Contenu du sommaire : Itinéraires de chercheurs et parcours d'une institution : l'IEDES a 50 ans

Researchers' life courses. The contributions of this issue are the written versions of oral presentations made in Jean COPANS'seminar at EHESS in 2004 and 2005. Researchers from four different disciplinary fields (geography, economics, sociology and anthropology) and from agronomy describe their personal encounter so to speak with development in the Third World countries they have visited and studied since the 1960'. These very personal itineraries are exposed at the intellectual, scientific and professional level and reveal a diversity of experience and questions which constitute the basis of contemporary French research in development studies. Several of them reflect upon the autonomy of such a domain in social sciences. This collection of papers is a contribution to the sociology of knowledge.

Development : an act of faith but also a catalyst for research. Forty years hanging around the study of rural universe. Jean-Pierre Raison combined an early commitment to African rural geography and an erratic and un-specialized cursus. His “populist” approach puts the peasants to the first place and political and technical powers in the second place. Encounters in the field with agronomists, initiated a “research development” option, where development agents, researchers and peasants have been working together. Elected as research director at EHESS (1977), J.-P. Raison has been (1981-84) deputy director for Research at the ministry of Cooperation. Lastly, he was head of a Research Formation team on “Geography and practice of Development” in Paris X University. His career is structured on an axis : research is improved when it deals with answering questions and needs of peasants and development agents. J.-P. Raison and Alain Dubresson are the authors of L'Afrique subsaharienne. Une géographie du changement (2003).

Political and social dimensions in economic development analysis. The author is doctor in law and doctor in economics from the University of Louvain. He has been researcher and professor at the University of Kinshasa (Congo), economist at the World Bank (Washington D. C.), at the OECD (Paris) and at the « Commissariat Général du Plan » (Paris), and professor of development economics at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in Geneva. He is the author of about ten books, the most recent being : The Impasse of Modernity. Debating the Future of the Global Market Economy (2002) and La croissance ou le progrès ? Croissance, décroissance, développement durable (2006).

The academic trajectory of a sociologist. This paper presents the academic trajectory of the sociologist André Guichaoua. It provides a reflection on the theoretical background used in various successive fieldworks and the status of sociology and sociologists in the realm of social sciences applied to development issues.

From a new anthropology of development to a socio-anthropology of African public spheres. Jean-Pierre OLIVIER DE SARDAN is directeur d'études at EHESS in Marseille and director of research at the CNRS. He works in Niger at the LASDEL (Laboratory for Study and Research on Social Dynamics and Local Development) where scholars from Niger and Benin conduct research in social anthropology of public spheres and spaces in West Africa. First he has conducted personal research on the Songhay and Zarma populations in Niger and Mali. Then he has directed collective research about anthropology of social change, anthropology of health and anthropology of local powers and administration (Niger, Mali, Bénin, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinée, Sénégal and Centrafrique. Everyday Corruption and the State is the last book he has written (BLUNDO and OLIVIER DE SARDAN, 2006).

A geographer from the French Institute for Development Research (IRD) in a changing Africa. In this article, George COURADE explains how he became an ORSTOM tropicalist geographer whereas his life course seemed to lead him to another professional destiny ; and how he found difficult to adopt a tropicalist referential. As an ORSTOM-IRD civil servant expatriated in “Françafrique” (Cameroun and Burkina Faso), he had to cope with strong scientific and political constraints, with the feeling of being locked in an intellectual enclave as well as with the difficulty of implementing true partnerships. Lastly, this article shows why the Africans want to live better lives, why science is not able to produce development and why state-oriented geography has a limited capacity to organize regional planning. G. COURADE edited L'Afrique des idées reçues in 2006.

Life history of a researcher in economics. Pierre SALAMA's research field is focused on the development of semi-industrialised economies, using a comparative approach. The author has studied the State in Latin America from a theoretical point of view and has tried to explain its particularities, then he has studied on the one hand the impact of the financial boom on growth, income distribution, and poverty using comparative analysis, non only between Latin American economies, but especially between these economies and major Asian economies, and on the other hand illegal drugs in emerging economies and the causes of violence in Latin America. His last book is Le défi des inégalités, une comparaison économique Amérique latine/Asie (2007).

