Contenu du sommaire

Michel Crozier : For a sociological analysis of French planification. Planification is considered here at the same time as a learning mechanism, a new model for action and a modification process of institutional forms. It substitutes growth to bureaucratic rationality. In France it was and remains the main spring and catalysing element for change as well in the structures and attitudes of public administration as in the nature of the state's relations with the private economic sector and other social groups. A small staff of animators were able to obtain a general consensus on average time growth by recuring to modes of actions based on négociations, concerted decision-making, and the integration of ends and strategies. The author concludes by an interrogation on the manner in which the planification of efforts for the reconstruction of a war devastated country may become a general and multidimentional effort for the growth of a social and economic system.

Pierre and Marie-Claire Bourdieu : Peasant and photography. The study of attitudes towards photography as object or practice, constitutes an excellent method for seizing up peasant values in their specificity. The photographic picture made by a professional photographer was accepted very early (as early as 1900) in as much as it served socially approved purposes in solemnising important moments of collective life. On the contrary, the practice of photography is violently opposed not so much as an innovation but frivolous and town-like, it seems to defy the fundamental principle of peasants morality which prohibits the pursuit of difference for difference's sake. Lastly the spontaneous aesthetics expressed in the posture adopted for the photographic picture is no other than a dimension of peasant aesthetics, it refers back to the moral code which rules daily relations in peasant society.

Paul Vieille : An Iranian feudal estate. The study of a great « feudal » estate leads to the analysis of some fundamental traits of Iranian society : the insecurity of contracts and social relations, conflicts brought on and resolved by the owner between peasants, peasants and usurers, between peasants and representatives of the administration, etc. These mechanisms and conflicts are a slow down for the economic development.

Jean Maisonneuve : A form of brief psychosociological intervention for simple structured collectivities. The type of intervention proposed here concerns average size groupings with diffuse tensions linked to a deficient functionnal coordination. It is developed over a period of two to four continuous days and according to three principal sequences : 1) First in heterogenous groups (each bringing together participators with various status but with no daily hierarchical relations) the object of which is of a diagnostical order striving, in particular, to elucidate the perceptions which the groups have of each other; the conclusions of this work are confronted in a general assembly meeting. 2) The second sequence, in homogenous groups, aims at the elaboration of practical reform projects in the perspective of each category. 3) A final general assembly allows the ad justement of these projects in view of a precise program of transformation. The author shows in function of several concrete cases how each step conditions the preceding one, taking into account some difference due to the degree of complexity or occultation of the conflicts. The formula seems apt to set off an evolution process which should be backed up by further work-sessions.

Joseph Sumpf : Notes on the sociology of education. A study of the problems and concepts which in the U.S. condition the establishment of a specific sociology of education. After a brief review of the well-known themes of educational sociology and of the social background, the author endeavors to show the importance of the problem of efficiency and of what categories its study requires. It seems that the study of effects must be integrated in a study of the values of the educational community for which Mead's operational concepts would be useful and a study of the relations between education and a class system of which Reismann's ideas could constitute a préfiguration. Yet it remains that concerning our problem American sociology of education is in a descriptive stage where no categories nor adequate typology exist, and which is moreover impeded by an immoderate pragmatism. Can it change ? A French-American dialogue is possible because there can be no education without historical traditions, because education constitutes a privileged access to the class system as well as to the system of values.

Michèle Huguet : Women in large urban housing-estates. A study of a few cases of acceptance and intolerance. The author deals with the problem of the adaptation of women in large urban housing-estates through the bias of case studies where the person and the environment are sized up in their totality. The clinical interviews include a questionnaire dealing with the present situation and the personal history of the subject and a semi-directive interview focused on housing-estates. The manifestations of acceptance concern mainly the appartment looked upon both as a commodity and as a symbol. They appear mainly in the young women belonging to the middle class with a professional activity. In the case of intolerance, the social isolation results from an attachment to an anterior way of life in contrast with the present situation and destructive of a type of family and personal stability. This intolerance is found mostly in older women belonging to the bourgeois and working classes. In a second part of the work the links between the reaction to the situation and the representation of the housing-estate are examined. The author stresses the fact that the feelings towards the situation are structured around two notions : identity and density which probably represent the originality of the housing-estate phenomenon. Lastly she notes the importance awarded in our society to the notion of personality.