Contenu du sommaire

Jean-Claude Passeron : Degree inflation. Comments on the use of some analogical concepts in sociology. An examination of the analogical concept of "degree inflation" is used in this article to direct a survey of researches in the sociology of education which study the transformation of the relationships between success at school and the probability of social mobility. The purpose of taking this example of the role played in a sociological argument by schemas borrowed from other disciplines is to show that the use of analogy can stimulate empirical research both by its adequacy and its inadequacy with regard to the phenomena being studied. Adequacy enables a systematic linking of a series of classical questions, but the difference which appears between the diffusion of a symbolic rarity such as certification through academic degrees and the inflation of monetary currencies leads to a study of the specific effects of the devaluation of degrees on symbolic markets. The analogical aspect of the concept of "capital" when applied to the cultural heritage and the concept of "market" when used to describe the imaginary transactions taking place on symbolic markets does not disqualify these concepts as instruments for formulating questions.

Jean-Michel Berthelot : Reflections on theories of schooling. What is the position of the sociology of schooling today ? Has it anything new to say ? The A. criticizes the two major theoretical models of the last twenty years (the school as "reproducer" model and the "unequal opportunities" model), - in each case he reveals what he calls a "confining effect". He then proposes a new paradigm - one of combined interplay of diverse social logics (structural logics, actors' logics) - based on the study of the transformations affecting the French school during the last two decades and a perspective focusing on the concrets analysis of concrets schooling situations. The A. recommends a renewed approach to schooling which he views as a specific mode of socialization, which is realized in modes of schooling, constituting areas of interaction (and dissension) for social actors occupying various positions.

Dominique Monjardet and Georges Benguigui : Managerial utopia. The middle social strata between the State and class relations. The A A. base the present analysis of the "middle social strata" in industrialized societies on their earlier empirical studies of management in industrial firmes. These intermediate strata (technicians, executives, professionals, intellectuals, etc.) are made up of those agents dealing with the apparatuses (this notion is distinguished from those concerned with organization and institution) that manage the two orders of fundamental social relations in these societies : the order of class relations and the order of the relation between the State and civil society, and their interaction. Over and beyond the morphological and sociographical variety present in these classes, this position constitutes a unifying principle that engenders the three features characterizing their intervention in social relations: 1) professional corporatism, 2) political opportunism, and 3) cultural innovation. These three features, combined with the ideology of the common good and rationality, define the contours of what is called managerial utopia, characteristic of the intermediate strats. The nature of class relations on the one hand and the relation between the Strate and civil society on the other, and their conjunctural evolution will thus explain the specific forms taken at a given historical moment by this managerial Utopia in choosing between its extreme variants : a totalitarian project whose aim is the absorption of civil society by the State, or a project of self- management in which State intervention is rejected.

Patrick Pharo : Social situations and "social structuring". All available statistical sources point to the evident social inferiority of salaried farm laborers. The present article approaches this orderly structure through such concrete mechanisms as the value assigned by farm owners to salaried labor and the jobs held by the laborers, and attempts to explain the present-day social significance of this situation. The author disagrees whith the vision of social reproduction which assumes both a certain degree of permanence of social structures and an initial adherence of the dominated groups to their lot by the structural adjustment of subjective hopes to the objective conditions of the social order. Instead, he attempts to bring to light the changes in meaning which, from the actors' point of view, affect social structures. In so doing he reveals the conflictual aspects of the process of social structuring and the issues at stake expressed in terms of the moral and social values borne by the different groups of actors.

Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Paul Rendu : Spatial and social distance from public facilities in the Ile-de-France region : conditions for practice and practices. Public facilities are distributed unevenly among the various districts of Paris and the urban centres of the Ile-de-France region, and are not uniformly available to the different social classes. Although the dominant pattern is one of a diminution in the number of facilities from the centre toward the limits of the region, there can also be found, at a comparable distance from the centre and particularly in the suburbs near the city, certain specific situations related to the class structure of the population. An analysis of the social effects of policies of public facilities must take into account both physical and social distance in order to shed light on the relationships between the conditions enabling practice and the actual practices.