Contenu du sommaire

Alain Testart : The importance and meaning of enslavement through debt. The phenomenon of enslavement through debt has been largely underestimated or, on the contrary, confused with the different forms of exploitation of the indebted (person used as security, work to pay off debt). After having clearly defined its aim, the article shows the extent of enslavement through debt on a worldwide basis. Its main social signification is : inequality between rich and poor, already highly apparent in the majority of primitive societies, redefinable in terms of masters and slaves. This transformation, or the risk of such a transformation, considerably reinforces the power of the dominant. The article ends with a suggestion regarding the origins of the State.

Claudine Attias-Donfut : Relations between generations. Intrafamily transfer and macrosocial dynamics. This article presents an analysis of relations between generations, within the family and with public/private interface, based on the study of cultural transmission and forms of mutual assistance. It uses data from a three-generation survey built in such a way that the notion of generation becomes operative, by making family, historical and welfare generations coincide. The results show that transmission and transfer between generations, similar to the way they operate in family interactions, work as mediators of social change, transmission links of the welfare state and economic and social regulators. The relations between generations are closely connected to the relations between sexes. Social mobility plays an important role in the determination of their solidarity and of their cultural influence. This study also shows the necessity to take into account a minimum of three generations in order to perceive the temporal dimension which establishes the specificity of these relations.

Carole Rivière : Telephone sociability networks. This article proposes to add a contribution to the analysis of networks based on a survey on telephone sociability. After specifying the procedures used to perceive the structure of sociability networks, several types of personal networks were defined by analyzing telephone relations. Whereas some reply to an additional logic of interpersonal connections, in which the networks accumulate all the types of connections in opposition to those defined by the absence of all the connections, the others reveal the existence of a preferential logic, in which networks centered on a type of exclusive connection, normally family or friend, are in opposition with each other. Social status would appear to be insufficient when trying to understand the relational choices which in fact are part of a diversity of divisions associated to the new forms of solitary life and life when not at work. Taking in the differences in sociability in these different dimensions therefore illustrates an increasing complexi- fication of factors in the understanding of social behaviour.

François Hochereau : Internal contract formalization in business and its limits. The case of software design. Businesses are at the present time a place where there is a multiplication of internal contracts and a generalization of market reference. Such contract formalization is aiming to give greater responsibility to each operative unit as regards its costs, thus reducing waste. The study of the present case, relative to software design, reveals however the perverse effects of formalization and compartmentalization, likely to harm the correct running of software projects. In fact the success of these projects depends on a regular adaptation of software in order to integrate emerging needs or to resolve unforeseen problems. All software projects therefore lead to numerous amendments and successive contracts. However, the temporary close down imposed by these contracts prevents an informal redistribution of tasks and skills which are in fact necessary when trying to solve problems rapidly. The stability of contractual relations thus depends, on one hand, on the capacity of the parties to remain united in time for the correct running of the software and, on the other hand, on a regular adaptation of the contractual context in order to know the investments accorded to each party to carry out the project. Often confronted with the problem of excess in terms of delivery time and cost, it could be asked whether internal contracts are not just rather empty frameworks.

Thierry Blöss, Valérie Erlich : The new « actors » of university selection : technology « French bac » graduates. Higher education has undergone many changes over the last few decades, allowing admittance to an increasing flow of « new students », most of which are of modest origin and with a professional secondary -education background. This increase in diploma holders has reinforced social differentiation within the existing courses. This article proposes a better understanding of the new issues of discrimination in relation to the admission of a large number of technology graduates. It analyses their rather paradoxical choice of course, and their studies in higher education, from which spring misunderstanding, incomprehension, and to finish, individual disillusionment and collective downgrading. The career path of technology graduates today is the reflection of a growing differential instability : another way of reproducing in higher education the differences already encountered at school.