La constitution d'une élite du Welfare dans la France des années 1990

A neo-elitist interpretation of the relations between the governmental and administrative elites helps us understand new power relations at the top of the French state. Light is shed on the formation, during the last twenty years, of a “welfare state elite”, which has arisen around decision-making in the social service sector. An analysis of changes in social policies shows how an elite that has shared the same purposes in collective action has gradually asserted its identity as a group. With a very coherent view of public policies and of relations with the authorities exercising oversight (Cour des Comptes, IGAS), this elite has proven capable of exercising a strong influence over policy-making. Its institutionalization is corroborated by the long careers in this sector that lead to controlling professional know-how. In brief, a unified elite has arisen that might well leave lasting marks on the future of the French welfare state.     

Contenir le marché : la transition de la criée à la cotation électronique à la Bourse de Paris

Open outcry was fully replaced at the Paris Bourse by an automated trade execution system (CAC) in the late 1980s. In this article, we focus on the circumstances that made this transition possible. We analyze the diverse compromises (both social and technical) that the officials and engineers in charge of the innovation process constructed in order to stabilize the new market device. They had to carefully inscribe into the new system the interests of the actors at stake: bankers and stockbrokers. This case study contributes to economic sociology by drawing a relation between a technical device and the interests set around the “modernization” of a market.     

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.     

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.     

La restructuration des PMI à Saint-Étienne après la crise : traces du passé et limites de l'intégration horizontale

On the basis of a survey conducted in Saint-Étienne, France, as part of a comparative European project on “modes of governance” in local economies (which, thus, takes into account the level of small and medium-sized industry and the middle level of the territory), questions are raised about the goods and services that enable these industries to be competitive with big firms or holdings. For these industries, solutions developed two decades ago for the machine tool industry, mechanics and metal-working are still significant resources. The momentum detected in a small number of fields can lead to an increasing specialization and horizontal integration that favor a more competitive growth. How to know whether this momentum results from still (temporarily) active remnants of the past or whether it is evidence of a collective impetus that can stimulate new economic growth?     

Le SAT et l’accès aux études supérieures : le recrutement des élites américaines en question

James Conant developed the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) in the 1930s in line with thought about the mobility of elites, a subject that many American as well as European intellectuals were discussing. This test, now used for the admission of high school graduates to universities, was to be a means for detecting talented youngsters and, in fine, producing a model of society. Nowadays, the SAT has a value as a means of effectively comparing students nationwide; but in practice, it serves to reproduce a certain social elite. Far from measuring pure intelligence disconnected from culture, it has turned into a commodity advantageous to certain social groups and ethnic communities.     

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.     

Retour sur le « secteur informel ». L'économie du Katanga (Congo-Zaïre) face à la falsification de la loi

In the social sciences, the idea of an informal sector has been criticized more for the classification of economic activities in two separate sectors than for the labeling of them as “formal” or “informal”. In the Congo (formerly Zaire), the use of such labels is ambiguous. Labeling has to be understood in the context of corruption, i.e., in a transaction involving the personal networks and social identities of the parties to it. An analysis is made of how such transactions with civil servants shape the local market in the case of the import trade in Katanga. Compared with the formal/informal cleavage, this approach enables us both to see the labeling of economic activities as a social and political process and to draw attention to the plurality of such practices in relations with authorities.     

Les mutations de la profession d'huissier de justice depuis les années 1970

To determine the nature, scope and explanatory factors of important changes in the profession of bailiff (huissier de justice) since the 1970s, various scales of observation are combined around a morphological and a structural (or interactionist) analysis of this professional group. The morphological analysis assesses the changes in this group's major social and professional characteristics and thus accounts for its degree of heterogeneity. It also calls for analyzing careers (by using academic and lay categories to explain biographical itineraries) and everyday professional practices. Drawing on Everett C. Hughes work, the structural analysis brings to light the decisive role played by “political actors”, by this professional group's representatives and by its disputes with other legal professions for the purpose of preserving and demarcating its own field of activity given recent changes.     

