lauwe, including his contact with liberal Catholic associations, his research on the needs of the working class, and his studies under ethnologist Marcel Mauss.

The central question concerning the future of masculinity is whether the current matrix of distributions of roles and status, praxes and practices, will remain intact or whether a shift to a new configuration will occur. This essay briefly examines thinking on masculinity in two French attempts to theorize the future of relations between men and women: that of Auguste Comte, at the beginning of sociology, and Jean Baudrillard at the end of sociology. Both have, in their time, predicted radical gender futures. The essay considers these theories against changes in social structures and the effectivity social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the influence of Dreyfus affair on French Jewish sociologists. The author reflects on Aron being a rationalist and a Jew. He states that Aron rejected the idea that there could exist a Jewish way of being a sociologist. He compared the beliefs of French sociologist linked in varying degrees to Judaism including Emile Durkheim, Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Marcial Mauss. The author declares that Durkheim was proposing a sociological interpretation of the theory of scapegoat, Mauss' interpretation of antisemitism moderates his Dreyfusard involvement and Levy-Bruhl was a Frenchman who never stopped feeling Jewish. He concluded that Jewish sociologists and anthropologists preserved a kind of hidden faithfulness that moved them to public action and unexpected commitments.

This article focuses on how in the sixties the French sociologists developed an interest in championing the positivist variant of American sociology mainly against Phenomenology and its interest in subjectivity. It discusses that aspect of French sociology known as "empirical sociological theory," which means data collection by questionnaire survey and interviews and their interpretation according to a theoretical framework thought mainly to be expressions of domination by the upper-class, expressed in a few abstract and general concepts. The article seeks to answer as to why Phenomenology seems to be an obstacle to the foundation of a new type of "empirical sociology" in the French academic and intellectual world in the sixties. In attempting to do so it treats four points: 1. The interest in the subject in general. 2. Phenomenology took over that interest, offering itself as a sophisticated analysis of subjectivity as the origin of perception, meaning, knowledge, as well as of ethical and political involvement. 3. The attack against subjectivity and phenomenology was part of an epistemological assault in the guise of a proposed renewal of Humanities studies and social sciences in the late fifties and the sixties. 4. How a trend in French Sociology, empirical sociological theory became a part of the fight against subjectivity and, ignoring the individual, built a new system meeting the expectations of elements both in the social sciences and philosophy.