Contenu du sommaire

Marcel Fournier : Theoretical and methodological considerations concerning ethnoscience. This article is an abstract both didactic and critical about ethnoscience, which is a new approach to cultural phenomena and whose main purpose is to better the quality of ethnographic description and analysis by means of linguistic techniques. In spite of some weakness, for example the attribution of too much autonomy to cultural or symbolic systems from the social relations systems in which the former develop, ethnoscience remains nevertheless an important « conquest » and deserves the interest of every social scientist; and that for many reasons, particularly since: 1) among the studies of societies, even of contemporary ones, there are few systematic studies of the cognitive organization of experience; 2) it may be fulfilling to apply ethnoscience to the sociology of knowledge and culture which has but little progressed for a few years since ethnoscience can define the field of study more accurately and can provide elaborated techniques; 3) eliciting process brings out the traditional problem of the relationship between observed/ observer and solves it accordingly. It enables us to formalize an « Habitus » that sociologists, among others, are still trying to acquire often through a false and superficial non-directivity. However ethnographers will have to solve the theoretical problems underlying this practice in order to nurture the hopes set on ethnoscience: 1) the universality of the set, Question/Answer; 2) the universality of ways of classification such as taxinomy; 3) the relative autonomy of cultural systems. In other words they will have to explicit their theory of ethnographic knowledge and formulate a theory of social system.

Guy Michelat et Michel Simon: Objective social class, subjective social class and voting behaviour. The authors' aim was to study the variations in voting intention in relation to class position and class consciousness. The initial hypothesis was that an individual is more or less part of a social class depending on the quality and quantity of his class relations (occupation, marital alliance, social origin). Their method consisted in combining various indicators of class position to study the variations of behaviour and connected representations in order to determine whether there is an incongruity among these indicators or whether they indicate a strengthening of class consciousness. Their hypothesis is tested by studying, one after the other, the relations between class position and voting, class position and class consciousness, class consciousness and voting, class consciousness, class position and voting. Thus there seems to be two variables linked together yet acting in an independant and often cumulative way.

François Gresle: Ambiguity of models and specificity of the Martinique society. In this article, the author analyses the process of mutation in Martinique. It cannot be grasped out of the traditional social frames determined by the plantation, the economic unit of production, as well as the family and cultural unit. The originality of this colonial society rests upon imported European and African models which simultaneously influence the French West-Indians. At every level of social reality, the people of Martinique can choose between two contradictory value-systems which didn't allow a genuine community identity to develop. The present deep changes in the Carabbean cannot be considered out of the logic of plantation society because of its vivid abilities of adaptation and assimilation. However, the official structuring of this traditional French colony into a « département » played an important part in the advent of «leading» western-like social groups whose political influence is incessantly growing. In Martinique sociological mutations precede technical and economical mutations. This is one of the main contributions of this research centered more generally on the evolution of contemporary French West-Indian societies.