Contenu du sommaire

How is it possible that at the core of the mathematical tools used by financial actors on a daily basis there lies a conflation of two situations — that of randomness and of heterogeneity — that statistical tools are very unequal in their capacity to grasp. The present article explains how this confusion came to be institutionalised in the insurance sector. It distinguishes, within this process of institutionalisation, between moments of mobilisation and periods of implicit adoption. After a long and chaotic history, starting in the seventeenth century and lasting till the Kolmogorov axiomatisation in the 1930s, the conflation came to be silently adopted by the actors involved in financial markets, and later in the banks, through the progressive use of models such as those developed under the influence of portfolio theory and the Black-Scholes formula. The banking sector and the models developed to deal with financial markets played a very important role in the penetration of this conflation into the insurance sector. Two moments of mobilisation were decisive, in the late 1990s and in the 2000s: the former had to do with the valuation of insurance firms involved in M&A operations, and the latter with the definition of new prudential rules now known as Solvency II. This conflation later came to be institutionalised within the practices of the actors.

How can providing health services generate inequality? This paper seeks to clarify the classifications practised by public health workers and to reveal the forms of discretionary practice implicit in their work. In a free and anonymous AIDS screening setting, everyone is present for the same reason. This makes it possible to observe how health service providers divide their clients into social categories such as class, gender, sexuality and race and offer different service responses to an essentially identical demand. The research analyses NGO archives, quantitative data and interviews with health workers, as well as observation of their work in public and at NGO screening centres. It shows that gender and class affiliations receive little attention, whereas racial and sexual categories are of prime importance. Only white men are asked about their (homo)sexuality and receive more personalised information. Women and non-white men are presumed to be heterosexual, and therefore receive more standardised advice, unless health workers obtain more accurate biographical information during longer consultations.

This article represents a contribution to the sociology of work and to the sociology of occupations. The author undertook a direct participatory observation of the day-to-day lives of French private ambulance drivers, whose work remains a blind spot in sociological research dedicated to the healthcare professions. Beyond the dominant social representation of the ambulance driver as a “transporter”, the enquiry reveals the multiple care tasks that they undertake, in particular the technical care practised within the framework of emergency health transport. In 2007, the creation of the state degree for ambulance drivers, which sought to extend their healthcare remit in this domain, signalled a turning point in the history of this professional group. It provided an opportunity to satisfy the claims of a section of the group that was seeking to acquire the status of emergency specialists by drawing on the example of European and American ambulance paramedics. However, despite favourable technological and scientific factors, the outcome of this process of segmentation still remains uncertain today, partly because of obstacles internal to the professional group, but also because of the political and corporatist barriers in its way.

The purpose of the French law of August 2008, which changed the rules of union representation, was to restore social democracy. The application of this legislation in the professional trades and its adoption by people in the field, both management and workers, must therefore be examined from the perspective of this democratic principle. The approach to this is twofold. On the one hand, we must determine the meaning of the ambivalent concept of social democracy and the improvements that this legislation is intended to bring in daily professional relations. On the other hand, given the segmentation of the labour market, we must verify the equality of all workers before the law. Given the situation of labour mobility brought about by subcontracting practices, the law has provisions that are applicable to “secondable workers” based on the principle of “close and permanent integration into the community of work”. Drawing on the example of the cleaning industry, where we have conducted several surveys, we seek to analyse this legislation as it applies to this category of the work community, where its meaning is not immediately obvious. We re-situate this community within its legal context and within the representation that is available to those that belong to it.

Drawing upon an extensive literature review on the topic of “political professionalisation” in the French social sciences, this article has two goals. The first is to specify the ways in which this term has been used in recent decades. It shows that, apart from the classical definition borrowed from Max Weber, three other definitions of political professionalisation are often present in the publications it cites, at least implicitly: based on the time spent in the political field; based on the career trajectory of the individual; or based on the knowledge acquired and ethos developed to thrive fully in the job. From there, the article identifies and discusses some of the most pressing issues currently facing researchers in this area, whether relating to the conceptual aspects or the measurement of the phenomenon, or to the reintegration of the problem into a broader social science framework. It also calls for a deeper engagement with the literature on work and occupation. Overall, the article sheds lights on some of the most important transformations that the French political sphere has undergone in recent decades.