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The most widely used measure for studying social, economic, and health inequality is the Gini index/ratio. Whereas other measures of inequality possess certain useful characteristics, such as the straightforward decomposability of the generalized entropy measures, the Gini index has remained the most popular, at least in part due to its ease of interpretation. However, the Gini index has a limitation in measuring inequality. It is less sensitive to how the population is stratified than how individual values differ. The twin purposes of this paper are to explain the limitation and to propose a model-based method—latent class/clustering analysis for understanding and measuring inequality. The latent cluster approach has the major advantage of being able to identify potential “classes” of individuals who share similar levels of income or one or more other attributes and to assess the fit of the model-based classes to the empirical data, based on different cluster distributional assumptions and the number of latent classes. This paper distinguishes class inequality from individual inequality, the type that is better captured by the Gini. Once the classes are estimated, the membership of estimated classes obtained from the best fitting model facilitates the decomposition of the Gini index into individual and class inequality. Class inequality is then measured by two relative stratification indices based on either the relative size of the Gini between-class components or the relative number of stratified individuals. Therefore, the Gini index is extended and assisted by model-based clustering to measure class inequality, thereby realizing its great potential for studying inequality. Income data from France and Hungary are used to illustrate the application of the method. INSETS: Figure 1. Gini indices and Lorenz curves for income data...;Figure 2. Empirical income distribution of France in 1990...;Figure 3. Income clustering in France, 1990.;Figure 4. Income clustering in Hungary, 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comparative study of the social mobility of women in France and Sweden. One question which will be central to this and to subsequent papers will be that of how far analyses of the mobility of women tend to support, or to require qualification of conclusions that have been drawn with respect to the mobility of men. On the basis of absolute rates of intergenerational mobility for women, Sweden would appear to have markedly more mobility overall than France. The total mobility rate is consistently higher than in France, whether mobility is assessed in terms of our nine-class schema or various collapses of this. The composition of the various occupational classes of women as regards social background is somewhat more similar in Sweden than it is in France. But the striking contrast is that the differences in origin distributions of women by occupational category are much greater as compared to men in Sweden than they are in France. It is in the case of women's outflow mobility patterns-and thus chances of mobility according to social background--that our two societies show the most marked differences, in contrast to results obtained when comparing men's mobility.

This article examines the formation of a belief in journalism as a worthwhile career in France and the United States. Using journalists' memoirs, early textbooks and novels depicting journalism, we show that a life in news became appealing in the late nineteenth century due to the novel mixture of material and symbolic rewards on offer. Promising pay for work that seemed adventurous and exciting, with opportunities for expression, the potential for influence and a connection to broader social values (e.g., fighting injustice, informing citizens), the possibility of these rewards formed the basis of a highly similar illusio – i.e. the belief that journalism constituted a social game worthy of one's energies (Bourdieu, 2000). Highlighting this emergent sense of worth fills a lacuna in historical scholarship, while also inviting questions about how these attractions are given life under contemporary conditions that often frustrate journalists' efforts to secure these rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to confront two models of the French pattern of action: the well-known 'bureaucratic' model, depicted by Michel Crozier, and a model which emphasizes the persistence within modem French organizations of what Montesquieu called the honour principle. This model is tested successfully against the ethnographical material presented in The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. In addition, the paper explains, using a semiotic approach to culture, how a mode of functioning said to be archaic can persist in the long run. [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]

In many so-called developed countries, participation to at least one physical activity or sport is a mass phenomenon. More, the combination of a high involvement rate and omnivorousness/voraciousness results in a very high volume of practice and lead to a significant volume of accidents. Academic studies have shown the importance of socio-demographic characteristics, such as age and sex, the mode of practice and the physical activity or sport itself in the occurrence of accidents. However, it is also necessary to take into account certain cultural dimensions of investment in sport, and more particularly the legitimate definition of risk specific to each activity. Since commitment and risk-taking are characteristic of young men, we tested the hypothesis that there are more accidents in physical activity or sports in which young men are statistically over-represented. This study evaluated this hypothesis using a sample of 29,000 reported physical activity or sports for a sample of 7,424 practitioners (national survey of the Ministry of Sports in France, people aged 15 and over). We used a multilevel cross classified logistic regression. The results show first a strong effect of the variable concerning the overrepresentation of young men in a physical activity or sport. Secondary, other results are more usual with the effect of modes of practice involved (high frequency, club and competition) and of the physical activity or sport itself (example of alpine skiing) and a single sociodemographic characteristic (the under 30 yo). Conversely, some results are more original, showing the non-effect of sex taken independently. These results provide essential information for taking into account the cultural dimension in sport-related prevention and for the management of the teams responsible for administering it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the innovative departures in the sociology in France, the debate on social criticism and critique, and the emerging and anticipated society in the twenty-first century.

