Contenu du sommaire

Jean Maisonneuve : The Body and « Bodyism » Today. The social psychologist and the sociologist have to inquire into the meaning of the strong recrudescence of interest, values and practices involving the body, at least in the West. This « bodyism » is present in our everday lives, in specialized sectors (religious, artistic) and in the very practices of training centers. After having mentioned the roots of this movement (the theses of Reich, Dadaism), the author examines and discusses its manifestations: « new groups » which reject discourse and analysis (bioenergy, corporeal expression); charismatic currents which practise glossolalia; plastic research and antimodels in the iconic representation of the body. The confrontation of psychoanalytical and sociological interpretations reveals the ambiguity, or the fix, into which bodyism leads, where nostalgia for the primitive and neospiritualism mix together. The body in itself appears elusive once it is both the subject of desire and the object of ideology. Both the indefinite lowering of the thresholds of transgression and the loss of the symbolic in corporal experiences correlate with a state of cultural crisis. After the virulent reawakening of desire, they pose to a society which tends to impugn it the problem of the senses and their regulation.

François-André Isambert : The Internal Secularization of Christianity. Secularization ? a loosening of the religious hold on human conduct ? is a multiple process. At one time animated from the exterior, it nowadays proceeds from Christianity's internal development. It can assume the form of a positive appreciation of the secularization of some activities (political, scientific, moral). It can operate even within the strictly religious domain: deritualization, desacralization, demythicization. These transformations are to be studied within the framework of the interactions between religion and civilization.

Janina Markiewicz-Lagneau : Autobiography in Poland or the Social Usage of a Sociological Technique. To what scientific need did the spectacular development of autobiographical techniques in Poland between the two World Wars correspond ? That is this article's central question. The answer is given by the successive analysis of the origin of these techniques and their application in Poland, the social and scientific justifications of their utilization, and the reasons for their success.

Jean-Marc Dutrenit : The Ethos of Social Service and Childhood in Danger. The empirical study using an analysis of dependence of the social itineraries of a population of 813 minors in danger, most of whom had been previously taken into custody and were under an Educative Action program in working class circles, reveals some typical sequences of social work in this field. These sequences bring to light the complex elements which are made up by the relationship which is established during the treatment of subjects by different institutions (Courts, Social Assistance, Social Services, Placement Services) between the past or the social characters of the treated subjects and the selective utilization or application of possibilities offered by the laws and regulations of Childhood in Danger and of Social Assistance. These complex elements, which are reconstituted by the analysis of dependence, contribute to analyzing the ethos of social services and the value system incarnated in their practices.

Bruno Jobert : Main and Remainder : A Criticism of Systemic Strategic Analysis. M. Crozier's and J. C. Thoenig's article, criticized herein, claimed to establish a new paradigm which, starting with the analysis of systems, would renew the analysis of interorganizational networks and establish the possibility of an autonomous study of these networks. This note's aim is to show, through a systematic confrontation of theoretical propositions and their illustration by the « system of local decision-making », that neither the delimitation of the system of action, nor the definition of the elements making it up, nor even the model of relation between its elements nor its dynamism for change can be usefully analyzed independently of their relations to social groups and classes and to political struggles, thrown back into this procedure as a negligible remainder.