Contenu du sommaire

Dominique Schnapper : Photography and Painting. A survey of the Bologna photographic club can be made at two levels. At the conscious level, the photographers are artists, rejecting any extra-aesthetic function in photography and accepting only the beautiful as their guide. Their aesthetic justifications seem to form a coherent whole. However, the author notes a certain lack of coordination between the works presented and the justification given, and suggests another interpretation of these activities. The photographers are members of the lower middle class who have become rich in the course of the town's recent rapid economic progress, and wish to escape from the burden of Bolognese society in which painting, the art par excellence, is the prerogative of the traditional ruling class. Thus they recreate, without knowing or wanting it, the shrines of the followers of art for art's sake, for, like them, they condemn the Philistine middle class in the name of art without accompanying their condemnation by a social revolt.

Raymonde Moulin : A Type of Art-Collector: the Speculator. In this study we find : a brief account of the methods and techniques of inquiry ; the description of the original aspects of the market that help to explain the speculative character of the transactions ; the analysis of the psychological motivations of the collector-speculator (complexity and ambiguity of the motivations : the incentive of profit excludes neither gambling, nor the desire of prestige nor sensibility to a work of art) ; the analysis of the economic behavior of the colector-speculator (the logic of rational economic calculation) ; the study of the function of the collector-speculator. (The artist's condition depends on the pressure of speculation. During the past 10 years, from 1952 to 1962, the fever of speculation and rising prices favoured the commercial progress of living art and artists benefited from this ; the present uneasiness of the market, acts in the same way on the material wellbeing of artists. The influence of collectors on the evolution of art itself is much less evident.) Speculation is inseparable from the art-market ; one cannot make judgment on art without also judging the art market.

Yvonne Bernard : Popular Songs. A Social Phenomenon. Popular songs represent an important cultural factor of our society because of their increasing diffusion. An historical study would be able to tell us if the new forms of production and diffusion have impoverished the contents of the popular song and the way they are felt, but this normal conclusion is not apparent. The complexity and rapid change of the repertoire make the establishment of a typology difficult. The author limits her work to the temporary establishment of a type of song that she calls « style song ». She analyses their diffusion among the public ; lastly an analysis of their functions show that they have also been transformed, that some have disapeared and that others have replaced them,

David Victoroff : The Notion of Role and Persuasion Techniques. The author specifies first the signification given to the term role in researches on persuasion. He then examines the results which the use of this concept in the study of persuasion techniques has lead to. Thus he notes that the results made available through laboratory experiences or data collected by observation of actual experiences have lead to the same assertion : « playing at a role » effectively contributes to the adoption of new opinions. Finally he stresses the paradoxal element in the fact that the concept of role, elaborated mainly for the analysis of inter-personal relations in small groups, can also serve for the exploration of psychological processes involved in anonymous propaganda distributed by mass- media.

Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe : Aspirations, Guiding Images and Social Transformations. The study of the role of aspirations in social life, has until now, only been the object of particular researches in the social sciences (level of aspiration in psychology, for example) or of reflections by thinkers and theoricians. The bringing together of these researches and empirical studies should permit the elaboration of a theory on the role of aspirations. The author mentions some results already obtained in this field, and announces the preparation of a publication in connection with the studies carried out by the Group for Social Ethnology.