Contenu du sommaire

François Héran : The second nature of habitus. Philosophical tradition and common sense in sociological language. Through the analisis of Bourdieu's use of the notions of habitus, scheme, ethos and reactivation, the author studies the sometimes unsuspected ties which can link a sociological theory to well-known philosophical traditions : first, Aristotelism that expresses linguistic structures the effects of which are persistent in ordinary speech and stressed by etymological studies; second, phenomenology, which made use of the notions of habitus and scheme in the context of a theory of perception and judgement. Such a sociological reactivation of philosophical habitus leads to problems of interpretation... which habitus theory seems to be able to enlighten.

Susanna Magri and Christian Topalov : From garden-city to rational town. An international turning-point of the reformist plan, 1905-1925. A comparative study of France, Great-Britain, Italy, and the United States. This comparative study tries to apprehend the international turning-point of the reformist plan for working-class housing and city planning during the 1910s. It analyzes three basic changes which quicken during the first after-war period. The set-back of Utopias is accompanied by the transition from experimental urban communities production to residential suburbs development policy. Such a change transformed the object of the reform which shifted from working-class housing to city planning and specially city growth. Urbanism is born. Finally, the reform rationality leads to a change of methods : scientific knowledge, where sociology predominates, is set up as a guide for action; the implementing tool, the polity itself, wants reforming through administrative rationalizing, setting up of experts, and new management techniques.

Patrick Hunout : Conseil de prud'hommes (Conciliation board) : an example of decision-making in an institutional context. This paper partially reports the results of a psychological field research dealing with an original work jurisdiction, the Conseil de prud'hommes, which though a fully qualified court of law in charge of individual right cases, is formed of elected judges, employers and employed, whose attitudes, beliefs and representations are heterogeneous up to antagonistic. The author determines the processes through which a kind of progressive homogeneization develops at different stages of institutional life, and analyses in terms of social roles theory the mechanisms of this process of attitude change and institutional socialization.