Contenu du sommaire

Ernest Gellner : a « historicist » popperian ? Ernest Gellner has tried to account (theoretically and normatively) for a society (the Civil Society) characterized by an individualistic and egalitarian social link, an epistemology which deconnects identity from truth and logical coherence from social coherence, an or­ganization of powers which combines the economic decentralization of the market and the social decentralization of voluntary associations with the political centralization of the nation-state, all of which constitutes a specific pluralism. His relative originality is that his undertaking is based on an epistemology and a methodology different from those of Civil Society, to which he grants no supremacy based either on Reason or on History. He is a positivist and a Popperian for Hegelian reasons, an individualist for functionalist reasons, an anti-relativist for historicist reasons, and both Popperian and Weberian for Durkheimian reasons. The article develops the little mystery through which knowledge and organization that can only produce the internal conditions of their self-validation, without ever being able to produce the validating conditions of their own founding paradigm which determi­nes these conditions, are nevertheless declared preferable to others for objective reasons, not decisionist ones.

Political socialization. analytical strategies, theoretical stakes and new research agendas The quantitative approaches to the phenomena of political socialization have nourished research in this area for a long time, without however leading to a reflection on their so­ciological relevance. This work analyzes on one hand the prevalent US behaviorist approaches to the processes of transmission of values and political beliefs from parents to children and on the other hand the research strategies which deal with the effect of the « context », of the immersion of the individual in social « networks » or of particular his­torical conjunctures on attitude changes. To conclude an analysis which emphasizes the sociological aspect of this research, the article surveys the criticisms to these still domi­nant approaches levelled by certain authors as well as the research agendas proposed by them, inspired by various currents in American social psychology.

Public school. prix ate school : the forgotten cleavage. The Role of Political and Religious Factors in Educational Choice and the Effect of Educational Context on the Political Socialization of French High School Students Based on a questionnaire survey of 1,400 public and private high school students and their parents in the Grenoble area, this study seeks to show that political and religious factors continue to play a very important role in the students' choice of educational orien­tation, and also that the type of school chosen by parents is likely to influence the students political preferences. School influence should be interpreted in the light of a problematic that emphasizes the role of the educational context and peer groups in political socialization, based on recent developments in educational sociology.

The singular fight between greenpeace and sirpa competition for media access on the resumption of french nuclear tests During the controversy caused by the resumption of French nuclear tests during the sum­mer of 1995, the communication strategies of the two principal actors varied. While Greenpeace kept up an intense effort to bring this event to the forefront of the media, the French military authorities maintained a wait-and-see attitude before putting out a lot of information after the first assault on the Rainbow Warrior. There were two phases in the French media's coverage of the controversy ; the media were at first favorable to Green­peace, and then to the French authorities. This suggests that « official sources » do not have automatic access to the media simply because of their institutional position. Not until they carry out a strategic plan designed to maximize their material and symbolic advan­tage do they weigh effectively on the media's agendas. In other words, in this unevenly competitive field, the status of « primary definer » is not a situational rent but an advantage which needs to be maintained constantly.