Les apories de la solidarité familiale Contribution à la sociologie des configurations de justice entre les familles et l’État, dans le cas français

Despite its many meanings, “solidarity” has once again become current in French to describe macro as well as microsocial relations. Social relations in and outside the family have not always been understood as instances of solidarity. But is this solidarity the same as the one established by the welfare state? Forms of family solidarity that have risen in esteem over the past two decades are “deconstructed”. The conditions for family solidarity are examined; and conceptual paradoxes, described. This approach suggests that family solidarity, as this concept is normally used, mixes together several systems of justice that should be clearly distinguished, especially if we want to put this phrase to a judicious social use.     

Pour une approche sociologique de la comptabilité Réflexions à partir de la réforme comptable chinoise

Based on research on state-run companies in China, the reform of Chinese accountancy is examined so as to show the advantages of a sociological approach to accounting. How can bookkeeping interest sociologists? First of all, it has come out of struggles between various parties and addresses social issues. Secondly, it conveys models of reality, in particular of what is and is not a firm. Thirdly, it produces history in that it shapes economic practices and expectations. Finally, there is a high degree of coherence between the bookkeeping system, the form of a firm, the operation of the economy and the management of social questions. These various points turn accountancy into a legitimate subject of study for sociology and provide an interesting approach to analyzing broader phenomena and processes.     

La dynamique de la vocation : les évolutions de la rationalisation de l’engagement au travail des danseurs de ballet

The commitment to one's work, with body and soul involvement is a key issue in the study of vocation-driven occupations. In such callings, the aspirations that are socially constructed and experienced as vocations have been shown to provide meaning and direction to one's commitment. However, this study of Paris Opera ballet dancers shows that realizing one's aspirations are impossible to achieve does not necessarily result in quitting, nor retraining. Changes in the way dancers relate to their work are studied using sequential analysis, to examine which social factors may explain how this involvement's meaning is maintained. The analysis identifies some processes of vocation recomposition. Thus revealing, behind the professional careers, the “moral careers” of the vocation.     

Soutenir le marché : les nouveaux instruments de la politique du logement

This examination of the tax incentives to individuals, established since the 1980s, for stimulating investments in building new rentals runs counter to the prevailing opinion about the French state's withdrawal from the housing sector. These arrangements have become a key instrument in housing policy. Though playing a decisive part in designing them, public authorities then lose control to private players, in particular real estate developers, who play a key role in implementing them. As the analysis of these arrangements shows, players in the market depend on interventions by public authorities. In fact, the very nature of public interventions is altered not only by being more oriented toward market players but also by losing visibility. Furthermore, the costs are hard to assess, and the effects, highly uncertain.     

L’adaptation des modèles de production dans les pays émergents L’exemple de l’industrie automobile en Argentine

How to test for the existence of a new model of production based on the firm lending an ear to customer demands and valuing the individual and collective intelligence of its work force? The facts for putting this model to the test of reality come from an analysis of two Argentinean automobile-makers, subsidiaries of Toyota and Volkswagen. Various aspects of their organization policy provide evidence of their capacity for making adaptations by “hybridizing” the parent firm’s model with the rationales inherent in the network of local actors (suppliers and labor unions, in particular). These firms are open systems with a narrow margin of maneuver. — Special issue: Latin America.     

Entre « passion » et incertitude : la socialisation au métier de footballeur professionnel

On the basis of a socioethnographic survey conducted in a professional soccer training center in France, the means of occupational socialization are analyzed in this demanding, captivating institution. Light is shed on how trainees appropriate this professional world and its requirements. As they enter this social universe, they encounter a key tension. On the one hand, training calls for a heavy investment that trainers and trainees experience as a “passion” and understand as being separate from the world of “ordinary” work. On the other hand, it is also a major source of uncertainty as to trainees’ prospects, given its intense selectivity and the few outlets in the labor market. It requires of trainees a strong commitment in time, body and spirit with prospects so uncertain that the course of training is seldom free from periods of soul-searching.     

Crise de la rationalité industrielle et transformations de la prescription. Une étude de cas

Studies of industrial rationality should be reconsidered given the thoroughgoing changes under way. We have switched from a Taylorist rationality based on Scientific Management, which claimed to fit production into a single viewpoint, to a dissemination of the sources of the directions to be followed and an overall destabilization of any attempt at rationalization, and as a consequence, to a looser sense of rationality even among engineers. But this does not at all benefit wage-earners. Often without bearings, they have to cope with instructions; but have a harder time doing so whenever their organization provides them with few tools for coping and whenever the instructions, or part of them, are contradictory.     

