Contenu du sommaire : État et société civile

Christiane Veauvy, Reflections on the Notion of Civil Society In France, since the 1970's when the thought of Antonio Gramsci was a focus of attention, the notion of civil society has gained popularity. It is important to ask how this came about on the national and international levels and, more particularly, how this idea has gained ground throughout Western culture.

Pierre Lantz, Civil Society and Political Society The distinction between civil society and political society suggests the perspective of a minimizing or the diminuation of the State, defined in terms of the sovereignty that it exercises over its territory. The extension of civil society from this point of view is not limited by the territorial borders of the State. If the ideas of Marx on the withering away of the State seem unclear, and the notion of civil society is more coherent in the thought of liberals and anarchists, it is not, however, more realistic. In order to avoid confusion between the notion and the reality, it is prudent to consider the distinction between the State and civil society as an interlocking relation. The State, as a sovereign organization, is pressured by the more informal forces of the civil society.

Michel Trebitsch, Civil Society and the Theory of Forms At the present time, the ideological function of the concept of "civil society" is related to its use as a synonym for "people", "nature", "liberty", etc.). The concept of civil society is indissociable from the theory of the modern State, both possessing their own laws and principles of organization. The marxian overturning of the Hegelian theory of the State has been analyzed by Henri Lefebvre as the basis of a "theory of forms" (juridical, moral, logical, and political) indispensable for understanding the relation between the State and civil society. Reflection on this basis could prove enlightening in the present conjoncture.

Roland Lew, Civil Society : Real and False Debate The concept of civil society operates to obscure the concepts, the distinctions and the tensions between social classes. This process of mystification is remarkable in that the present period in the Western countries is characterized by the rampant growth of the State and the extension of its authority throughout all aspects of society. This is a process that is especially clear in intellectual life where forms of ideological manipulation exist that have proved more powerful than those used in the "totalitarian" countries.

Ulysses Santamaria and Pierre Achard, Utopia and Sociology Habermasian, Questions in Sociology To understand how the recent works of J. Habermas concern the discipline of sociology, it is necessary to take into account the ethical and normative dimension that he adopts, along with the transdisciplinary point of view (within the social and human sciences) that it implies. The disciplinary point of view can, perhaps, only be objectivist and descriptive. However, the convergence can take place if the realism of the normative perspectives and the universality of "modernity" that has been elaborated in the Occident throughout the past two centuries is questioned. It is also useful to take into account the active dimension of the production of sociological knowledge. We render these reflections more concrete by examining the concepts of communication, of society, of the State, of the public and the private, and of the lived world.

Jean-René Pendaries, Biographical Approach and Structural Approach : Some Remarks on the "Return to Biography" in Sociology Traditionally specialized in the irreducible singularity of the social actor and defined by the recourse to the life story, the biographical approach is now experiencing, with the development of the study of the social forms of the organization of existence, a profound transformation which affects its scientific status, its objects and even the notion of biographical phenomena itself. Its return on the sociological scene cannot be explained simply as a forceful return to individual subjectivity and to the "qualitative". The biographical question today places sociology before an alternative either to satisfy the alternance between the "structural" and the "singular", or to question the epistemological models that render these two sensibilities antagonistic.

Pierre- Jean Simon, Sociology's Open Secret Reductionism aside, sociology implies a particular, irreductible perspective on the human condition and must rigorously adopt the thesis of the social production of society and thus of its radically artificial character. This is sociology's open secret : the social is composed of conventions, and the social order is only a pure function maintained by an indispensable collective belief that is not.

Véronique de Rudder, Racism in Interethnic Relations In France, interethnic relations have never been highly considered or even legitimate in the social sciences. At the same time, work on racism is characterized by an overall conceptual and philosophical perspective that is markedly abstract Because the question of racism has not figured in the study of interethnic relations, research on the relationships existing between immigrants and indigenous populations continue to be contained with the problematic of a hypothetical sociology of migrations. The concret situations of contact allow the reconciliation of these two approaches. This procedure involves a conceptual and nominalist deconstruction of racism and the articulation of transversal approaches making use of concret and symbolic representations such as social status, the "desire to understand", pessimism and violence, assimilationism and pluralism, and the social as opposed to the national. status, the "desire to understand", pessimism and violence, assimilationism and pluralism, and the social as opposed to the national.

Nicole Beaurain, On the Multicultural in General and the Spanish in France in Particular In spite of the good intentions of those who created it or those who invoke it in defense of the right to a specific identity, the notion of multiculturality can be coopted and used to support a neo-cultural racism which justifies the exclusion of immigrant populations. The case of the Spanish in France is illustrative of this phenomenon.