Quand l'expertise se heurte au pouvoir souverain : la nation américaine face à la prolifération nucléaire, 1945-1953

After the Second World War, the applications of nuclear science raise a crucial threat to international security as far as their civil applications can be turned into military devices. Debates about nuclear proliferation offer a fruitful site to analyze the production of an expertise in bio-security. This paper analyzes in particular how experts have envisioned the role of nation-states and sovereign power in relation to policies aimed at ensuring the security of populations against the risk of nuclear annihilation. It explores what conceptions of sovereignty different experts constructed; what disciplines (political science, natural science, law) were mobilized in this debate; what strategies of institutionalization American experts followed; what publics were targeted by these experts (officials, think tanks, academic publics, media). Experts' conceptions of threats and insurances as well as the institutional paths they build to access policy circles explain which of the experts' policies diffused among policy circles. This approach, which focuses on the production of ideas rather than on the diffusion of administrative norms, complements neo-institutionalist studies of the internationalization of scientific modes of regulation.     

Le marché comme rencontre d’activités de régulation : initiatives et innovations dans l’approvisionnement bio et local de la restauration collective

How to apply Jean-Daniel Reynaud's theory of social regulation to market relations? When applied to the results drawn from fieldwork on the supplying of organic and local produce to catering businesses serving public institutions in France, this grid of analysis shows that organizing this supply chain involves many activities of regulation. An explanation is provided about how hard existing regulations make it to search for local produce. Two contrasting cases show the degree to which the parties involved can skirt around existing regulations and also, use certain regulations to construct new ones. The innovative regulations that enter into application are qualified as being “joint”, since they stem from the efforts of the parties in catering and in agriculture to agree about how to organize transactions, which had previously been done through the work of market middlemen. In that case, instead of reasoning in terms of a pre-existing supply and demand, we have to understand how supply and demand gradually take shape through the process of working out regulations.     

Réinterroger la relation entre école et mobilité sociale. Le cas des enfants d’agriculteurs et d’ouvriers dans l’Ouest

Till now, the relation between schooling and social mobility, a classical question in the sociology of education, has been approached through analyses of a structural sort, either by focusing on the functions that schools are supposed to fill or by adopting the timeless model of neoclassical economics. This approach does not examine all possible relations between schools and social mobility; nor does it see these relations in terms of a process. A study of the scholastic biographies of the children of farmers and workers in western France renews our conception of this relation. It shows that this relation mainly stems from a combination of quite heterogeneous elements, which we glimpse in these biographies.     

Linking Federally Assisted Housing with Services for Frail Older Persons

Advocates of policies designed to link federally assisted housing with social services for the frail elderly have encountered barriers such as the historical separation of housing and services, political and bureaucratic fragmentation, and budget constraints. Over a 20-year period, they have attempted to address these issues by identifying the nature and extent of the problem, creating workable models, and developing a political constituency. Major reform, however, occurred only in 1990 when Congress passed the landmark National Affordable Housing Act (NAHA) which provided an "open policy window" for supportive housing legislation. NAHA's passage, however, still left many issues unresolved (e.g., targeting and funding for services). The future challenge is to develop new models of supportive housing and provide a range of residential settings and portable services to increase the choices for frail older persons.     

Le travail vu par les assistés : éléments pour une sociologie des politiques d’insertion

The relations between “assistance” and “work” are seen from the viewpoint of the beneficiaries of welfare services for integrating them in the world of work. Material was collected during 70 semi-directive interviews with recipients of the minimal welfare payment program (RMI) who had valid “contracts of integration” in three local authorities in the Île-de-France region between 2005 and 2007. The relations of these persons to work differ as a function of their attachment to the norm of autonomy, their resistance to stigmatization and their guilt feelings. They very much depend on beneficiaries’ sociodemographic characteristics and quite diverse backgrounds and itineraries. Three types of relations to the world of work have been detected that enable us to empirically verify the postulate that the most disadvantaged categories have difficulty appropriating the currently widespread norm of individual autonomy.     