Today Pierre Bourdieu is well known as one of the most important social scientists of the 20th century. One of the outstanding qualities of his work has been his innovative combination of different methods and research strategies as well as his analytical skills in interpreting the obtained data (his ‘sociological gaze’). In this paper, we attempt to retrace the development of an extraordinary way of doing social research and show the benefit of Bourdieu's visual sociology for his empirical fieldwork and sociological theory. The article particularly stresses the significance of his photographic archive, which has long been ignored within the appreciation of Bourdieu's work. Studying Bourdieu's photography gives access to his œuvre in several new ways: not only can we understand how Bourdieu became an unconventional sociologist practicing his craft in the midst of a colonial war. Bourdieu's visual anthropology also offers an insight into the status nascendi of Bourdieu's sociology in all its elementary forms and contents. Through his photography Boudieu demonstrated the concepts of ‘habitat and habitus’, the material and symbolic living conditions of the Algerian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

Embracing the manifesto for a 'live' sociology, I included portraiture into the research design of an ethnographic study into women's lived experiences of French suburbia and organised an exhibition entitled Habitantes d'Hier and d'Aujourd'hui: exposition sociologique et photographique. This was a personal project in the neighbourhood of my youth and was motivated by the intention to shine some light on the invisible stories of women living in lower-middle and middle-income suburbs in France. In this article, I reflect on the use of portraiture for the possibility it offers in capturing the ethnographic encounter as well as in giving saliency and offering a visual representation of the sociological analysis. I also discuss the exhibition of these portraits as a moment of conviviality grounded in the endeavour of writing differently from hegemonic modes of academic communication and dissemination allowing for a sharing and sharpening of the sociological imagination. It represents an opportunity to think beyond some of the more neoliberal imperatives that govern academia today and shape our sociological craft. I argue for the value of creating a moment of conviviality, that is a space challenging modes of dissemination, engagement and even impact to some extent, as well as modes of knowledge production: broadly opening up more possibilities for a truly public sociology to continue to exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concentrating mostly on France, this paper considers the changing interests and the renewal of academic alliances in the sociology of work and labor over the last 50 years. Three periods result from the combined dynamics of sociology's internal agenda and societal changes: (1) analysis of blue-collar labor as the downgrading process of complete work in taylorist industry; (2) sociology of labor markets and employment, and analysis of the bargaining processes of rules, identities and the value of work; (3) reconciliation of work and labor in distributed and flexible organizations, based on mobile and involved workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

