La dynamique des professions à l'épreuve de la féminisation : l'ascension atypique des femmes commissaires

There are more female constables at the top of the hierarchy, especially in very male oriented services, then at the bottom of the police force. And differences of carrier between male and female constables are not so big. These two original points can only be explained if they are put in the light of professional, political and anthropological prospectives that governs the profession in process.     

« Le plafond de verre dans tous ses éclats ». La féminisation des professions supérieures au xx siècle

The metaphor of the glass ceiling helps one to focus on the often invisible barriers qualified women have to deal with, in order to access to the highest professional positions. This article presents the set of contributions, which clarifies the evolution of this phenomenon in various professions and in various countries. It gives one a more dynamic and less linear view on the top job feminization throughout the 20th century.     

Le nom et le corps. Personnalisation et collectivisation du travail chez les ingénieurs des Ponts et Chaussées autour de 1800

A tension between strong individualization and a holistic conception of activities characterizes most of the French state's major administrative corps. By concentrating on the civil engineering corps (Ponts et Chaussées) during the early 19th century, we can see how this tension was resolved. When the Ourcq Canal was to be built, a conflict during the Ponts et Chaussées Assembly, which was responsible for examining plans for public works and making decisions about them, brought to light two contradictory rationales: incarnation and delegation, two ways of relating the individual and collective aspects of civil engineering during the drawing up of plans and their examination. These two rationales, which come into conflict in controversial situations, are normally combined in a “moral economy” — the civilities that enable this corps to relate the individualistic aspirations of the engineer in charge of a project with the collective dimensions of supervision and integration in a whole. In conclusion, the relations between design and execution, between activity and passivity, are examined in order to show how similar the administrative corps’ tense relation with the state is to the individual engineer's relation with his corps.     

Le juge est (souvent) une femme. Conceptions du métier et pratiques des magistrates et magistrats aux Affaires familiales

In France, disputes related to marital separations are heard in the Family Chambers of the Superior Courts (Chambres de la famille des Tribunaux de Grande instance) by a single judge (a family court judge). As the magistracy feminizes, the question of what influence a judge's gender has over rulings in family cases has become a controversial topic and a media hobbyhorse, under mounting pressure from organizations that defend fathers’ rights. Using the results of a collective survey conducted in four Superior Courts between 2008 and 2010, this article shows that male and female family court judges do not follow the same personal and professional paths and do not assume their jobs under the same conditions or at the same moment in their careers, and thus perceive their roles in quite different ways. Despite all these differences, there is great homogeneity in these judges’ decisions, no matter their sex.     

Écrire l’incertitude. Le travail à bord des navires de commerce entre stabilisations,prises de risques et responsabilisations

Because of the many sources of uncertainty and opportunities for separation between sailors and the ship, work on board a merchant ship requires a panoply of tools that contribute to the continuity of activity and the identification of active agents. Writing is one of these instruments. Observation of the ship's different written media reveals the difficulty and, at the same time, the need for this organization to be maintained. They reveal the existence of a particular connection between land and sea, while raising issues of responsibility.     

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.     

Vers une représentation européenne des salariés. Les comités d’entreprise européens face aux restructurations

Nearly 900 European works councils (EWCs), transnational committees for informing and consulting workers, are now active in firms operating across borders inside Europe. How do they help establish a European industrial relations system? How have these new forms of representation been molded into a collective actor that is making itself heard at the EU level, in particular when the firms where EWCs exist are to be restructured? The intent is to see how an “additive logic”, whereby the EWC is the sum of the representatives of the firm's European workers, turns into an “integrative logic”, whereby the EWC becomes the place of a European representation of these workers. This study follows European works councils from the negotiations leading to their creation to their activities in coping with economic restructuring. It shows how they take part in the Europeanization and renewal of collective action in the social Europe under construction.     

Les régimes de production des connaissances de la sélection animale. Ontologies,mesures, formes de régulation

This paper analyses the co-production of knowledge and socio-economic order in animal breeding. Is it possible to historicise analyses of the actor-network theory (ANT) and to show forms of pairing between knowledge production and sociopolitical order typical of a given historical period? Symmetrically, in an approach based on regimes of knowledge, how do we account for the differences that remain over a given period? Drawing on the differences in the exploitation of animal genetics in three production sectors (beef, pork, chicken), this paper analyses the diversity of the composition of the socio-(bio)technical methods of animal selection and the mechanisms for stabilising these methods. It also explains the relations with factors whose forms of existence do not depend only on local arrangements. In this way, one can move from local heterogeneous agencements to regimes of knowledge.     

