The birth of French labour sociology after the War: some reflections on the nature of the corporate state and intellectual engagement for the sociology of work in the UK today

• Published in: Work, employment and society Vol. 28; no. 6; pp. 1003 - 1015
• Main Authors: Durand, Jean-Pierre, Stewart, Paul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-12-2014; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Automatic control; Consensus; Debates and controversies; Economic history; Employment; France; Funding; Hegemony; Heroes; Labor; Labor economics; Marxist sociology; Political economy; Political sociology; Public sociology; Radicalism; Reconstruction; Social change; Social Development; Social research; Sociologists; Sociology; Sociology of Work; Studies; Technological change; Technological Progress; United Kingdom; War; United Kingdom > UK; France; lessons for sociologist-practitioners outside France; role of sociologists; post-war French sociology of labour; intellectual autonomy; public sociology; hegemony; national reconstruction
• ISSN: 0950-0170; 1469-8722
• DOI: 10.1177/0950017014536458

The controversies in French sociology of labour between 1945 and the early 60s sometimes overlook its place in the period of national reconstruction. As part of the social consensus marking reconstruction sociologists, encouraged by state fonctionnaires, sustained a research agenda perceived as 'useful' for national renewal: the focus would be on questions that sociologist-practitioners would share with France's political class. While the state's hegemonic project of social development through technological progress was manifest in similar methodological agendas in the oeuvre of two leading protagonists, nevertheless it allowed for radically different views of sociology's role. This is of significance not just for the discipline's researchers in France. It has relevance for a 'public sociology' of work in the UK in a period of conformist pressure.