“Health psychology” is a newer sub-discipline whose research methodologies, theories, and practices were borrowed from diverse areas of psychology. It appeared later in France than in the United States or United Kingdom. In 1966, I adopted a perspective between anthropology and psycho-sociology of medicine. I never have self-identified as a “Health Psychologist”, continuing to work outside of disciplinary boundary constraints, but studied health questions moving first from psychology (and anthropology), through social psychology to sociology. By the 1980s, I adopted an even broader multi-disciplinary approach to health, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic urgently challenged health researchers/practitioners, in France and worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a series of arguments about social fields, subfields, and social spaces that can help us understand empires and colonies. First, we have to assume that the scale of fields is not always coextensive with the boundaries of the national state but is often much larger, or smaller. Imperial fields are among the most spatially extensive ones, though they may not be as territorially extensive as truly global fields. Second, we need to make a distinction between imperial fields and imperial social spaces (based on Bourdieu's distinction between social fields and social spaces). The third argument is that colonies in modern empires were characterized by two different kinds of fields: fields that were simply extended into the overseas territories, versus completely separate fields unique to one or more of the colonies. The colonial state is an example of a field that is specific to the colony. By contrast, scientific fields were often simply extended from the metropole into the colonies, encompassing both. The fourth argument concerns subfields. Transported into imperial realms, this distinction suggests that some colonial offshoots of fielded metropolitan practices do not constitute separate fields but are nonetheless differentiated from their main overarching field. These four points are illustrated with examples from British, French and German imperial policy, colonial statecraft and colonial sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on archival materials and personal testimonies, I reconstruct the conditions under which Bourdieu came to receive the Gold Medal of the National Center for Scientific Research, France’s highest science prize, in 1993 as a signal case study of the existential predicament and institutional trappings of scholarly consecration. Bourdieu’s award speech and the ceremony at which he read it present a triple interest for the history and sociology of sociology. They illustrate how a shaping figure in the discipline personally experienced, reflexively viewed, and practically navigated the nexus of science, authority, and power. They mark 1993 as a pivot-year in Bourdieu’s intellectual evolution, leading to a new agenda foregrounding the state as paramount symbolic power, the alchemy of group formation, and the unfinished promise of democratic politics; and they help explain why he ventured more forthrightly into civic debate in the 1990s. Bourdieu’s ambivalent acceptance of the prize also illustrates his conception of the ‘Realpolitik of reason’ and put an emphatic end to the eclipse of Durkheim by restoring sociology to its rightful place at the scientific zenith in the country of its birth. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The relationship between European sociology and European anti-Semitism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is investigated through a case study of one sociologist, Émile Durkheim, in a single country, France. Reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism are distinguished and contrasted to Durkheim's sociological perspective. Durkheim's remarks about the Jews directly addressed anti-Semitic claims about them, their role in French society, and their relationship to modernity. At the same time, Durkheim was engaged in a reinterpretation of the French Revolution and its legacies that indirectly challenged other tenets of French anti-Semitism. In sum, Durkheim's work contains direct and indirect responses to reactionary and radical forms of anti-Semitism, and together these responses form a coherent alternative vision of the relationship between modernity and the Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on the limits and relevance of the different name generators comes with the development of social network studies. The core questions are: What are they supposed to construct? For what research question? Some procedures tend to choose a precise target with a unique name generator; others prefer to use a series of name generators. The authors discuss here some specificities and advantages of these methods for ego-centered networks. The authors then present the ‘‘contextual’’ name generator, which was developed in longitudinal qualitative panel studies in France and Québec. This tool gives access to a great variety of information focused on sociological questions. Its original design differentiates two complementary stages to distinguish the global contexts-based network from specific resource-based networks. This tool remains flexible and may be adapted to different topics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This article recounts the course of sociology as a teaching subject at the French military academy from the personal perspective of one of its local protagonists. Having placed its introduction in context, it points up the motives behind a reform of studies (1982) which gave academic education greater scope and in which sociology played a central part. It goes through the various stages in the institution-building process that led from initially mixed reception to full internal acceptance as part of a common core of subjects. It analyzes the reasons for another major reconsideration, in 2000, of curricula and avenues of access, which endorsed and radicalized the previous reform's philosophy and turned sociology into a truly pivotal discipline-one that allows better integration of the academic and military sides of officer education. It assesses, in conclusion, the factors behind such a (fragile) success story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study advances the sociological inquiry on social categories by synthesizing two lines of research in economic and organizational sociology--studies of industrial categories in market dynamics and neo-institutional analyses of social categories. It compares the classificatory schemes and structures in the California and French wine industries and investigates the impact of institutionalized categories on social evaluation via the lens of determinants of wine price. Empirical findings show that under distinct classification systems, similar categories and wine attributes have different significances and affect wine price differently. These findings shed light on the profound consequences of the organizations and structures of categories in classification systems. They also enrich the institutional analyses by demonstrating that institutional categories systematically differentiate market products and create social differences and hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study that tried to understand the specific modalities of sociological authorship within two national contexts: the United States and France. Methodology of the study; Trends in American and French sociological research.

A number of sporting activities are qualified today as 'fun' or 'Californian'. In contrast to the so-called 'classical' sports, their practitioners value the game, the pleasure of being together, the humour and the shared emotions. These elements are indicative of their distancing themselves from the 'serious' aspects of competitive sports, even as their activities are classified as futile, undemanding, marginal or even socially immature. This study, based on the ethnography of a small community of climbers who appropriated a cliff in the south of France, demonstrates that far from being futile, this activity is a theatre of social concerns which surpasses the practice of sport itself. In fact, if, on the one hand, conviviality, sharing and the play dimension of rock climbing unite some players in a community of belonging, on the other hand, the use of symbolic violence and the process of normalizing behaviour lead to the exclusion of 'others' (those who do not 'play the game of the place'). These phenomena are interrogated here because they demonstrate how, within the context of a sport, tensions occur between (free and equal) individuals and a community of belonging, thereby challenging contemporary ways of 'living together'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crozier's Bureaucratic Phenomenon was a landmark in the development of both the sociology of organizations as a research approach and the study of French society in the 1960s. To understand its genesis requires an exercise in the history of contemporary thought, locating Crozier's magnum opus within the context of the influence of Gouldner, March and Simon. His initial intellectual preoccupation was with the role of trade unions in the US and France during the cold war. This led to his main cultural finding: the fear of face-to-face communication, requiring impersonal mediation to avoid confrontation with those in authority. France required a new style of authority and her intellectuals should provide it as a way of dealing with the problem of overcoming cultural lag and changing France into a modern industrial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]