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This paper explores the significance of resources in determining a group's ability to respond to the European Integration process. Both domestic and supranational opportunity structures are constantly shaped and re-shaped by EU policy processes. The single country case study of France is selected on the basis of the state's longstanding traditions of civil society exclusion. The influence of the EU in transforming these Jacobin predilections is explored with reference to a comprehensive European environmental implementation programme (NATURA 2000). Resource Mobilisation theory reminds us that a group's resource base is a decisive variable in attempting to influence decision makers. It is argued, first, that the European Commission has empowered some French civil society actors with resources allowing them to mobilise on more levels for longer, while failing to influence others. Second, it is revealed that this empowerment is dependent upon the level of financial incentives offered as well as the overall favourability of the group to the EU project itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This paper addresses the question of whether a sociology of mental health is possible. This question raises the issue of the theoretical conditions necessary to establish a sub-field, and requires a debate about the boundaries and epistemological status of such an enterprise. Aim: To analyse the various historical building blocks and contexts relevant to understanding the contemporary expression and state of a sociological perspective on mental health in France. Method: Literature review and a current empirical research about the politics of distress and psychoanalysis as case study, used to discuss the genesis and development of French sociological influences from a historical epistemological framework. Results: The context and limitations of previous social approaches to the study of mental health and suggestions as to the future direction of a sociology of mental health in a French context are discussed, centring around relevant influences and interests. Implications: The use of an interactionist orientation combined with a critical analysis of psychoanalysis in the context of contemporary social conditions lays the foundation upon which to recapture a sociology applied to mental health. Declaration of interest: None. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the links between the French school of sociology and anthropology and the surrealist avant-garde in inter-war Paris by unearthing their common reliance on a cross-cultural critique of European modernity. Accordingly, the paper focuses on how both currents and notably the College de sociologie-used representations of a mythical 'primitive' condition to produce an outside of modern society and an alternative socio-cultural universe from which Europe's pathologies could be diagnosed. This self-critique through a comparative lens aimed to radically situate, relativize and decentre the phenomena of rationalization, disenchantment and anomie characterizing modernity, which could be shown to be neither natural, eternal, universal nor inevitable, but rather the socio-historical products of developments in a particular culture during a specific period of its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is another pragmatic attempt to include women in the comparative study of intergenerational class mobility in France and Sweden, two societies that differ in their political history and in the prevalence of women's activity outside the home. In the main, it addresses two questions: How do the mobility patterns of women via marriage compare with those of men via occupational career? How do the mobility patterns of women via marriage compare with those of women via occupational career? These questions are treated in terms of actually observed life chances as well as in relative terms, which shows the impact of the division of labour by sex on differences in life chances by alternative channels of mobility. An attempt is also made to assess the relative importance of interactions between women's social origin, own occupation, and class position by marriage. The association between the latter two proves to be the strongest by far. Rather unexpectedly, social origin does not appear to affect the association between husband's class and wife's occupational category either in France or in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'social fluidity' is to be understood as intergenerational occupational mobility net of direct structural effects, i.e. effects of differences in the marginal distributions of the mobility tables. Though not entirely adequate in the case of women, the terminology of earlier studies of class mobility is retained to simplify the task at hand, namely to complement the picture of the stratification process in the occupational system obtained from intergenerational mobility data regarding men. In this paper, log-linear models are used to test possible outcomes to the questions: Do men and women in the same nation have the same pattern of social fluidity? Do women/or men have the same pattern of social fluidity cross-nationally? Is the relation of women's to men's patterns of social fluidity the same cross-nationally? On the basis of data from France and Sweden the first two questions are answered in the negative, though one may be impressed by how small differences are and how important structurally induced variation is. The last question may well be answered affirmatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper considers the issues surrounding the social, professional and family (re-) integration of end-of-career professional athletes in France. Drawing on the case of French rugby player Marc Cecillon, a former captain of the national team whose descent into alcoholism culminated in his conviction for murder of his wife in August 2004, it examines how sports institutions fail to meet athletes' aspirations and needs for support. Drawing on a series of interviews with representatives of sports institutions and analysis of print media coverage, the research investigates the issues surrounding career-change difficulties for