Contenu du sommaire : Transaction sociale, Économie sociale et solidaire, Émancipation. Hommage à Jean Remy

The social transaction methodology never falls into an exclusive and mutilating anthropology, in so far as Jean Remy gives us the opportunity to think about and implement an approach to social life in which a sociological art is outlined, working at the creation of a society by taking note of the multiple facets of human beings. His approach seems to plead for an anthropological pluralism opposed to any conceptual hegemony and, in so doing, for a rehabilitation of the full human depth of every person at the heart of observed concrete situations.

Jean Remy's scientific and personal career sheds light on his way of doing sociology. The founding experience of the invention of the University, then of the City of Louvain-la-Neuve, enabled him to structure the paradigm of Social Transaction and to demonstrate its relevance. He also questioned the forms of Christian commitment. If Social Transaction took off around these two objects – urban and religious issues – it gradually became autonomous as new objects which seized on it and integrated it as an "organising and inducing principle for the construction of hypotheses and theoretical interpretations" (Remy et al., 1978). It is possible to go beyond the oppositions between different theories and to construct new interpretations of investigated objects. We highlight the concentric circles of mobilisation of Social Transaction that move away from the initial objects and we show the relevance of the paradigm for new social objects, as well as its integration by researchers from the South who colour this thought differently.

As a homage to Jean Remy, this paper offers a reflexive understanding of some major stages in my biography. The aim is to illuminate the links between my research activities and the inspiration emerging from the reading of Jean Remy's main publications. He offers a coherent path leading to a conciliation of complexity and unity. He also offers a new heuristic frame relevant for three major projects in which I was involved: the future of peasantry, the Euro-African academic co-operation in a Francophone context and the recognition of Social and Solidary Economy (SSE) in the academic agenda. Jean Remy opens new perspectives for a sociology of emerging fields, embedded in a renewed relation of human beings with the world.

This contribution marks out the trends of the reception of Jean Remy works in Portuguese language, taking into account the fact that he is a plural author, before being a collective one; his work is vast and eclectic, with multiple empirical anchors leading to different interpretative frameworks. It is important to take into account the academic framework in which J. Remy used to work. As most of his works are not translated into Portuguese, he is often quoted in French. The appropriation of his works in the Portuguese language mainly takes place within a “triangle” formed by his methodological approach, the theoretical intentionality marking his works and the resulting pedagogical approach.

This paper examines elements of a field study on the black condition of young Afro-descendants living in the urban region of Liege (Belgium). The concept of social transaction appears useful for analyzing racial mixed contacts. I show here the "heuristic fruitfulness" of the concept of social transaction, which usefully complements various Erving Goffman's notions: social transactions are likely to allow each person to find his or her place. In this context, I present a reflection on the possibility of social identity transactions between individuals who consider themselves and/or are considered as black, and people associated with the white majority group, through the study of an urban dance: the krump.

The crisis of representative democracy fuels the exercise of urban power and a prevailing enthusiasm for a participatory democracy, producing a rise of consultative places, co-operations and/or negotiations grounded on the “civic imperative”. Their institutionalization appears as the result of “instituting events”. We approach the democratic dimension of urban governance through the prism of social transaction, which allows an analysis of the reconciliation process aiming at the emancipation of citizens. In Algeria, these processes operate through complex interactions, which crystallize coalitions of actors. This paper investigates these composite spaces, facilitating the search for an acceptable compromise through a mix of relevant expertises. The aim is to combine two opposed models: representative democracy and participatory democracy.

This article examines a participatory mechanism based on food in a disadvantaged neighbourhood of Lille, over a period of almost four years. It reveals the gentle moralisation implemented by the local authorities and the facilitators of the mechanism. In front of rising protests and in order to guarantee the continuity of the project, spatial and social transactions, or practical compromises, were initiated, reflecting both the capacity for action of the weakest and the capacity for imposition of the most powerful.

Based on a research on the deployment of a digital patient record system in a Quebec health and social services organization, we analyze, from 48 semi-directed interviews and a documentary analysis, the tensions created in the project of organizational change that we approach as a transactional space.We note certain critical discourses on the evolution of the project, which do not necessarily aim to prevent its outcome. Their limited performativity leads us to propose the concept of subsidiary discourse, i.e. an accessory discourse as it fails to impose itself and may not even convey the intention of doing so.

For our doctoral research, we observed in the city of Saint-Denis (93) the dynamics of an innovative Social Centre project, with the status of a Co-operative Society of Collective Interest (SCIC). Contrarily to traditional Social Centres, this one is neither autonomous (associative), nor dependent (municipal), nor social (care counter). It is an entrepreneurial and a partnership-based project (including the City Council, Associations and Inhabitants). This project challenges traditional practices in the provision of services to residents and it is conflictual: it is based on the invisible dynamics of residents and on the encouragement of co-construction between the public authorities and civil society. The paradigm of the social transaction is relevant to understanding the important issues raised by the sequences of negotiation, exchange and compromise in this type of social innovation in France.

The ways of overcoming the frame of waged labour is an old and lively debate in social sciences. Both authors face this theoretical issue, in his/her discipline and research. They discover the same interrogation in their common research field: a concern for and an investigation of the social actors they supervise: overcoming the salary system is for them a reflexive issue on their relations with the institutions supporting them. Their contribution to the debate describes and analyses the "grey areas of employment" developed by various non-employed actors during experiments and projects in a social and solidary economy (SSE) organization: the SCIC (Co-op) TETRIS.

The focus of this paper is the contribution of social transactions sociology to a participatory research for land use planning in Tunisia. Three transactional scenes are analysed, everyone playing out at different scales in the context of a rural development programme: policy, research and the field. This analysis shows how the sociology of social transactions encourages: 1/ taking into account different transactional scales in the understanding of exchanges and outcomes of the participatory process; 2/ highlighting the oppositions between actors. The paper suggests that researchers and facilitators can support local actors in the accomplishment of economic, social and environmental transitions by: 1/ taking emotions into account; 2/ emphasizing the role of space and time in participatory processes; 3/ enlarging the space of social transactions, i.e. blurring the rigidity of institutions and mechanisms.

International academic cooperation follows two opposed logics: one is hierarchical and a colonial legacy; the other is cooperative and aims at putting all partners on an equal foot within a process of interaction and negotiation. Training projects through action research are open to the needs of the population and adapted to the territory. The cooperative initiatives led by the interdisciplinary and international research network Sustainable Development and Social Binds (French acronym: 2DLiS) in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Senegal allow reciprocal learning within sustainable development and/or social and solidary economy. The content is discussed and negotiated with the will to reach transactional compromises nurturing the common.