Contenu du sommaire

François Gresle : Present-day relevance and implications of the concept of professional independence applied to France. The groups comprising farmers, on the one hand, and artisans and merchants on the other, are usually considered to belong to different social categories. And yet, when a study is made of their respective positions, be it in the mode of production or in the whole social system, certain similarities can be seen that are not just a matter of circumstances. Nowadays the model of the non-salaried worker, with its reference to professional independence, acts as a unifying principe which shapes their behaviour and mentality. Drawing on data belonging essentially to social morphology, the author attempts to account for the continuing relevance of this model both on the economic and the psychosociological levels.

Nonna Mayer and Guy Michelat : Small merchants and artisans' voting choices in 1967. The importance of contextual variables. Surveys carried out in 1967 reveal that the voting behaviour of small merchants and artisans (the PCAs) depends mainly on their intermediary position between the bourgeoisie and the proletariate. Their status as independent workers plays a more determining role than the characteristics linking them with the lower classes : it motivates their hostility to communism and their vote for the right (artisans, however, whose type of work brings them closer to manual workers, vote more often for the left). This general tendency can be reinforced or weakened depending on the political and social characteristics of the local context. Like all socio-professional groups, the PCAs are influenced by this local context, and their vote for the right will decline in the départements where the Communist Party has a strong electoral position. Conversely it will increase if the worker group is important enough to represent a social and political threat, thus making them identify with the bourgeoisie and right-wing forces. On the other hand, their vote for the left will increase when the farmer group is important ; they will identify with the "small" farmers to mark their opposition to the "big" ones. Lastly it can be noted that the PCAs vote most for the left in the southern départements where traditional types of small business, handicrafts and agriculture continue to function side by side.

Michel Pinçon : Housing and way of life. Cohabitation of social groups in a low-rate housing block. This article uses observations and interviews to point out the differences, and at times ihe contradictions, existing in a low-rate housing block between the ways of life of its middle and lower class tenants. Whereas the first group is in a position to invest its cultural capital effectively in the housing facilities, the second fails in the attempt to appropriate its living space. The lower-class families then try to get away from a type of housing which they cannot really make their own and which they are at times forced to put up with for financial reasons.

Alain Leger : Social determinants ot teaching careers. A study of the career strategy of 4553. high school (lycée) teachers reveals that the great majority of them shun the lower-class schools and decide, as soon as a choice becomes possible, to go to teach in the more "bourgeois" schools. When the positions obtained by those who have first choice are examined, this strategy becomes clear. The author states the major mediations governing this implicit choice of a particular social type of school (and hence of a particular social type of pupil) which is the preponderant cause behind the search for professional, cultural, or family satisfactions. The author also considers the implications of this professional mobility both for the quality of teaching and for the climate of the pedagogical relationship. Lastly, this career behaviour is analyzed in terms of the light it sheds on the relations which the teachers maintain with the different social classes.

Jean-Paul Tricart : Private initiative and parallel State control. The sector of "maladjusted children". Social work seems to represent a privileged field for private initiative. But it is also an area where the Providential State vigorously proclaims its presence. A study of the transformations which have affected the policy of rehabilitation sheds light on the conditions in which private initiative connects with State intervention : in this perspective the sector dealing with maladjusted children appears hybrid and decentralized ; its institutionalization can be described in terms of a parallel take-over by the State. In order to assess the modalities governing the elaboration and implementation of social policies by the State, this study suggests the necessity of extending the concept of State beyond a narrowly juridical definition.