Le télétravail des cadres : entre suractivité et apprentissage de nouvelles temporalités

Telework is often considered to be a means for making life at work and at home more compatible. Why do some wage-earners, in particular white-collar employees, choose it? Do they actually make a choice or simply adopt a solution “for want of anything better” in an organizational context with its limitations? In this case, what factors do they weigh against each other? Once they have opted for telework, how do these white collars manage to adjust their occupational and family lives? Is their aspiration to improve the balance between the two satisfied? Or do they run up against unexpected difficulties? Answers to these questions come out of two studies conducted among white-collar employees in different sorts of telework. Given the absence of institutional regulations governing the relation between life at home and at work, telework, far from leading to a more balanced life, jeopardizes the organization’s collective efficiency.     

Comment se font les administrations : analyser des activités administratives constituantes

Between studies in historical sociology on changes in public administrations and microsociological analyses of the ordinary work done by civil servants, an intermediate perspective is advocated, one centered on “constituent administrative activities”. Following a panorama of the varied researches on public administrations, the proposal is made to focus on the arrangements that shape administrations and form their essential operations. Recruitment, personnel evaluation, the division of labor, the restructuring of hierarchies and the activities of keeping written records and statistics (writing and counting) should be the subjects of study. When placed in their historical and social contexts, they help us better understand how public administrations last and change. Discussing the scale of analysis and making comparisons over time and in space, this article presents the other contributions to this special issue. Less linear approaches are suggested for analyzing the historical processes of the “bureaucratization” and “managerialization” of administrative systems.     

Structuration d’un champ d’action publique : l’intervention publique sur les copropriétés dégradées

This article focuses on the social construction of the problem, which emerged in France during the 1980s, of dilapidated condominium apartment buildings and on the public policy instruments that have been used. A sociology of organized action serves to analyze this twofold process, which has resulted from the formation of networks of persons unfamiliar with the legal aspects of condominium ownership. Linking the periphery to the center, these networks have crystallized around norms ensuing from housing policy. The concept of “field” in the Weberian sense explains this crystallization, and also applies to the symmetrical process of conserving civil law on joint ownership. Parties attached to this normative system denied the problem of dilapidated condominiums, when it was presented to them. By pursuing a social activity based on applying and producing rules, individuals in the networks related to housing policy and persons concerned by condominium ownership contributed to maintaining and, too, revitalizing rules and norms.     

L’accountability à l’épreuve des incertitudes : le mandat des acheteurs d’énergie

Based on a survey of energy buyers in big industries, this article inquires into the different ways of explaining the actions they perform in situations of high, uncontrolled uncertainty. Describing energy buyers’ activities, the uncertainties and contradictions affecting them, shows how hard it is to explain them, make them visible or justify the decisions made. Energy buyers develop two forms of “accountability”: they claim to have been granted decision-making powers and ask to be evaluated on the basis of their results; or else they “socialize” their activities by involving corporate managers in decision-making. It is argued that “accountability” is stabilized in line with a collective learning process where the experience of uncertainty has a key place.     

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.     

Politique et expertise scientifique. La régulation européenne des médicaments

A study of the EU system for regulating medicinal products is used to show the usefulness of distinguishing between policy-making and scientific expertise when analyzing political decision-making. This approach presupposes identifying the characteristics of scientific expertise. The experts responsible for assessing drugs have to combine knowledge and action. Questions are raised about how work is shared between decision-makers and experts. In the case of medicinal products, the work of experts has absorbed decision-making. Lest we waver between explanations in terms either of science or else of politics, it is necessary to substantively identify expertise’s political dimensions. Two conceptions — the “healthy man’s” and the “sick man’s” — of the purpose of assessing medicinal products stand out in debates; but political authorities pay no heed to them.     

Dispositifs d’intermédiation marchande et politique des marchés. La modernisation du marché des fruits et légumes en France, 1950-1980

As this study of experiments with organizing the fruit and vegetable market from the 1950s till the end of the 1970s shows, there were alternatives to the principle of distribution, for instance: the modernization of traditional wholesale marketplaces (carreau) or the establishment of veilings (marchés au cadran) controlled by producers. After exposing the rationale underlying each of these arrangements, the empirical conditions are examined for actually modernizing markets. Attention is drawn to the factors that weigh on players in the market, in particular the tensions, on the one hand, between homogenization and concentration and, on the other hand, the singularity of products and transactions.     

Faire œuvre commune. Dynamiques d'attribution et de valorisation des coproductions en art numérique

By bringing together various parties and multidisciplinary contributions, digitalized art parcelizes the act of creation with, as a consequence, various ways for referring to the “work” of art. The outcome of this joint, polyphonic production process might be a piece of software, separate from the work itself, or an artwork, which might or might not incorporate the computer program. What arrangements ultimately redistribute these multicentric externalities between the cooperating parties? How are the results of this coordination exploited depending on the market (academic or industrial) of destination? By emphasizing the arrangements necessary for finishing a co-production whose social career is described, this article draws attention to the changes introduced through digitalized innovations and explains the new arrangements for giving credits and promoting partnerships between art, science and technology.     

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.