Contenu du sommaire

Lucien Karpik : Law : a new profession ? A new hierarchy now characterises the French legal profession : based on the different fields of law, this hierarchy associates two apparently contradictory features, division and cohesion. It separates the profession into collective unities distinguished by their differing levels of income, qualification and prestige ; however, generalised interdépendance is maintained through lawyers' simultaneous participation in the several legal fields. This hierarchy provokes general effects, ranging from the social definition of talent, to the formation of conflicts and to the relation with the political realm within the bar. It results from a process built up over the past twenty-five years and combining the evolution of the market, the reorganisation of the profession's internal structure, changes in strategy and social struggles. The irruption of the collective phenomenon expresses and consacrâtes a global redefinition of the profession. Whether it be question of the work done, of the relationships between the members of the profession, of defining a collective identity, of the relation to Justice, to the State, to the market, to politics, etc., everything sets apart the present from the past : the composite profession has replaced the traditional one.

Jean Prévot : On indices and proportional comparisons. We propose a critique of those procedures that consist in comparing the evolution of the inequality between two groups using proportional quotients. We are thus led to examine the notion of index, and to explain the criteria which must be met by a coherent index, to indicate several classes of coherent indices for the problem at hand and to present the modes of graphic adjustment for the given factors which would permit clearer and more complete response to question too often held to be solvable be means of indices. We thus hope to clarify the debates that have been muddled by some of the procedures used and to incite sociologists to turn more often to graphic methods.

Dominique Merllié : Analyses of the interaction among variables : a statistical or sociological problem ? In the prolongation of the recent article by J.-C. Combessie on The comparative evolution of inequalities', we propose to generalise the problem posed by the latter (problem that may arise in the study of any relation between more than two variables), to present some examples characterictic of its effects and of the ways in which it is habitually perceived (or not) and settled. An examination of the relations uniting the different elementary presented by J.-C. Combessie enables us to reduce their number without solving the problem posed. We subsequently examine the interest which resides, for this problem, in measures of association among variables by taking into account the marginal proportion. Finally, we propose as a solution to this difficulty, to adapt the indicators retained for the dependent variables to the different comparative situations (or values of the independant variables).