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.     

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.     

Les émeutes urbaines de l’automne 2005 : cadres d’analyse et points aveugles de la sociologie française

Sociological interpretations of the suburban riots in France during the autumn of 2005 have been the subject of many a comment. This critique places the more original interpretations in the context of the unstated paradigms adopted by “understanding” authors, who have sought to provide a meaning to persons whose actions were supposedly deprived of it. There is a flagrant need for studies of how the crisis was globally managed with respect to local events - as if the persons involved in regulating the riots were not as worthy of study by sociology. Case studies are emerging to fill this need that have more awareness of the interactions between parties during these events.     

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.     

Un nouveau type d'indice de la criminalité pour le Canada*

The authors present the results of a research project in which the aim was to develop for Canada an index of criminology and delinquency based on public appraisal of the seriousness of various criminal offences. This new kind of index of crime was originally proposed in the United States by T. Sellin and M. E. Wolfgang. The possibility of using such an index in order to compensate for the shortcomings of present statistics on criminal behaviour is brought out as a research conclusion. The index has advantages as well for the development of international statistics on crime.     

Observer,consigner, tracer. Les usages d’un cahier électronique controversé en établissement pénitentiaire pour mineurs

This contribution, based on research conducted within a Prison for Minors, provides an analysis of the guards’ use of a software application: the “electronic observation logbook”, designed to record and disseminate various day-to-day “observations” about prisoners. The analysis of the use of this system — which simultaneously attempts to “profile” prisoners and “track” surveillance activity — not only helps conceptually identify the type of surveillance employed in a Prison for Minors, it also reveals the growing complexity of the work of prison guards, previously studied primarily in terms of the informality of the interactional frameworks in prison.     

Un outil de diagnostic et d'action pour la réalisation du travail décent

En s'appuyant sur les indicateurs identifiés par la Réunion tripartite d'experts sur la mesure du travail décent, réunie en 2008 au BIT, les auteurs élaborent un questionnaire complété par des entretiens approfondis afin d'évaluer la qualité de l'emploi dans la sécurité, l'agriculture et l'hôtellerie‐restauration en Afrique du Sud. Leur outil de diagnostic concerne des travailleurs de secteurs d'activité particuliers considérés individuellement et non la situation nationale. Cette approche permet de suivre les progrès accomplis en matière de travail décent, et de mettre en ?uvre des stratégies fondées sur des données probantes afin de combler les déficits de travail décent.     

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.     

Anthropologie économique des communautés indigenes de la Sierra Norte de Puebla (Mexique) 2: Les villages de haute montagne

In a preceding article, the author has shown how Indian communities of the tierra templada have been transformed by a century of coffee-growing. Those of the adjacent highlands, although linked to the latter by language and a long cultural tradition, have known a different evolution. Until a generation ago the absence of any important cash crop has meant little inner social differentiation: the subsistence growing of maize alternating, for most Indians, with migrant wage labour. The typical class structure is here much more complex than in the lower zone, since it opposes the peasant both to the bourgeoisie of the Lowlands, as a migrant farm labourer, and to the petty bourgeoisie of merchants and landowners in the Sierra, as a customer and a share-cropper. The latter opposition reveals itself both in the classical “ethnic” form (mestizo vs. Indians) and as a political opposition between the county town (mestizo) and the Indian villages. For a few decades, diversification of production activities and relations of production linked with these have lead to a far greater structural variation in the villages than is the case in the coffee-growing area. Dans un article précédent l'auteur a montré comment les communautés indigènes de tierra templada s'étaient transformées sous 1'impact de la culture du café. Celles de la haute montagne adjacente, très apparentées aux premières, linguistiquement et culturellement, ont connu une évolution fort différente. Jusqu’à une époque toute récente, l'absence de production commerciale importante s'est traduite par une faible différenciation interne des classes: la culture vivrière du maïs se combinant, pour la majorité des Indiens, avec le travail salarié migratoire à la côte. La structure de classes caractéristique est ici plus complexe qu'en basse montagne puisqu'elle oppose le paysan indien, comme ouvrier agricole saison-nier, à la grande bourgeoisie de la côte et comme metayer/client à la petite bourgeoisie marchande et terrienne de la Sierra. Cette dernière opposition se manifeste, à la fois sous la forme « ethnique » classique (Metis/Indiens) et comme opposition politique entre le chef-lieu métis et les villages indiens. Depuis quelques décennies, la diversification des activités productives et des rapports de production qui s'y rattachent, entraine une variation beaucoup plus grande dans les structures sociales villageoises qu'en basse montagne.     

