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When it is relational, processual, and it articulates the incorporated dispositions of the actors and the contexts of their actions, sociology 'desevidentialize,' denaturalize, desubstantialize, and historicize the social world by contributing to do away with spontaneous representations that distort the reality of things. Besides, when sociology studies the social at the level of the individuals and individual actions, it destroys the fictions (juridical and philosophical) of the isolated individuals, enclosed on himself, free and fully conscious of everything. By producing images of the real state of the social world, sociology fully participates in the democratic life of our societies and should, therefore, be at the heart of the formation of citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenological approach has a quasi-monopoly in the individual and subjectivity analyses in social sciences. However, the conceptual apparatus associated with this approach is very restrictive. The human being has to be understood as rational, conscious, intentional, interested, and autonomous. Because of this, a large dimension of human activity cannot be taken into consideration: all that does not fit into the analytical categories (nonrational, nonconscious, etc.). Moreover, this approach cannot really move toward a relational analysis unless it is between individuals predefined by its conceptual apparatus. This lack of complexity makes difficult the establishment of links between phenomenology and systemic analysis in which relation (and its derivatives such as recursiveness, dialectic, correlation) plays an essential role. This article intends to propose a way for systemic analysis to apprehend the individual with respect to his complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1963, the ministère de l'Agriculture du Québec directed the Eastern Quebec planning bureau (Bureau d'aménagement de l'Est du Québec - BAEQ) to accomplish an unprecedented task: to create a Master Development Plan for the pilot territories in the Lower St. Lawrence, Gaspé and Des-de-la-Madeleine regions. The plan was innovative in its preparation, through both the philosophy that shaped it and its methodology. In fact, the BAEQ appealed for the active participation of the communities directly affected to support the report it planned to submit to the government, to lessen the socio-economic disparities between Eastern Quebec and the rest of "La Belle Province." The BAEQ completed the project in June 1966, with the submission of a substantial report published in ten volumes and containing more than two hundred recommendations, including several proposals for a major reconfiguration of the political and economic framework in Eastern Quebec. The BAEQ was extremely prolific in its academic writings until the mid-1980s. Since then, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists seem to have turned a blind eye to this research subject, as if an irrevocable verdict had been rendered against it. The BAEQ seems to have been the biggest failure of the Quiet Revolution, the prototype of the technocratic drift, the illustration of the failure of centralized development planning, and the embodiment of the government's lack of responsiveness towards citizens' demands. And yet, when we re-examine the BAEQ we can now appreciate how this political experimentation left behind a legacy of social innovations that, over the years, have become an integral part of the government's processes. From this perspective, the BAEQ is seen in a different light : it is a crucial step in the history of public administration in Quebec, the direct and indirect fallout of which has profoundly re-shaped the logistics of territorial development in Quebec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three essential dimensions, which do not necessarily overlap, permit to differentiate the eight communes of the region under study, the rural-urban continuum, the conflict-consensus continuum, the power relations of three socio-political groups, for this purpose baptized radicals (the individuals desiring a radical change), reformists and integrationists. The numerous conflicts developing in this microregion depend mainly of three factors: the intensity of change, the social and cultural heterogenity, and the ecological dispersion. The economic and social transformations of these communes and of their region have modified the local power structure (disappearance of certain social actors and strengthened the position of others). The weakening of village autonomy in favour of the central government is another consequence of these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban policies in developing countries are subject to both internal and external determinants. As elsewhere, internal determinants, social relations and conflicts evolve over urban space. External determinants arc not only related to the general mechanisms of dependency, but also to specific modes of intervention by European and North American countries; such as consultancy firms producing urban studies and plans, bilateral cooperative organisms, international institutions, suppliers of key materials for urbanization (cars, buses, pipes), training centres for planners and other technicians, etc. All urban policies in the Third World have this international dimension. It has been said that urban sociology has become the sociology of urban policies. In this case, urban sociology of the Third World has become that of the sociology of urban policies in their international dimensions, and it can only be done by examining each end of the chain, each side of the system of relations. Neither side can he studied without the other in understanding and analysing the phenomenon which links them. The urban sociology of the Third World could provide the opportunity to reconsider from new points of departure, the relations between European or North American sociologists on the one hand, and Latin American or African sociologists on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]