Contenu du sommaire

Claude Dubar : Adult education ("formation continue") and social differentiation. The rapid development of adult education in France, especially since the enactment of the Laws of July, 1971, has not been accompanied by a true "democratization" of access to these kinds of training. Unskilled categories are still largely under-reprensented among those benefiting from training programs which are organized above all in the form of short courses not leading to diplomas. However, the avaûability of continued professional training has given rise to new strategies, especially on the part of intermediate categories who have seized upon it as means to improve their chances of advancement or to attempt changes of profession. A certain socially differentiated dynamics of requests for training has created a contradiction which the firms' and the State's rigid policies for this type of training, and has brought about the emergence of new attitudes and forms of conduct.

François Gresle : Trade independence and social protection. Class practice» and ideological fluctuations of small business owners. Considering compulsory insurance as a pernicious requirement because it affected their freedom of action, or rather their individualistic conception of social advancement, small business owners ? whether artisans or tradesmen ? have rejected all constraints in matters of social welfare protection and any attempts to bring their insurance into line with that for salaried workers in the French Social Security system. By analysing the main stages traversed by the programs set up by self-employed workers, this article attempts to deal with the evolution of thinking among small business owing to "technical" factors (such as the collapse of pension plans) and also to socio-demographic and psychological factors. Self-employed workers now enjoy a rather complete system of guarantees, but it is very different from what had been imagined at the outset since they have been forced to base their demands on the benefits which employees receive. In addition to a review of these historical incidents, the theme of social protection is here taken as revealing of the internal tensions at work in these circles, setting the simple independent workers, ready to sacrifice the remains of a largely illusory autonomy, against the well-off small businessmen aligned with the small and medium firms' organization (Petites et Moyennes Entreprises) who still refuse to relinquish their peculiarities.

Jean-Paul Tricart : Origins of a social welfare instrument: the a cités de transit". Contemporary thinking about the urban habitat tends to regard some experiments - especially that of the "cités de transit" ? as the ruling classes' ways of stabilizing marginal populations constituting a threat to the prevailing social order. A close examination of the circumstances surrounding the foundation of these "cités de transit" has allowed the author to show how they arose out of a series of improvisations and unrelated initiatives rather than any maturely pondered project carried out with purpose and determination. Although they cannot be ignored, the problems posed by the connection between rehabilitative action and the popular environment require a deeper sociological analysis.

Jean-Pierre Lavaud : Political mobilization of the Bolivian peasantry. Especially since the 1952 revolution, Boliva's economic modernization has been accompanied by a profound movement among the rural masses, encouraged by the new "elite" arising out of the middle classes, which has allowed the peasants to gain political power in return. This peasant revolt strongly contributed to the dismantling of the traditional power structure. Its instigators quickly let themselves be co-opted by the urban-based leaders whose power they had helped to establish, and the peasant masses soon lapsed once more into passivity. The author undertakes the analysis of this double movement in the light of the concepts of "social mobilization".