Introduction. Ce que les écrits font au travail

As is known, large numbers of writings circulate within every kind of professional environment. As a result, there is extensive research on the formats, uses and roles of writings in work. However, the approach taken here is not to describe what is done with writings in work. The central hypothesis rests on a performative vision of writings, one that gives them the power to act, agency. It can be summed up as follows: what do writings “do” to work? Studying work through its writings is a way to connect two dimensions that are too often kept separate: situated activities on the one hand, organizational functions on the other. Indeed, writings are material and robust — though not always lasting — traces of concrete activities, and they provide a handhold for the rigorous analysis of work as close as possible to its conditions of realization. However, writings travel and circulate. They form links between workers, groups, workshops, services, firms, without which production could not take place. They stretch work beyond its source. To track them is therefore to shift the field of enquiry to moments other than the present of the observed situation, and also to other nearby, surrounding workspaces. This brings out the procedural and interactive dimensions of organizations, their integrating capacity. Exploring what writings do to work is therefore not only to place oneself at an intermediate level between situated action and organized action. For the sociologist, it is a way of connecting these two perspectives “on paper”, by embedding the analysis of the actual work in spatially and temporally broader collective actions, and by documenting organizational analysis on the basis of observed work situations. It is a way of contributing to a more extensive ecology of activity, more clearly anchored within its organizational envelope.     

New Public Management et professions dans l’État : au-delà des oppositions, quelles recompositions ?

More and more reforms in public administrations are being conducted that are based on the principles and instruments of “new public management”. They have set off protest and collective actions by several professional groups in various sectors (health, education, justice, social work, research…), whence questions about the future of professional groups in public services, in particular about their autonomy, which these reforms threaten. The opposition between this new public management and certain professional groups, is not the final explanation to draw from an analysis of this situation. Should these changes be seen as the decline of professional groups and of their autonomy, as a mutation of professional models, an overhaul of professionalism, etc.? These questions, which current events in France and Europe have raised, are a matter for ongoing sociological thought. They are approached empirically, from the field, using varied scales of analysis and research. Forms of tension between this new public management and professional groups are explored.     

Matière à spéculer : les produits laitiers saisis par l’écrit

This article seeks to describe the work of dairy products speculators. It reveals the effort, cognitive and material, that enables these actors to handle the widening of their range of action, but also the contraction in the timescale of that action, two dynamics characteristic of the financialization process currently underway in certain international agricultural markets. In contrast with certain works critical of finance, which report a decoupling of the “financial sphere” from the “real economy”, it reveals – through close attention to the graphic media employed – agents who are aware of the materiality of the products they manipulate, despite their growing distanciation, both cognitive and geographical, from the target of their activity.     

Généalogie et évolution de la catégorie de « cadre » en Italie

Conceptions of the social world in industrialized countries use categories worked out in the course of a nation's history. In this respect, the notion of cadre for referring to both a concrete social group and a statistical, cognitive category turns out to be a French invention. From a societal perspective, why are there no cadres in Italy? Why is this sort of catchall category for referring to persons in the middle range of employees missing there? Although the notion crystallized through the French experience does not fit the Italian situation, we can inquire into it by examining the history of two close but distinct socioeconomic categories: quadri and dirigenti. A constructivist approach is taken to examining several aspects of the emergence of these categories in Italian society: the place of the institutions that defend and objectify them as a socioeconomic category; the expectations and aspirations that motivate them; the impact of historical and symbolical events in making these categories; and the role of sociologists who persist in analyzing Italian cadres by using quite different theoretical and ideological presuppositions.     

Sociology and New Wars in the Era of Globalisation

The sociology of war has used a number of analytical perspectives to explain why the end of the Cold War saw outbreaks of violence around the world in the form of 'new wars', rather than universal peace. Factors often considered are globalisation, nationalist ideology, political elites, the Revolution in Military Affairs, international crime and migration. Sociological analysis of these new wars often makes use of comparative historical sociology, but these are wars of state disintegration rather than of state formation. This summary undertakes a critical evaluation of different approaches, arguing that they mostly follow a model of war inherited from Clausewitz which conceives of war only as an encounter between two states and so cannot successfully explain new war, where armed forces no longer primarily fight each other but target civilians.     