From anthropology to development and back again. Jean-François BARÉ is doctor in anthropology from the University of Paris I. He has been assistant professor at the University of Madagascar, senior research fellow at IRD, visiting fellow at Honolulu's East-West Center for Technical Exchange between East and West, and has headed various research groups at IRD and CNRS. He has been teaching at EHESS and in the universities of la Réunion, Paris I, Bordeaux II, Toulouse II. His last books are L'évaluation des politiques de développement. Approches pluri-disciplinaires (2001) and Paroles d'experts. Etudes sur la pensée institutionnelle du développement (2006).

Comparative agriculture and agricultural development. Marc DUFUMIER was trained as an agricultural economist and obtained his PhD in geography from Paris I-University (Panthéon-Sorbonne) in 1974. He works as a senior professor in “Comparative agriculture and agricultural development” at the Paris institute of technology for life, food and environmental sciences (Agro-ParisTech). He is also an active member of the administration council of the Research and Extension Institute for Development (IRAM-France). In addition to his research on agrarian systems and his comparative studies on the economic competitiveness and the ecological sustainability of different farming systems in the world, Marc DUFUMIER offers scientific contributions to some rural and agricultural policies programs and projects in various countries of Southeast Asia, Sub-Sahara Africa and Latin America. One of his latest book is Les agricultures et paysanneries des tiers-mondes (2004).

The strange otherness of labour. Itinerary of a development socio-economist. Since 1989, Bruno LAUTIER has been professor of development sociology at the Institute of Development Studies of University Paris I/Panthéon-Sorbonne (IEDES). He has first focussed his research work on the theoretical status of labour force and on domestic labour. Then, since the mid-1980's, he has dedicated himself to socio-economic development studies, particularly in Latin America. His numerous publications deal with the informal economics, with transformations of employment relationships and markets and, lately, with social policies in developing countries.

Fifty years of development policy. This introduction paper is composed of two sections. The first one recalls IEDES'institutional history. It shows how it has been affected by the changes in political and ideological views produced by the evolution of international relations and country-specific contexts. The second and more personal section analyses the evolution of development studies and reflects on the conditions required to develop IEDES' future action.

IEDES celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. Works and days of a lively fifty-year-old. The IEDES is fifty years old. This is an opportunity to draw up a picture of its activity. The institution is first of all devoted to post-graduate teaching and to research. That is why we enumerate the courses given and the degrees delivered. But this contribution chooses to focus on its journal Revue Tiers Monde. Authors, academics and researchers come from different countries and various disciplines and their papers often related to special issues, as well as important documents, books reviews or contributions to debates. The quantitative analysis is completed by a listing of significant contributions : original concepts, new tools and a multiplicity of disciplinary approaches have allowed progress in the analysis of growth and development. But also in the discovery of unknown areas, in the understanding of institutional structures, economic activities and policies, as well as social conditions of development.

Sociology of development in the Revue Tiers Monde. A fifty year history for an uncertain academic discipline. This paper analyses fifty years of sociology of development in the Revue Tiers Monde. The main evolutions are identified : first the progressive view of development in the sixty's, then the structural adjustment era, lastly the post-cold war period with its sectorial approach. The sociology of development is a branch of sociology, not a specific discipline, and its history shows a growing autonomy from its initial dependency upon Economics.

Rearview of fifty years of development economics in the Revue Tiers Monde. This article analyses the evolution of development economics during the fifty years of Revue Tiers Monde. It distinguishes four main periods which characterised the evolution of the Journal : the period of construction with an developmentalist project ; the period of radicalisation with an revolutionary project and the notion of new international order ; the period of liberalisation through adjustment policies and the spirit of “Washington consensus” and the period of refoundation of development economics with an institutional approach and governance project.