Linking federally assisted housing with services for frail older persons

Advocates of policies designed to link federally assisted housing with social services for the frail elderly have encountered barriers such as the historical separation of housing and services, political and bureaucratic fragmentation, and budget constraints. Over a 20-year period, they have attempted to address these issues by identifying the nature and extent of the problem, creating workable models, and developing a political constituency. Major reform, however, occurred only in 1990 when Congress passed the landmark National Affordable Housing Act (NAHA) which provided an "open policy window" for supportive housing legislation. NAHA's passage, however, still left many issues unresolved (e.g., targeting and funding for services). The future challenge is to develop new models of supportive housing and provide a range of residential settings and portable services to increase the choices for frail older persons.     

Vertical Village: Social Contacts in a Singles Highrise Complex

Abstract

This paper examines the characteristics of community life in a age-segregated highrise complex and the implications of this new form of housing for the quality of urban life. The physical characteristics of the housing do not determine behavior of occupants, but use of the residential environment is shaped by the image of the community and is also affected by the characteristics of residents and their housing expectations. The reputation of the community serves to attract a certain type of person—the upper middle class, well-educated, and single young adult—in high concentrations.

Despite previous studies which have characterized young adults in city neighborhoods as totally cut off from local ties, a combination of factors encourages a high degree of neighboring among this population: homogeneity in terms of age, class, ethnicity, and stage of the life cycle: social selectivity of persons with a positive interest in neighboring: a high concentration of persons occupying a deviant social status; and inter-locking networks of friendship, work and organizational ties. “Marginals” in this environment are the small minority of older and married tenants who compensate for their deviant status vis a vis the majority group of young singles by over-selecting other tenants like themselves for nieghboring relations.     

Social Networks of Old People in India

Summary

This article presents a comparative analysis of the available research on the social networks of older persons in India. Most of this research has been done in North Indian cities. The research foci of the available studies include network size, core networks and beyond, life course changes in networks, impacts of residency in old-age homes, gender differences, and joint and nuclear family residence. This research is discussed in terms of its policy implications. Because the research demonstrates that social networks are important for the welfare of older Indians, one can conclude that social policy that encourages the maintenance of robust networks throughout the life course may be worth pursuing. One aspect of policy is discussed. The analysis of the relationship between social network and gender suggests that current policies that can be seen as supporting gender inequality in terms of property may have a negative impact on the networks of older women.     

Le traitement syndical du racisme et de l'insécurité dans une entreprise de transports urbains

On-the-job racism is studied in the case of a public transportation firm that has to cope with insecurity in an urban area. In this company, the labor union has related security and racism in order to definitively integrate young persons hired to do “mediation work”. Eliminating this work from the list of jobs has had two positive effects; it avoids the risk of an “ethnic professionalization” and grants legitimacy to the relational know-how linked to the origins of young wage-earners. The option of labor union members in the firm did curb the escalation of conflicts between transportation personnel and young people in housing projects.     

Separate and Unequal: The Housing Act of 1968 and the Section 235 Program

In recent years scholars have identified racial disparities in wealth and home ownership as crucial factors underlying patterns of racial inequality and residential segregation in American metropolitan housing markets. While numerous federal housing policies have been identified as responsible for reinforcing residential segregation and racial inequalities in home ownership, little research has focused on the segregative effects of the Section 235 program. As one component of the 1968 Housing Act, Section 235 was designed to shift the focus of federal housing policy away from dispensing aid to local housing authorities for building public housing to providing direct supply-side subsidies to the private sector to stimulate home ownership for nonwhites and the poor. Archival and census data, government reports and housing analyses, and oral histories and interviews are used to examine the segregative effects of the Section 235 program in Kansas City, Missouri from 1969 through the early 1970s. Findings indicate that while the housing subsidy program allowed a vast majority of participating white families to purchase new housing in suburban areas, most participating African American families purchased existing homes located in racially transitional neighborhoods in the inner city. These findings corroborate recent research showing how the market-centered focus of federal housing policy has impaired the ability of African Americans to accumulate wealth through home ownership and reinforced racially segregative housing patterns.     

Rural Housing Adequacy and Civic Structure

One persistent problem that many small rural towns face is housing adequacy, which encompasses interior and exterior structural conditions; assessments of heating, cooling, and sanitation systems; and residence size relative to space needs. The creation and reproduction of vibrant rural communities is grounded in the capacity of citizens to solve local housing problems. We posit that towns with strong norms of mutuality, high information flows, and inclusive behaviors have a civic structure that produces the capacity to frame and resolve housing concerns. We find that perceptions of civic structure are a significant factor in explaining the variation in rural housing adequacy, net of income, age, and tenure. This implies that the social and political environment is an important influence on the quality of housing stock found in rural places.     