Écrire la loi. Un travail de bureau pour hauts fonctionnaires du ministère de l’Écologie

This article analyses the process of the drafting of the Bachelot Bill on technological risks, passed on 30 July 2003 but initiated by Lionel Jospin's government immediately following the AZF factory disaster in September 2001. It focuses on the practical work of the civil servants at the Ministry of Ecology responsible for setting the orientations of the reform, transcribing them into legal provisions and ensuring that they would be supported and passed in Parliament. The analysis approaches the task by tracking both the successive versions of the bill and the multiple documents used in the preparation of these versions. This immersion in the administrative production of law provides a better understanding of the relations between the civil service and the political authorities, and shows how the boundary between these two worlds of practice is difficult to draw in the legal drafting process.     

Les sentinelles bancaires de l'antiblanchiment. Acteurs privés et policing économique

Private actors in finance, especially in the banking industry, play a leading role in the campaign, institutionalized during the 1990s, against money-laundering. Assigned the duty of detecting dubious transactions in their establishments, they are supposed to inform Tracfin, a finance intelligence unit located in the French Ministry of Finance, of their suspicions. The latter decides whether to alert judicial authorities. A set of interviews conducted with the ‘compliance officers’ in banks who supervise the implementation of regulations against money-laundering are analyzed in order to understand how persons whose normal duties are oriented toward commercial activities based on a high regard for privacy are being led to assume police duties and how they are performing in this new role.     

Les infortunes de la vertu. Sociologie d’un répertoire d’action patronal

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the sociology of employer organisations, by combining input from work recently conducted in France, with research — notably in the field of Science and Technology Studies — on lobbying and public relations activities pursued by companies to repudiate or downplay the dangers to health or the environment posed by their activities or products. Drawing on a study focused on the Comité des salines de France, an organisation that represents French industrial salt producers, we explore the strategies that industrial firms employ to defend their reputation and that of their products when doubts are cast on their safety. This enables us to demonstrate the existence of a common repertoire of strategies — both trans-sectorial and transnational — employed by these actors.     

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.     

Confiance et qualité des produits alimentaires : une approche par la sociologie des relations marchandes

Given the current crises, what means do actors implement in order to redefine the conditions for both a social contract and an economic adjustment between the producers and consumers of foodstuffs? These means can be interpreted as ways to cope with the risk of a mismatch between consumer expectations and the quality of produce in the marketplace - as new ways of assembling actors around interests that are not always stable. This quite high degree of indeterminacy, which comes into play throughout the market game, makes it necessary to better understand forms of association among actors and the arrangements that emerge as the market evolves as a function of new forms of adjustment. The actions undertaken by a group of mussel producers in France are reported. Under pressure to standardize produce, they have, nonetheless, imagined solutions for identifying produce and sorts of production so as to force the marketplace to deal with differences in quality. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

Un modèle multidimensionnel pour appréhender les formes de travail inacceptables

À l'approche de son centenaire, l'OIT a inclus la lutte contre les formes de travail inacceptables parmi les «domaines de première importance» devant guider son action. Cependant, pour les auteures, ces modalités particulières, leurs causes, leurs dimensions et leurs manifestations appellent encore une analyse exhaustive. Elles s'attaquent donc à ce projet, en commençant par exploiter les apports des différents courants d'analyse sur le travail contemporain, puis en proposant un modèle multidimensionnel novateur, que les acteurs sur le terrain devraient pouvoir utiliser pour repérer et traiter les formes de travail inacceptables à l'échelon national, quel que soit le niveau de revenu du pays.     

Une étude de la mobilité sociale au Québec de 1954 à 1974 et une méthode d'analyse statistique: des résultats divergents*

Is structural mobility stable in the Province of Québec? There is no unique answer to that question as many structural mobility models can be designed to fit the pattern of occupational distributions in the 1954, 1964, and 1974 occupational mobility tables in Québec. Each of these models drives the researcher to different conclusions concerning the stability of the intergenerational mobility structure. A secondary analysis of mobility data shows how difficult it is to conclude in this case on the basis of a statistical analysis only. Theoretical efforts are needed to disentangle the empirical snare. La structure de mobilité sociale inter-générationnelle du Québec est-elle stable depuis les années 50? Il n'y a pas de réponse unique à cette question puisque plusieurs modèles de mobilité peuvent expliquer les distributions d'occupations des fils selon les occupations des pères à chacune des périodes observées. Certains de ces modèles permettent de conclure à une certaine stabilité, d'autres indiquent plutôt le changement. Seule une théorie de la mobilité sociale et de son histoire contemporaine pourrait permettre de choisir entre ces modèles.