Contenu du sommaire : Varia / Négocier les temps sociaux

The Staging of Negotiation: Experiences in Transaction and Learning Processes
How, within the space of social interactions, do people negotiate social conventions in order to overcome situations of uncertainty ? That is the guiding question of this contribution. Setting out from a conception that combines social transaction and negotiation, this article analyzes the staging of negotiation through the experiences of people facing various situations of uncertainty : researchers grappling with a scientific world dominated by an economic logic, men and women affected by disease, or having to face infertility problems within a context where social status is dependent on procreation. How do people enter into transactions ? How is negotiation staged ? With what words ? With what images ?

Kinship, the “Polytheism of Values,” and Deliberation: Variations on Weber
Can kinship norms be the object of collective debate ? This a crucial question today, given the continuing transformation of kinship relations. Max Weber's thesis of a “polytheism of values” suggests a positive response to the question. Weber defends the conception of an “intellectual probity” that seeks modes of deliberative compromise, between an “ethics of conviction” and an “ethics of responsability”—a thesis that raises many questions, in particular concerning the rules, procedures, and methods of discussion likely to promote a democratic compromise.

Implicit Negotiations in the Division of Labor: The Case of Regional Representatives
The division of labor between politicians and civil servants is scrutinized on the basis of fieldwork conducted in several French regional councils. It is analyzed as a set of implicit negotiations that take place behind the scenes, and are visible only for the actors involved. Because they are implicit, these negotiations do not threaten the belief in the demarcation between political and technical functions. Moreover, they enhance the consistency of the professional world in which they take place. Two dynamics of the division of labor are identified within the workplace : an extension of the professional territory of politicians, and conversely, a powerful contraction of their capacity for action. To explain these variations, we propose an hypothesis focusing on the role of professional values assigned by and to the actors in the labor process.

The Evolution of Collective Bargaining in North America and Its Effects on the Profession and Skill Set of the Union Negotiator. The dynamics, processes and issues of collective bargaining have undergone profound changes over recent decades. While many scholars have sought to document the evolving contexts and practice of collective bargaining, much less is known about negotiating as a profession. Based on an empirical study conducted with union staffers active in private sector collective bargaining in Quebec, this article focuses on the effects of the evolution of collective bargaining on the profession and on the contemporary skills of union negotiators.

Time Negotiations Within Differentiated Normative Spaces: An Analysis Based on the Senior Time-Credit System in BelgiumT. he reduction of working hours toward the end of one's working life is an important decision that concerns not only the older worker but also his family. This article attempts to understand the negotiation mechanisms that lead to the decision to reduce working hours, by way of a public policy device called “time credit” which has been available to seniors in Belgium since 2007. From an analysis of 42 semi-structured interviews with beneficiaries of this measure, the results of this survey show how the negotiation process may be affected by normative frameworks, and how symbolic investments continue to be strongly determined by gender.

I Negotiate, We Negotiate: A Matter for the Farming Couple, or Only For the Wife?
Within a farming couple, the negotiation of professional and domestic roles and responsibilities takes place within an economy of affects which reproduces a gender framework conditioned by the economic survival of farm work and its exploitation. Accordingly, the idealized vision of conjugal harmony, a necessary condition for the maintenance of the professional contract, rests on the idea of a sexual complementarity within which roles are unequally distributed. Depending on their life courses, and those of their relatives, women farmers adjust their work/life balance to respond to this ideal. However, conjugal arrangements also result from negotiations that can vary according to the cultural and/or economic capital each member of the couple possesses, and are mediated by the professional norms disseminated by farming organizations.

“Is Homemaker Really a Father's Role?”: Negotiating the Role of the Stay-At-Home Parent As a Man Becoming a stay-at-home father is still not a straightforward matter : the contemporary mandate for men to be employed and to economically provide for their families, along with the perceived femininity of domestic work, mitigate against the legitimation of men as primary caregivers. In this article, we show how some men negotiate a reversal of gender roles in marital relationships, in their interactions with others (spouse, family, friends, strangers, and researchers), but also in dialogue with themselves, by transgressing social norms and masculinizing the role of the “stay-at-home” parent. We thus provide an understanding of how a man can become a “stay-at-home dad,” and the various ways in which this role can be taken on.

Social Temporalities and the Negotiation of Ambitions
This article deals with the intimate negotiations leading up to the decision to start an adult training program. Analysis of these negotiations reveals the ambitions that are being pursued, and thus allows us to detail how the desired futures are seen by the individuals concerned as improvements in their life situation. We show that these ambitions are negotiated so as to make them acceptable to the individuals themselves, but also to various significant others and to the “social self.” Such negotiation thus brings into play standards and rules relating to the desired balance between private and professional time. We present three ambitions, each representative of a specific model for the negotiation of social temporalities.