When formal laws and informal norms collide: lineage networks versus birth control policy in China

Ancestor worship and bloodline continuation are the core norms of lineage in China. Beginning in the late 1970s, these cultural norms came into direct confrontation with the state birth control policy. Pitched against each other are the antinatalist laws backed by the powerful and unyielding state apparatus on the one side and the ancient pronatalist norms backed by revived lineage networks on the other. Even though the draconian state policies did succeed in dramatically reducing the overall birthrates, data analyses show that villages with strong kinship networks tend to have higher birthrates. The findings demonstrate the normative capacity of social networks to bend the iron bars of formal institutions. A general framework is developed for analyzing the roles of social networks in four ideal-typical juxtapositions of formal and informal institutions: normativism, legalism, congruence, and conflict.     

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.     

Pour une sociologie des professionnels engagés : « Mondes de l’art » et militantisme contre la guerre en Irak aux États-Unis

This analysis of the mobilization of American artists against the war in Iraq emphasizes how their work situations have shaped their involvement. Regardless of political organizations and networks, or of the ideological dimensions of the anti-war cause, relations having to do with the work and occupational identities of these persons determined, in the first place, their actions and the positions they have adopted publicly. This article contrasts various “artistic subfields” and “patterns of activity” in order to understand the factors that have made it more or less tenable for these social actors to articulate the identities of artist and activist and, in some cases, to produce “political art”. The second part focuses on the “professional structuring” of this activism by showing how the current operation of artistic spheres — which have become more self-regulated, specialized and professionalized —tend to curb the confusion of issues that mixes aesthetic up with politics.     

Better Homes and Families: Housing Markets and Young Couple Stability in Sweden

I model the relationship between aspects of the housing market influenced by housing policy and couple stability for cohabiting couples in Sweden. Using data on 3,851 cohabiting couples obtained from the Swedish Family Survey of 1992, I examine the effects of housing market characteristics on couple outcomes. I focus on three housing variables, including the affordability of housing, the availability of detached housing, and the profitability of ownership. I link these variables to the transitions from cohabitation to marriage or separation in Sweden. Policy relevant aspects of the housing market are shown to have significant effects on the stability of couples in Sweden. Greater affordability increases couple stability. Intriguingly, greater availability of detached housing significantly weakens couple stability.     

Social networks of old people in India: research and policy

This article presents a comparative analysis of the available research on the social networks of older persons in India. Most of this research has been done in North Indian cities. The research foci of the available studies include network size, core networks and beyond, life course changes in networks, impacts of residency in old-age homes, gender differences, and joint and nuclear family residence. This research is discussed in terms of its policy implications. Because the research demonstrates that social networks are important for the welfare of older Indians, one can conclude that social policy that encourages the maintenance of robust networks throughout the life course may be worth pursuing. One aspect of policy is discussed. The analysis of the relationship between social network and gender suggests that current policies that can be seen as supporting gender inequality in terms of property may have a negative impact on the networks of older women.     

Effets pervers des déréglementations européennes : le cas du transport routier de marchandises

The transportation of freight by truck has been fully deregulated and opened to competition in the European Union, without any quotas or restrictions since 1July 1998. This deregulation has caused problems, mainly due to the delay in adopting common fiscal and social measures, road checks and sanctions for firms that commit offenses. Unscrupulous companies have used this legal vacuum in the EU to factitiously “outsource” activities and dodge national rules and regulations about taxes, labor relations and welfare. As a result, working conditions have worsened as barriers have been lifted. By definition, turnover is high among wage-earners. Truck drivers, semi-skilled, have become interchangeable on the EU marketplace. They can be profitably replaced with drivers from eastern Europe (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria), who are much cheaper and less protected. The spread of such practices is a cause of concern for labor organizations in Europe. Shipping by truck is a textbook case for analyzing how the EU is trying to counter the devious effects arising out of the deregulation of a branch of the economy.