Le travail enseignant en lycée professionnel et ses paradoxes

The paradoxes in the work of teaching in French vocational education stem from the “symbolic closure” of these secondary schools. The latter, given the mass enrollment in general secondary schools, receive students marked by their failure in middle school. This has created a distance with the students' social and family environment and with firms, even though the latter are supposed to be the destination where these students are bound. The work of these teachers is strongly marked by “subjective ordeals” related to their subordinate position in the school system, to a concern for keeping peace in the schools and to doubts about integrating students in the world of work. Might the work of these teachers not lead paradoxically to reasserting the “weight of the educational form” by including therein actions that are supposed to help students “mature” and develop an “appropriate school identity”? In this case, the purpose of this work is the academic socialization and rehabilitation of young people as much as their vocational training as such.     

国际权力基础与伊拉克战争

本文考察国际权力在不同历史时期的基础及其变化,并提出,各国围绕国际权力竞争的背后是各国围绕国际权力基础的竞争,国际权力基础随着时代不断发生变迁。作为国际政治的一个重要变量,国际权力基础反映出国际政治单位之间所享有的国际权力差异。自威斯特伐利亚条约以来,国际社会见证了数次国际权力基础变化。在第二次世界大战以前,国际权力的基础是常规武器水平;冷战期间核武器成为了新的基础;冷战结束后,各国之间的竞争围绕着综合国力展开;伊拉克战争爆发以后,国际权力基础又变迁为国家独立行动能力。     

Compter : l’invention de la statistique des fonctionnaires en France (1890-1930)

Civil servant statistics in France were invented on the margins of the state during the period from 1890 to 1930. This invention came out of activist and/or professional rationales that were desynchronized with the drafting or application of polices for reducing the number of government employees. There were three successive phases. At the dawn of the xx^th century, civil servants were counted in order to inveigh against “functionarism” and “depopulation”. During the decade before World War I, counting them was a matter of improving the expertise of statisticians. Between the two World Wars, sharp cuts were made in personnel, while civil service statistics were held in abeyance. By focusing on how civil servant statistics have been produced and used, the approach proposed herein sheds new light on a persistent but paradoxical discourse in France that ignores how many civil servants there are while claiming that there are too many.     

La carrière des artistes et les transformations de la production musicale. Relations de travail et relation au travail dans le monde des musiques rap et électroniques

The interaction between the artistic and managerial poles of the world formed by the persons specialized in rap and electronic music in France is described as well as musicians' occupational culture. The aesthetic and organizational characteristics of these musical genres are shown to influence the division of labour in recording and production. Owing to the combination of artistic and managerial activities typical of these musicians, occupational networks are fluid. This blurring of roles is especially visible in the recording labels used from home studios. Technical changes in the “tools” for this work have led these artists to become professionally involved in management and advertising. Cultural motivations also explain this involvement: the critical stance adopted by the “cultures” of rap, electro, techno, etc., tends to make obsolete the image of the artist as a creator who avoids the engineering aspects of the commercial distribution of his recordings. In contrast, rap and electronic musicians' careers develop through participation in many and various projects, which nurtures their artistic production, improves the quality of their groups and enhances their reputations. Accepting more short-term professional engagements supposedly increases their control over their career profiles. However these musicians voice concerns, in particular, about bonds between the individual and the groups whom they cross (and who cross them) — concerns that can be extended to other types de workers caught up in an occupational world organized “by project”.     

Produire l'objectivité médicale : un système expérimental réplicatif de standardisation

As seen through studies in medical sociology and though the concerns expressed by health-care professionals, standardizing medical practices is the key to the theoretical and practical thought devoted to the production of scientific objectivity. Till present, analyses have given a special place to the conditions for establishing innovative systems of medical coordination on a large scale. Recent studies have focused on constructing standards and concretely applying them to the coordination of medical practices. Under this paradigm however, maintaining standardized practices over time is taken for granted. Attention has mainly turned toward the visible aspects of standardization in a narrowly defined medical setting with, as a result, models that are based on the degree of standardization obtained instead of on the process of attaining it. Two empirical studies are used to raise questions about how to make the nascent medical/administrative objectivity last. This presentation of a “style of standardization” pleads for a pragmatic approach to the producing of standards so as to describe the various innovative forms of standardized practices without necessarily making presuppositions about the context of discovery or the properties inherent in what is to be standardized.