Contenu du sommaire : La vie sociale des dossiers

Following the Wars of Religion, the work of writing political documents becomes a more autonomous and immediate reflex within political culture, due to the necessity for swift action. This article focuses on issues surrounding these State papers, which are treated as “constituted and constitutive” files, and considers the work of the offices in question in terms of a continuous process of filing of political affairs, in the form of a diachronic record of reality intended to organise and constrain it within the documentary realm.

To what extent can psychiatric files be used as sources of social history? This article attempts to answer this question on the basis of a test study concerning GDR society. As part of a review of the investigation, we attempt to reconstruct the way in which the files from an East German psychiatric clinic were turned into a source which allows certain tensions that ran through socialist society in the 1960s to be understood.

Based on an ethnographic study undertaken at the Musée national d'art moderne (National Museum of Modern Art), this article explores the issues underlying the documentation of collections; indeed, there is a file attached to each work of art in which every detail concerning its life within the museum is recorded, including a special “confidential” section which crystallises certain issues relating to the circulation of knowledge about the work. By crossing analysis of the content and observation of the use-contexts of these files, the study, through three examples of confidential data, allows us to grasp their situated meaning. The files thus provide an original perspective on the art works, revealing their attachment to the institution and to the individuals who look after them.

In 1945, the US government commissioned a survey to assess the effects of the massive aerial bombing of German and Japanese cities. This survey involved two teams of social scientists who reached opposite conclusions regarding the effects of the bombing on civilian “morale”. One, led by the Keynesian economist Galbraith, concluded that the bombings had the opposite effect of what was intended: they remobilized the civilian population against the aggressors. The other, led by the positivist psychosociologist Likert, found that the bombing did demoralize civilians and, therefore, contributed to the victory. This second conclusion was used to justify the creation of the US Air Force in 1947 and subsequently the strategic bombings in Korea. The conclusions of both teams stem, in part, from their respective relationships with the military-industrial complex, but also from the replies to the following questions: How can civilian “morale” be studied scientifically? Can it be quantified?

Why do corporate bankers put their health at risk for their work? This article analyses the labour conditions of privileged individuals who are yet willing to work excessively long hours. Although bankers' desire to commit to this profession is partly motivated by the pursuit of prestige and money, it is also reinforced by their familial and educational dispositions. In particular, the intensive work environment of the banks mirrors the working conditions of the preparatory schools from which they came out victorious by successfully entering the schools of power.

In the context of a health crisis, video-conferencing appears to offer an acceptable alternative to ethnographic interviews. However, when it comes to intimate subjects, is vision essential for the production of knowledge? Reflecting on twenty interviews conducted in three ways (in person, by video and by telephone) during a survey on post-cancer parenting, we come to the conclusion that telephone interviews are, paradoxically, more revealing than video-interviews.