professional athletes. It demonstrates through the story of Marc Cecillon why the career of professional sportsmen and women cannot be divorced from their social trajectory. Rather than acknowledging this, however, the sports institutions concerned are seen to attribute blame for any ills affecting French rugby to exterior causes, such as individual weakness. By rejecting responsibility in this way the sporting 'family' falls apart, removing any support system and denying athletes the information and guidance necessary to manage their career change effectively. This is particularly significant for team players, who have been in a subservient position in relation to their clubs and can therefore suffer identity uncertainty from this lack of guidance. The case study suggests that French sports institutions do not play their role in preparing athletes for the realities of a new life based on different values and different social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory plant breeding began in developing countries and now some European farmers and scientists are proposing its suitability in contributing to sustainable agriculture. This paper uses both genetics and sociology to determine the conditions required. A review of the sustainability of projects implemented in developing countries initiated discussion of an organic durum wheat participatory breeding programme, which is currently being implemented in the south of France. The analysis highlighted the need for the critical participation of experts from different horizons in a socio-technical network. Multi-level interactions and cross-linked learning processes about breeding methods and sociological concepts are needed for effective communication between different stakeholders and scientific disciplines. This approach enables implementation of a range of different action systems in which the production of relevant knowledge and rules addresses the issue of the sustainable development of diverse agro-food systems, rather than the generalization of one model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the discourses to be read in painted representations of colonial motifs (and their modes of display) in France between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, i.e. until the dawn—but not the completion—of decolonisation. It will analyse selected images, some of which have become emblematic as triumphant and/or enduring manifestations of colonial domination. It will question the readings and uses of such images from the time of conquest to the post-colonial era. This article's focus, however, will be less on the well-rehearsed dominant discourses than on gaps, silences, unanswered questions, misgivings and various non-dits which can be detected, on closer examination, in these works, their modes of diffusion and their reception by contemporaries. It will look for signs of ambivalence in the rendition of colonial scenes by the artists themselves (such as Vernet or Fromentin), who visited the sites of battle scenes in Algeria shortly after gruesome events had taken place. In particular, the paper will look for haunting visions of what had happened there, beyond the official, hegemonic discourse which was fashionable at the time, and which, in some cases, these artists had been commissioned to illustrate. The main argument concentrates closely on discourse and counter-discourse analysis, as well as the fluidity and the transferability of discourses across the colonial/post-colonial divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I examine and critique Donald Levine's treatment of the "French Tradition" in sociological thought. After summarizing Levine's account of the development of the French tradition, I discuss the identification of the French tradition with the work of Durkheim, and discuss the reasons for the predominance of Durkheim's work over and above other plausible candidates for exemplars of the French tradition of sociology. I then use this discussion to problematize the identification of sociological theories with national traditions, and the idealist framework that Levine uses to discuss the development of sociological thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper poses the question of the persistent absence today of a sociology of religion of Islam, an absence which coincides with the continuation of a lively orientalist tradition. This gap is all the more intriguing if seen in the context of the history of sociology in France, and in particular the history of Durkheimism, which quickly established itself as a science of religious phenomena, but which tacitly avoided the three Semitic monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). In contrast, the history of Indology and of the anthropology of ancient Greece shows clearly that the conjunction of sociological theory with the textual sciences could be accomplished only in relation to civilizations which are far from the West’s own religious core. It is possible then that Islam and the knowledge of it as a religion occurs within a blind spot (un impensé) characteristic of the history of ideas in nineteenth-century France in which Christianity, and especially the religion of the Ancien Regime, constitute an ever-present barrier to a clear vision. The scientific construction of Islam suffers from too close a proximity, or an absence of distance, with regard to French society’s own (problematic) religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that there is a strong connection between the religious component of French sociology and the critique of political economy. In the first section, I consider how selfish behaviour, or egoism, became treated as a major threat endangering the creation of industrial society by those concerned about the diffusion of political economy. I then summarise the methodological critique set forth in theCours, before connecting this critique to the economic content of theSystèmeand the concept of altruism. In the following section, Spencer's view of altruism is contrasted to that held by Comte, and then I consider the reaction of French political economists, defending the moral value bought about by their science. In the final section, I explain how the Comtean approach was