Les ajustements de la technique médicale face aux règles de droit

During the 1990s, partly as a result of accusations of medical malpractice, doctors’ obligations were reinforced; and patients’ rights, recognized. In a lawsuit brought on the grounds of liability, the doctor and his/her qualifications are accused; and the doctor's identity and sense of professional honor, affected. This has serious risks for medical practices and, more broadly, medicine. This research based on interviews with doctors shows that the specialty, type of practice and nature of the establishment expose doctors to more or fewer risks and thus partly determine how they adjust techniques to cope with the risks of a lawsuit. The professional identity (including the values and practices to which interviewees referred) and the consciousness of their symbolic status (related to the place and type of practice) are keys for understanding practitioners’ behaviors. Assuming that a doctor's sense of professional identity is shaped by his/her sense of responsibility, relations with patients and concern for achievement, it is hypothesized that these three dimensions and their possible combinations explain the adjustments, or lack thereof, made by doctors.     

De la vigne à la rue : la difficile mobilisation des petits viticulteurs dans le département de l’Aude

The European Commission's specialized services are trying to tighten their grip over viticulture by invoking the legitimating figure of a “new consumer”. Accordingly, growers who work small vineyards are unable to make a wine adapted to market trends. They should, therefore, withdraw from wine-growing and enjoy the subsidies granted by the EU for uprooting vineyards. In Aude Department, southern France, small wine-growers take issue with this analysis, which, in their opinion, caves in to the pressure exerted by traders and hypermarket chain stores. However, there have been no protest actions against the Commission's decisions. This can be explained by the way the EU's policy is embedded in national and local conflicts. Although we cannot point to any joint plan, administrations, trade associations and political parties are developing practices that prevent organized protests.     

Un atelier d’écriture internationale : l’OCDE au travail. Éléments de sociologie de la forme « rapport »

The writing of a “transversal” report on employment at the OECD is examined by focusing not on the finished product but, instead, on the drafting of the report. This approach allows for exploring the dynamics of power at work inside the OECD. It opens toward broader considerations about how this type of international organization produces knowledge in economics and weaves relations, throughout the long process of drafting the report, with those who requested it. This article analyzes how economic issues are assembled through a succession of intermediate studies and reshaped through an asymmetrical competition between services. By making visible the process of constructing the position of “institutional author”, this analysis repositions on new grounds the problem of “influence”, which usually arises in organizations of this sort.     

Comment confronter mobilité « subjective » et mobilité « objective » ?

The methods for analyzing objective social mobility and subjective mobility as perceived by individuals are reviewed in the case of two surveys: Trois générations by the French Old-Age Fund (CNAV, Caisse Nationale d'Assurance Vieillesse) and Formation qualification professionnelle by the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). These two surveys have formulated subjective mobility in quite different ways, but this observation also holds for objective mobility, which, for the purpose of comparison with respondents' subjective evaluations, is defined using specific procedures. A method is proposed for contrasting these two sorts of mobility based on classical mobility tables. When the latter are designed so as to cross three variables (social origins, destinations and average scores of subjective mobility), the spontaneous sociology that can be collectively detected in the assessments made by respondents turns out to be not very different from the scholarly sociology of social categories produced by sociologists. After showing that subjective and objective mobility vary coherently in relation to each other, an additional hypothesis is advanced to account for some discrepancies.     

La barrière et le plafond de vitrail. Analyser les carrières féminines dans les organisations religieuses

Research conducted mainly in the United States and France on how ordination works like a barrier to the feminization of religious staffs in various Christian and Jewish organizations has brought to light factors for distinguishing several cases: women either gain formal access to religious offices, or informally exercise religious duties, or are barred from religious offices. The second part of this article examines the level in these organizations where this barrier has been lifted, in particular the dissymmetries between men's and women's careers. Emphasis is laid on comparisons with other professions, since similar processes operate underneath the religious sphere's apparent differences, as reflected by the phrase “stained-glass ceiling”.     

Comment transformer un produit en marchandise et lui attribuer un prix : le traitement de la viande dans la grande distribution

Several social science studies have described the conditions under which goods and services become merchandise. In 2002, Sociologie du travail [Sociologie du travail 44 (2002) 255-287] presented contrasting approaches to “quality” by focusing on the processes of identifying and evaluating goods. Approaching this question from the angle of meat-packing provides us with means for accurately describing the relevant operations in this commodification as well as the way that mass marketing has shaped the two aforementioned processes. By leaving aside operations specifically intended for customers and concentrating on those used in mass marketing, we see how meat is “objectified” as it circulates, and how its value and price depend on processing the data ensuing from this objectification.     

