Contenu du sommaire

Yvon Bourdet: World proletariate and national cultures. This article deals with the following problem: what is the most adequate model of social and political organization in order to insure the development of cultural particularities? For this purpose, the author analyses the classical theses; he differentiates the orthodox marxist theory from that of the austro-marxists' and that, purely tactical, of Lenin. On the basis of both his own personal experience as son of a French peasant of the Limousin, and of the study of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian multinational empires, he shows that the Nation- State ? even though claiming to be the defender of national cultures ? is in fact the most efficient oppressor of cultural minorities. The state seeks to create a homogeneity to insure a better efficiency of the Body-Society in military or economic war, for the sake of the ruling class whether it be the bourgeoisie or the bureaucracy. The conclusion drawn by this research is that free development of cultural particularities is dependent, as a sine qua non condition, upon the abolition of class society.

Janine Larrue : Representations of culture and cultural behaviors. This analysis reveals some of the characteristics of the content of representations in relation to practice from answers collected by a survey upon a sample of urban population. We give first, an outline of the sample, then we examine 1) the themes about which the answers converge, 2) the stereotypes whose impact vary according to the questions, 3) the divergence between the elements of representation and their corresponding practice. The study of these facts is taken up again in the sub-groups formed within the sample on the basis of social differentiations: the variations then established concern the problem of plurality of representations and their relation to experience.

Pierre Dandurand : Cultural dynamics at school. A diachronic study of French primary school textbooks. The author examines the problem of conservatism and dynamics of school institutions, and then presents an aspect of the cultural dynamics of French primary school. He relies upon samples of some reading books of the 1930's and 60's. The analysis shows that throughout this period, the content of textbooks has suffered drastic changes: on one hand moral education becomes diffuse and less proselytic; on the other hand children are set in front of a social reality which is narrowed to the boundaries of the primary group while the field of imagination seems to be widened. Finally the author suggests that the dynamical aspects of school institutions far from being contradictory with their conservatism, enable the conservative functions of these institutions to be maintained.

Zdenek Strmiska, Blanka Vavakova : Social stratification in socialist society. At first this article puts forward the main results of a research concerning the social stratification of Czechoslovak society, made in 1967 by a team of sociologists under the direction of Pavel Machonin. This study based on a sample of 13.215 persons deals with the vertical division concerning labour (nature and complexity), standard of living, income, power, educational and occupational training. An additional study deals with social prestige, social relations and socially determined choices, representations and evaluations of social status... This research offers an analysis of the quantitative distribution of partial status, an elaboration of an index of synthetic status, a taxonomie analysis of status patterns, which enable us to determine the main levels of stratification and a factor analysis of vertical division. In the second part of this article, the authors examine some of the methodological and theoretical problems of this research. They analyse the interconnections between the social structure and the social stratification of socialist society, underlining the contradictions specific to the stratification of Czechoslovak society, and in particular the oppositions between the trends of the economic and political systems. They also show the influence of institutionalized values upon the patterns of social stratification. They raise some problems regarding the definition of the political status and its role within socialist society.