Contenu du sommaire

Claude Dubar : Confessional Structure and Social Classes in Lebanon. After a critical review of recent studies devoted to Lebanese society, the author reveals the plan for and some significant results of a survey taken of a representative sample of the active Lebanese population. He makes clear the need to break with the traditional image of Lebanon as a « confessional society » preserved from the existence of social classes. This is the guiding ideology for most culturalist studies about this country. He does this in order to point out a socio-economic formation dominated by « peripheral capitalism » where class differences express and support confessional inequalities. Through a statistical analysis of objective data (job positions, educational levels) and subjective appraisals (views of and hopes for the society, Arab nationalism), the author shows how confessional differences serve either to mask or reinforce class differences.

Daniel Bertaux : Career Mobility : a Critique of the Transversal Approach. A critical analysis is made of the INSEE data on socio- occupational mobility, from 1959 to 1964, of a national sample of Frenchmen. Counter-mobility flows are separated from genuine social mobility flows. The latter ones then appear as restricted to a small number of well-defined channels (mostly the ones relating the positions of qualified worker to the positions of foreman, technician, or self-employed crafstman) which probably do not lead any further. Trying to evaluate the total socio-occupational mobility of a given cohort of Frenchmen throughout their life, one realizes that it cannot be done with this type of data because of its transversal nature. Hence the conclusion which calls for a radical breakaway from the « transversal paradigm » which dominates all contemporary empirical sociology.

Maurice Garnier and Lawrence Hazelrigg : The Extent of Occupational Mobility in France : some Estimates, with Cross-national Comparisons. In this preliminary report of re-analyses of data from the INSEE survey of 1964, we present estimates of aggregate and outflow rates of occupational mobility, rates of circulation net of structural effects, and correlations of son's with father's occupational rank among economically active French males born after 1917. Comparisons are made between the evidence for France approximately corresponding data from Australia, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the USA. Recent studies that have depicted occupational stratification in France as exceptionally rigid or closed for an industrial society, we argue, have been too quick and indiscriminating in pronouncing that verdict. Although the several measures document variations among the six industrial societies, in general the rates and patterns of occupational mobility in France were not exceptionally divergent. Based on our preliminary analyses, we suspect that the most important differences between France and other industrial societies have pertained to aspects of the process of occupational attainment, rather than to volumes or rates of mobuity ; and even in that regard there is reason to believe that such differences have generally been small or moderate in degree.

J. Lapointe and G. Le Cavalier : Notes on a Functional Paradigm for the Study of Social Change. Functionalism, defined as the ensemble of theoretical orientations of those social science researchers who now belong to the « establishment », is often presented as an approach which cannot study social change because it would then have to put in doubt postulates which form its very basis. The authors tackle this problem by establishing the essential theoretical elements of a model for functional analysis and by showing that this model permits a study of change which can be very fruitful.

Kotobi Morteza and Michel Villette : Problems Concerning the Methodology for Surveys in Developing Countries: the Iranian Case. The authors have attempted to extricate some rules for the study of attitudes in a rapidly developing nation. They have successively treated data collection, validation of results and construction of theories. Their findings are based on a series of studies during the last ten years at the Institute of Social Studies and Research, University of Teheran. In particular, they refer to a survey concerning fertility, sexuality and mortality, and to a study of the problems of new university students: the first, drawn from semiguided interviews; and the second, based on open written questionnaires. Adaptation to the context forces the researcher to participate in the conversation. The systematic distinction between different roles adopted by the subject and between the different ways he expresses himself are coded and amply exploited. The detailed study of the subject, of his « frontal » expression which is conventional and his spontaneous expression which reveals individual preoccupations, is a key for understanding attitudes. Crucial information is often obtained by the indirect means of « indexed variables » which makes the most out of local common sense. The upheaval that economic development causes in the subject's life obliges us to rethink the explanatory variables of his behavior.