Contenu du sommaire : Les changements en France

Emile Poulat : Religious society and the problem of change. The recent changes which have occurred in the catholic church are not a mere structural evolution. A methodological reflexion is necessary to distinguish the criteria of change, as well as the types of change (adaptation, development, mutation). This reveals the changing factors: relation systems, institutions, beliefs and representations, lastly the degree of sensibility. The changes now undergone by Catholicism formalize aspirations up to now regarded as suspect. But also the implications of the present changes can themselves be a generative factor for further transformations, involving elements considered as intangible.

Viviane Isambert Jamati : The rigidity of an institution : school system and system of value. Any school reform in France must necessarily take into account a strong institution which tends to remain equal to itself : the lycée. The great numerical increase in secondary schools for the last ten years does not facilitate changes in structure, and the actions in favor of a « single school » have always met with lively resistance. With regards to primary schooling the lycée teachers have developed a series of prejudices. The exceptional value they attribute to what they transmit and the manner in which they transmit it reinforces their feeling of superiority. A content analysis of the prize awards speeches since one hundred years shows a regression of the instrumental objectives (highly developed in between the two wars) in benefit of cultural impregnation objectives. This recent tendency may be interpreted as a reaction to educational reforms.

Pierre Bourdieu : The conservative school. Inequalities before schooling and culture. To explain and understand inequalities in schooling it is necessary to seize the logic of the cultural capital transmission and the attitude toward schooling and culture ; this attitude seems the interiorisation of the objective chances of acceeding to culture through schooling; but one must also show how schooling consecrates and increases the initial inequalities by insuring a formal equality between unequal learners and by engaging aristocratic values in the transmission of an aristocratic culture ; and how in this way it contributes to perpetrate inequalities, as much in the economic and social field as in the creation of a cultured attitude which is the support of all cultural practices.

Jean-René Treanton : Closed regions and cultural différenciations. The increasing amount and quality of statistical data, especially after the 1962 census, permits manifold inter-regional comparisons. When for example, one considers the North of France, which is one of the most urbanised and highly populated regions of the country, it is amazing to note to what extent it is closed to migrations. Of course, the rate of « imigration » and « migration » established by the 1962 census allows different explanations. But a systematic parallel between the North and other closed regions (such as Alsace or the Rhone - Alps) should open the way towards essential psycho-sociological analysis in bringing out the original traits of each region and the interpretative problems they give rise to. Some examples of these are given concerning the North of France.

Jean Cuisenier : Sociology and its applications : Research on programs and research on contracts. Today, the usual opposition between fundamental and applied research has lost its meaning. The only pertinent difference remaining is the distinction between sociological propositions according to the more or less importance of the field where they can be verified. So that in order to characterize sociological research in a country such as France, three questions must be asked: what products are required ? What works are proposed ? What are the operating agents in this exchange system and what are their strategies ? Only a powerful concentration of means can allow a better regulation of sociologists' productive activity, an improvement of the organised knowledge, a more precise applicability of knowledge. This communication, given at the French Sociological Association, is followed by a discussion.