Contenu du sommaire : Les sciences de l'homme en manuel

Although University textbooks eventually became important in France after 1960, they lack the historical capital of the British Companions, which appeared a century earlier. The pecia tradition, of course, dates back to the Middle Ages and preceded the invention of print, but it then concerned only scholars, not the huge post-baccalaureate student audience of over two million individuals, according to present estimations. The present day University textbook in France is closer and closer in its style to the “high school” textbook, which borrowed from the “primary school” one. Before it came to the fore with “U”, then “Cursus” and “Carré H” and began to flourish, to proliferate, with several specialized publishers, there were a number of series like “Que Sais-je?”, “Kiosque” or “10-18”. This article attempts to present an archeology of the phenomenon, analyzes its growth and its mutations from one century to the next, and then, so as to underscore the peculiarities of French-style textbooks, draws comparisons with British, German and American practices.

The article is about the organization of the development, approval and production of university textbooks of the French language in the USSR from 1946 to 1985. After the war, the Communist Party and the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR developed an activity to produce “politically committed” textbooks, which refer to the class struggle. To stimulate the creation of textbooks, several measures are envisaged: the now mandatory academic research, the five-year plan for the production of textbooks by higher education institutions, the competition of textbooks, the State Prize for the best work. To control production, the Communist Party organizes an ideological, scientific and methodological expertise of textbooks.

The Introduction à l'étude du droit, published in two volumes by Rousseau Publishers, in 1951 and 1953, proposes an original approach. Bringing eight authors to eight chapters, it's purpose is both pedagogic and breaking approach with the academic practices of the period. By doing so, it takes part in the law studies reform debates from the end of World War II until 1954.

Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers was first published in 1953. The book is considered a classic in history of economic thought. Significant of an heterodox vision in economics and cautious toward the growing mathematisation of economics and the present rise of positivism, The Worldly Philosophers praised as crucial the moral, political and social dimensions of great economic reasonning. It is the purpose of this paper to introduce Heilbroner's work to a french audience. We will do so in analysing the very first edition of the book, that is, the sources, the main developments and the intellectual reception of the 1953 edition.

Max Derruau Geography Precis was considered as one of the main popular university Geography textbooks during 50 years. The paper analyses its main characteristics and questions its exceptional longevity within academic publishing, which changing context reveals the quantitative and qualitative evolutions of higher education. Through its different republications, this textbook takes into account new questions, debates and scientific orientations of the discipline. In spite of the nowadays obsolescence of this presentation of positive knowledge in human geography, tempered by unequally achieved attempts to update the text, Derruau's book is considered to be a classic textbook in academic human Geography.

The article investigates the function of textbooks for the formation of clinical psychiatry in German speaking countries from 1875-1900. It argues that textbooks were supposed to play a crucial epistemic role for directing clinical observation. For this reason psychiatrists like Emil Kraepelin devoted much time and effort to writing and rewriting textbooks. Their rhetoric can be linked to différents nosological positions and practises of case writing.

Between 1928 and 1939, the French academic geography community changes: only male professors, but an increasing number of women, from 10 to 25 per cent of the students during the period. This relative but unquestionnable feminisation received little attention until now. These women were no pioneers any more, but almost “regular” geographers, even if only a few major female figures emerged till the end of the thirties. These little known women exemplify some social processes, such as endogamy, weak professionalisation and polycentric organisation of the French academic system. The Thirties are consequently a very contrasted decade for women geographers, between inclusion and exclusion in a changing disciplinary field.

According to the standard historiography of psychology, the founding of the experimental psychology laboratory at Geneva, in 1892, is the result of the direct influence of Wundt on Theodore Flournoy (1854-1920). He did indeed spend an academic year in Leipzig. However, previously unpublished archival sources suggest a more complex origin story : it was only after Flournoy's visit with Münsterberg, in October 1891, that Flournoy was furnished with the necessary knowledge, network, and material culture. The laboratory at Geneva was then founded four months later. Two important consequences follow from this observation, one historical and the other epistemological : 1. the founding of the laboratory at Geneva derives only from an indirect inheritance from Wundt ; 2. discussions of the genealogy of the Geneva lab are influenced by a confusion of resemblance with descendance, and thus are blinded to important differences. We then propose a term for this blindness : “analogical shortcut.”