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Jean Stoetzel : Age and income. Income by age is approached cross-sectionally, on the basis of answers gathered in the course of a number of sample surveys, carried out by the French Institute of public opinion. Every respondent is shown a card with eight classes of income, from less than 250 F a month, to 4.000 F and over and requested to locate himself on it. The sample is national representative. The number of answers exceed 20.000 for six months. The study extend from 1967-1968 to mid-1972. The statistics considered are the median and the quartile ratio, since all distributions are log-normal. The range of the ageclasses is five years, from 20 to 70 and over. Findings. The variation of the income median is a second degree function of age, x, with a negative coefficient of x. The fitting of the law, computed by the least squares method, is quite good. The maximum of the income median, yielded by the value of x which makes the derivative equal zero, appears below the age of forty. From 1970 to the end of 1971, the age of the maximum has been decreasing to less than 34 years. It increased in 1972. The dispersion of the distribution of income by age is also a parabola, with a positive coefficient of x and a minimum in the vicinity of 30 years. Conclusion. The variation of income by age in France shows no plateau. Income goes up before the age of 40, then diminishes. Income dispersion increases in geometric progression with age, except for ages below 25.

Etienne Gehin : Descartes and Montesquieu : From the Objectivity of Nature to the Concept of Political System. A sociology of 'superstructures' may wonder about the opposite fortunes of Descartes' and Montesquieu's works. For the former, the prestige of method, of principles, and of world order; for the latter, the half-obscurity of an incisive literature or of a political ideology. Such a consensus doesn't explain the reasons for fame or oblivion. But, if they are unveiled, it seems that cartesianism is the discourse of a society which blinds itself about its changes and whose ruling groups contribute to repress the growing fear. On the contrary, Montesquieu reveals himself to be a true innovator. Not only is his problematic an investigation of law and politics relations; but he also shows us how a complex ideological heritage and a specific social position have been able to create a perspective of intelligibility and a methodology full of anticipation.

Fanny Colonna : The Selection of the Elect : School Verdict and Class Position in Colonial Algeria. Research on the selection and training process of go-between agents belonging to the colonial society, carried out by the colonial school, in Algeria, from 1880 to 1940, based on judgments passed upon the teachers to come, at the end of their studies in the Ecole Normale. Method : (a) a certain number of categories inferred from the judgments passed upon nearly a thousand of the school's students, is put in relation with the socio-economic characteristics of the subjects; (b)a structural analysis of 100 judgments, selected among the students of 8 full years at regular intervals; (c) a content analysis of educational journals offered to the teachers at that time and of biographies of ex-students of the school. The data reveal that the 'excellent' ones are : 1) those who show their capacities in cultural go-between, i.e., with an average acculturation, half-way between the dominated and the ruling society and 2) that their social origin is indifferently rural or urban ,but that they show different profiles.

Rémy Ponton : Aesthetics Production and Accumulation of Symbolic Capital. The Case of the Parnasse. It is the purpose of this study to relate the different stages of the genesis of an aesthetics, the Parnassian one in this instance, to the positions held, in the literary field, by the poets who lay down the rules and defend them. Using some of Max Weber's categories in the sociology of religion, the analysis defines aesthetics positions as one among other strategies of acquisition and accumulation of the symbolic capital. The social course which, from 1850 to 1890, transfers the Parnasse poets, from a dominated to a ruling position, requires processes of break and rationalization, resulting from the social conditions of the poetic innovation in the second half of the XlXth century.

François Dubet : Suggestion for a Definition of the Patterns of Social Adaptation of Youth Starting from the Concept of Plan. The A. centers the study of the social action of youth upon the concept of plan. Therefore, he distinguishes two levels of plan regarding youth : the 'short- term' plan ? plan of immediate mobility ? and the 'long-term' plan ? plan oriented towards the adult image that is reached for. At both level, three types of plan are differenciated : the lack of plan, the 'realistic' plan and the 'different' plan. The main hypothesis is that the association between a short-term and a long-term plan, indicates a mode of social adaptation. The survey, performed in the suburbs of Bordeaux, deals with a sample of 212 adolescents and the data were collected by the means of interview questionnaires. Coherent sets of attitudes are distributed among each of the four evolutionary processes resulting from the plan. The A. names them : 'satisfaction', 'escapism', 'conflict' and 'apathy'. These are the 4 types of the social adaptation of adolescents. Though the concept of plan, especially that of mobility plan, is generally applied in the field of the sociology of work and organizations, this research shows it can be considered as a relevant conceptual tool in the analysis of the social action of youth.

A. Memmi, W. Ackermann, N. et S. Zobermann : Religious Practice and Jewish Identity. The A.A. aim to relate the variations of religious practice as observed in the Jewish population, to the social characteristics of the different groups. Thus, they point out several ways of integration of the religious practice into the life of these groups. On another hand, they have to differentiate the type of religious practice of the Ashkenazi Jews from that of their Sephardi coreligionists. Among the former, the maintenance of a certain practice can coexist with a low level of Jewish consciousness, and on the contrary, a very strong feeling of jewishness can exist without any religious reference. Religious practice and Jewish consciousness are coupled more clearly among the Sephardi Jews; in fact they use more often the religious reference to define themselves as Jews, at least at the time of the survey (1967).