Contenu du sommaire

Stéphane Dion Negotiation in local politics : neo-corporatism and democracy. The reinforcement of democracy at the local level has been an important issue to the left during the decade of the 70's. The causes of the relative failure of this policy are analyzed in the framework of a study of political power relations in local government in five suburban towns in the Greater Paris area. Participation in local politics implies certain restraints for the social actors concerned, as well as problems of representativeness. Furthermore, different rationalities come into play : the practices of local admi¬ nistrators are inspired by specific political and bureaucratic logics. An interpretative model «based on the interplay of rival democratic legitimations » is developed and applied to the analysis of the relations of the different actors to local level politics and of the mechanisms of negotiation. The author suggests that the same model may be usefully applied to the analysis of political life at the national level.

Jean-Pierre Darré The production of norms within professional networks : the example of a group of cattle raisers. On the basis of a critique of the assumptions underlying both the dominant conceptualization of and the research on agricultural development, the author offers an analysis of the processes of norm transformation in the agricultural sector The study of the activities of a group of cattle raisers who form part of an «information exchange network», leads the author to emphasize the importance of not only the technical choices, but also the ways in which the actors themselves conceive and discuss those choices.

Marie-Françoise Raveyre et Jean Saglio Local industrial systems : elements for a sociological analysis of such of small and medium sized industrial firms. In the area of industrial sociology and labor relations, as well as in that of industrial economics, the models and theories developed have, for quite a while, been based by and large on the observation of large firms. However, medium and small firms should not be simply con- sidered as large firms on a reduced scale : for them, the local environment is highly important. The authors did a case study of the plastics industry in a medium-sized town, and offer an analysis of the local industrial system, i.e., of the peculiarities of competition and cooperation, of professional relations, of the ties with the regional political network and of the management of technology and innovation. The analysis intends to go beyond the specific case, so as to improve our understanding of the industrial dynamics of small and medium-sized firms generally.

Denis Duclos Health at the workplace as a cause for militant action : the experience of the Committees on Occupational Safety Health and in the United States of America. Alternative, anti-establishment politics in the US during the last decade took various forms, among them the defense of certain public interest causes. The author chose to study the Committees on Occupational Safety and Health (COSHs), defined as action groups providing technical assistance, training and political lobbying. These groups maintained a high degree of autonomy, while collaborating with labor unions on issues of health and safety at the workplace. The analysis of the forms their action took and the way in which these developed over time shows the originality (as compared to France) of a social movement, in particular as concerns its capacity to survive despite the weakness of its institutional ties with unions, government and the legal system.

Jean Peneff The production of statistics, or the father's profession. Should one have confidence in statistical data which every sociologist will, at one point or another, be tempted to use ? The author presents a detailed analysis of the construction of an apparently unambiguous «data» — the profession of the fathers of university students — and shows how inevitably a bias is introduced in the production of statistical series. This demonstration of the possible deviations occuring at the different phases of the process (obtaining the data, coding, presentation of the results) does not only urge the reader to use such data with care ; it also recalls what sociologists should at all times bear in mind : that numbers are never more than a social fact like any other.