Bruno Cousin
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French Sociology at the Turn of the 21st Century
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Abstract
Neither French sociology as a field, nor the sociological profession as it is practiced in France, have been systematically studied as sociological objects. Although other disciplines such as philosophy and economics have been the focus of numerous analyses (for instance those developed on economists by Frédéric Lebaron and Marion Fourcade), there is no overall examination of our own discipline as a national field.
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GLOBAL DIALOGUE
French Sociology at the Turn of the 21st Century
Bruno Cousin and Didier Demazière
by Bruno Cousin, University of Lille 1, France, Member of ISA Research
Committee on Regional and Urban Development (RC21) and Didier Demazière,
CNRS and Sciences Po, Paris, France
En ligne: http://isa-global-dialogue.net/french-sociology-at-the-turn-of-the-21st-century/
2014, September
Neither French sociology as a field, nor the sociological profession as it is practiced in France,
have been systematically studied as sociological objects. Although other disciplines such as
philosophy and economics have been the focus of numerous analyses (for instance those
developed on economists by Frédéric Lebaron and Marion Fourcade), there is no overall
examination of our own discipline as a national field.
However, we have several monographs or biographies on sociologists considered among the
most creative, intellectually speaking, and/or important organizational figures: for example,
Georges Friedmann and Georges Gurvitch who, although largely unknown by non-francophone
readers today, played key roles in establishing sociology within French academia in the post-war
era, drawing links between the students of Émile Durkheim (Marcel Mauss, Maurice
Halbwachs) and the cohorts that followed. Moreover, there are also many autobiographical
pieces, ego-histories or auto-analyses by some of the most influential French sociologists of the
last half-century: Raymond Aron, Georges Balandier, Luc Boltanski, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel
Crozier, François Dubet, Henri Lefebvre, Henri Mendras, Edgar Morin, Pierre Naville, Gérard
Noiriel and Dominique Schnapper, among others. Together with less formal statements and
reflections by other colleagues, the official histories of certain departments and research centers,
and our direct observations, these references allow us to sketch in broad strokes the general
evolution of French Sociology over the past few decades.
The first main transformation is the progressive weakening of the oppositions between schools
of thought, and their replacement by a more thematic organization of scholars. While schools of
thought were organized around a strong theoretical paradigm, a leading scholar and a research
center, almost always in Paris, thematic organization favors collaborations between specialists
2 | Cousin & Demazière – French Sociology at the Turn of the 21st Century
of a given topic. Today, for instance, there is no equivalent to the once dominant quadrumvirate
Bourdieu-Touraine-Crozier-Boudon, which structured much of the French sociological field
from the mid-1970s until the second half of the 1990s (i.e. during the period following the
academic decline of historical materialism and the success of structuralism). Of course scientific
controversies and rivalries between the respective heirs of these traditions have not completely
disappeared, and other – new – theoretical formulations emerged with strong national and
international acceptance. However, nowadays, instead of grand theoretical dispute, we mainly
see a reorganization of scientific debates around grand themes: urban sociology, economic
sociology, political sociology, sociology of education, sociology of migration, etc.
This trend towards specialization is driven, in part, by a large increase in the number of
researchers and teacher-researchers over the last decades of the 20th century, a trend which
pushes individual researchers to seek differentiation through more precise research objects, and
foster the creation or the reinforcement of thematic subfields, each of them having now enough
members to secure a certain autonomy. In addition, easier access to scientific literature from all
over the world brought an international scientific opening, but the borders between subfields
have also been reinforced by the growing opportunity costs of mastering and establishing a
dialogue with international references, i.e. the Anglophone literatures, which is now required to
publish in the main French journals, as well as, of course, in English.
Over the last fifteen years, some of the most prestigious research universities in the social
sciences – including Sciences Po and the EHESS (The School of Advanced Studies in Social
Sciences) – sought international attention and impact, thus indirectly exacerbating this trend
towards fragmentation; similarly, the organization of the French Sociological Association
(established in 2002) in thematic sections directly reinforced the trend . Moreover, thematic
specializations are largely compatible with the widespread interest in French academia for
interdisciplinarity within the social sciences and humanities, in line with the lasting project of
the École des Annales to unify them. Finally, this evolution is also encouraged by the various
institutions seeking sectoral expertise.
Indeed, since the beginning of the 21st century, the three roles usually adopted by French
sociologists – scholar devoted to research, advisor to decision-makers, and/or critical
intellectual – went through several changes. The first role was supposed to be reinforced by
recent reforms to render French research more internationally “competitive.” However, a
shortage of research and teacher-researcher positions (see text by Musselin in this issue of
Global Dialogue), the generalization of the funding of research through competitive calls for
proposals, and the expansion of a bureaucratic apparatus of managerial evaluation, on top of the
numerous instances of peer review (see text by Lebaron in this issue of Global Dialogue),
reduced the individual and collective autonomy of sociologists, as well as of scholars in other
disciplines.
At the same time, the role of French sociologists as advisors has not increased. Although many
participate in national and local consulting commissions, in think tanks, or in operations of
intellectual communication or aiming to structure public debates, sociologists have little impact
on the actual development of public policies. Their expertise is often treated as a (limited)
complement to the analyses developed internally by high-placed technocrats in government
Cousin & Demazière – French Sociology at the Turn of the 21st Century | 3
(while the main school in charge of training these public officials, the École Nationale
d’Administration, gives scarce attention to sociology); and economics is also regarded as a much
more legitimate and effective science of government. Nevertheless, in some instances, both the
public sector, when confronted with “social questions,” and the private sector, when concerned
with managing human resources, consider sociological insights necessary (see text by Neyrat in
this issue of Global Dialogue).
Finally, the critical dimensions of French sociology – its ability to denounce inequality, and the
mechanisms of exploitation, domination, discrimination and social reproduction, as well as its
capacity to endow social movements with conceptual tools and alternatives to the current social
order – have also changed in recent years. Since Pierre Bourdieu’s death in 2002, no social
scientist in France has attained comparable recognition as a critical intellectual. But the trend
towards specialization has favored the multiplication of engaged sociologists and collectives as
“specific intellectuals” (in the sense used by Michel Foucault), and their analyses and political
positions are often displayed on the opinion pages of the main national newspapers, in critical
journals read inside and outside academia, and in small essay collections. Moreover, in France,
as elsewhere, an increasing trend toward reflexivity encourages reflection on the difficulties of
producing critical thought and critical sociology; sometimes with an impact on the regulation of
the sociological profession, as was the case when the national association refused to adopt a
code of conduct (see text by Pudal in this issue of Global Dialogue).
Direct all correspondence to Bruno Cousin <bruno.cousin@univ-lille1.fr> and Didier Demazière
<d.demaziere@cso.cnrs.fr>