re-enacted by Durkheim and then by Mauss, at the head of the “sociology of religion” section ofL'Année sociologique, the Durkheimian journal, to give birth to the theory of gift-giving behaviour that Mauss used to critique political economy in the 1920s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last few years, various international public health organizations such as the World Health Organization or the European Commission have recommended the worldwide dissemination of evidence-based mental health prevention programs. This public health ideal, relying on new scientific disciplines, is at the origin of multiple controversies in a number of countries. This article contributes to bring a reflection on the ways political experts, researchers and practitioners have integrated these new preventive strategies. More precisely, the objective is to present and to discuss the results of a qualitative study on French professionals' representations and theoretical perspectives with regards to evidence-based parenting programs. Results are based on ethnographical inquiries in French public health institutions and on 12 semi-structured interviews with professionals. The results demonstrate three ways to conceive parenting support, themselves attached to distinct anthropological, socio-political and interventional models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of anthropology in France and North America during the early to mid 20th century showed both similarities and pronounced differences. In both cases anthropology matured alongside sociology, a relationship that would prove increasingly problematic as the century wore on. In France, in particular, another important influence was art and literature, especially the Surrealism of the 1920s and 1930s. This was less the case in North America, but in both countries, anthropology occupied a medial position between science and the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the issue of the autonomy of patients who are not treated in standard situations of hospitalisation in institutions, but who receive ambulatory care. Academic and institutional discourses both suggest that the development of out-of-hospital care delivery models promotes patient autonomy. Through a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews of cancer patients treated using ambulatory chemotherapy in a French hospital we show that some of the constraints usually encountered by patients receiving care in institutions are also observed in patients receiving ambulatory care. They experience a form of cognitive isolation regarding access to information about their health, and their social life appears to be institutionalised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches post-war debates about the relationship between normative political theory and empirical political science from a French perspective. It does so by examining Raymond Aron's commentaries on a series of articles commissioned by him for a special issue of the Revue française de science politique on this theme as well as through an analysis of his wartime dialogue with the neo-Thomist philosopher, Jacques Maritain. Following a consideration of Aron's critique of contemporary approaches to this issue in France, we discuss his own distinctive attempt to draw normative theory and empirical science into the same orbit by tracing the interaction of these two elements in his work from the late 1930s to the mid-1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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Even a cursory glance at sociologies of ethnic relations indicates they vary from one location to another, cross over, and change over time. Yet in France, the development of the field is laborious, and externally fashioned problematics are viewed suspiciously and often rejected, creating a void that this article seeks to elucidate. A brief comparison of sociologies of ethnic and ‘race’ relations points to their different trajectories, corpuses, and ‘oversights’. Moving on to France, where the field has been immobilised, I identify the symbolic and material structures that prevented its development from within and halted the flow of concepts and paradigms from without. Opposition to the field entails a complex interplay between the Republic, colonialism, universalism and antiracism, which produces a double erasure that can be observed upstream and downstream. The sociology of ethnic relations now stands out as a variable shaped by social relations that inform the production, reception, circulation, and transformation of knowledge in the world system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the political stability of the French government. Assessment on the relationship among the ruling power, client governments and the civilian population; Emphasis on the imperial terms of French Syria; Dependence on military force to impose political and social control.

This article presents findings about English, French, and Swedish mobility tables from the early 1970s. The reanalysis shows that the vertical dimension of mobility is stronger and more autonomous than one would conclude from earlier analyses. It is necessary to introduce several parameters for class inheritance in order to fit the data, and such parameters account for more of the association between class origins and destinations than does the vertical aspect of mobility, but income and occupational prestige do not help to explain it. The findings suggest complementarities between vertical and non-vertical models of class mobility. The data for England and Wales and Sweden were rendered comparable in terms of a nine-category class schema developed by the classification of English occupations. Social Fluidity in Industrial Nations developed models of class mobility that assumed nominal measurement, while Vertical and Nonvertical Class Mobility combined a model of vertical mobility. The constriction of the English, French, and Swedish classifications initiated a round of comparative mobility analysis, based upon national surveys of the early 1970s. Such tables were constructed from unit record data, yielding greater detail and stronger claims to comparability than many cross-national comparisons.