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.