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

Abstract

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.