Brèves réflexions sur la reconnaissance d'un « droit à la différence alimentaire » dans le commerce international

We repeatedly hear that the World Trade Organization's rules (modified in 1994 to reinforce the principle of worldwide free trade) tend to inevitably uniformize culture in food, among other things. Whether in the case of bovine growth hormones or genetically modified organisms, WTO rules will ultimately impose a single food model as a universal reference mark. In France, these ideas crop up in talk about malbouffe (bad eating) and calls for a return to democratic choices or for instituting a fundamental “right” to freely choose food habits. Even though such talk has sometimes confused the issues, it has shed light on how the food question is presented in international trade. Increasingly, the issue is to defend national or regional values, or even choices about the type of society. What place do WTO rules reserve for these values ? Under what conditions can such values justify exemptions from free-trade rules and, ultimately, the maintenance of a “right to food differences”? As the European Union is thoroughly changing food legislation in line with its own concepts - the precautionary principle, the plurality and independence of procedures for evaluating foodstuffs, the well-being of animals, etc. - the answers provided to the foregoing questions will be decisive. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Le vol en interne : les vols commis par les salariés sur leur lieu de travail

The literature in the social sciences about theft by employees at the workplace is reviewed. As field studies and surveys based on personal accounts show, this deviant behavior is widespread in the world of work. Sociologists and anthropologists mostly interpret employee theft as a political way of resisting the injustice of on-the-job exploitation. In contrast, economists and the literature on management insist on the delinquency of theft and try to find the means whereby employers can preventively cope with dishonest salary-earners. Beyond this distinction, employee theft is worth studying in order to shed light on the complex salary-earning relationship.     

Gérer la qualité de l’eau : singularisation, évaluation et régime de gouvernement

The April-June 2002 issue of Sociologie du Travail opened its pages for a discussion of the question of quality. Authors highlighted two mechanisms: “identification/singularization” (a sociotechnical process of co-constructing the quality of goods and services) and evaluation (a process of building up confidence so as to do away with uncertainty about the quality of goods and services). Can these two processes be analyzed together? If so, how to understand their interactions? As the example of managing the water supply and wastewater shows, jointly analyzing these two processes helps us understand the work of “qualification/requalification”. The relation between singularization and evaluation is clarified by introducing the notion of a “regime of government”.     

Le modèle de « l'État-stratège » : genèse d'une forme organisationnelle dans l'administration française

Since the 1990s, a new organisational form of the administrative system in France has been steadily redefining relations between central administrations and local state units. Labelled “the steering state” or the “managerial state”, this new paradigm hinges on separating the strategic functions of steering and controlling the state from the operational functions of execution and policy implementation. The making of this new form of state organization involves two parallel processes: political and cognitive. For one thing, the adoption of concrete measures for “government at distance” results from power struggles between three major ministries (Home Office, Budget and Civil Service). For another, a new legitimate “categorization of the state” is being formed in the major committees involved in the reform process of the 1990s; it is borne by top civil servants and inspired by the ideas of New Public Management. — Special issue: New patterns of institutions.     

L’économie de l’attention : entre protection des ressources cognitives et extraction de la valeur

This general survey of the economics of attention presents the major theoretical models for exploring the mechanisms for “allocating” attention in an economy where it is a scarce resource. Writers have emphasized various means for attracting attention: the recognition, relevance, style and power of the emitter of information. The economics of attention subjects parties on the Internet and in the electronic media to two apparently opposite rationales. The first seeks to protect the attention of users from an information overload and improve its allocation. The second seeks to capture, for firms, the attention of customers or audiences in order to make money from it. Reconciling these two approaches is a challenge for innovation and an asset for competing in the digital economy.     

Le diable et les prolétaires. Le travail dans les mines de Potosi, Bolivie

For miners in Potosi, Bolivia, mining is more than a victory for acquiring underground wealth thanks to hard work and human know-how. This intrusion into an underworld understood to be the dwelling-place of ancestors, devils and wild forces is a ritualized activity, both a pilgrimage and an initiation. Learning the job and doing the work are conditioned by the diabolic divinity of the mineral world indwelling the miners' bodies. Mine work is examined from the angle of workers, bodily experiences so as to explore both the quite intimate grounds of the occupational identity of miners and the imagery that, in the Andes, emerged with miners as a social category distinct from the peasantry.