ECPR Standing Group on Political Sociology

Niilo Kauppi, Radicalism in French Culture. A Sociology of French Theory in the 1960s, London, Ashgate, 2010

An invisible pattern draws together most studies dealing with French cultural radicalism in the 1960s with intellectual creation reduced to individual creation and the role of semiotic and social factors that influence intellectual innovation minimized. Sociological approaches often see a more or less external link between social location and intellectual production but, because of their structural approach, they are incapable of taking into account unique historical circumstances, the crucial role of personal impulses, and more importantly the semiotic logic of ideas as conditions of innovative thinking.

This ground-breaking book will further an internal sociological analysis of ideas and styles of thought. It will show that the defining but largely neglected feature of what has become « French theory » was a collective mind and style of thought, an explosive but fragile mixture of scientific and political radicalism that rather quickly watered down to academic orthodoxy. For some time, radical intellectuals succeeded in producing ideas that were perfectly in tune with the demands of the consumers, mostly the young university audience. Ideas were used as part of radical posture that was set in opposition to the establishment and « those in power ». Ideas could not be too empirical or verifiable, and they had to shock. It is not surprising that a slew of new sciences and concepts were invented to indicate this radical posture.

The central argument of this study is that ideas become « power-ideas » only if they succeed in uniting individual and collective psychic investment in powerful social networks with significant institutional and political backing. These conditions were met in the French context for a certain specific period of time. From roughly the mid-1960s to the beginning of the 1970s, radical intellectuals such as Roland Barthes, Pierre Bourdieu, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva developed a host of new ideas, concepts and theories, a number of which have subsequently been labelled as French theory.

Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé, Marine de Lassalle, Jay Rowell, L’Europe des européens: enquête comparative sur les perceptions de l’Europe, Paris, Economica, 2010

This book presents the main results of a research program on ordinary perceptions of Europe. The goal was to understand and explain the attitudes of different categories of average citizens with respect to Europe, comparing France, Germany, Poland, and Italy.

Nonna Mayer, Sociologie des comportements politiques, Paris, Armand Colin, 2010

From political discussions to demonstrations, from voting to political consumerism, from strikes, election boycotts, to activist uses of the Internet: Nonna Mayer’s book offers an encompassing perspective on a central question of political science: political participation. It presents classic and contemporary models of voting behaviour, core concepts of current political sociology, builds on the analysis of political participation surveys and offers multiple comparisons between French and American patterns of political behaviour.

Antonin Cohen, Bernard Lacrox, Philippe Riutort, Nouveau manuel de science politique, Paris, La Découverte, 2009

This new textbook offers a broad presentation of political science. It brings together more than 70 scholars and covers all major topics of political science from a perspective of political sociology: from the historical construction of states through political parties, institutions, public administration, and voting behavior, to social movements, European construction and international relations.

Olivier Fillieule, Eric Agrikoliansky, Isabelle Sommier (eds), Penser les mouvements sociaux. Conflits sociaux et contestations dans les sociétés contemporaines, Paris, La Découverte, 2010

Social movement studies constitute today a specialized field within the social sciences, at the intersection of sociology, political science, and history.  Most of the core concepts were developed in the US, while the interest in social movements has been less sustained in Europe. French sociology of social movements, however, has been built on a number of original and distinct methods and approaches that this book explores in order to critically assess the core concepts of the contentious politics approach: use of instruments from critical sociology, suspicion of positivist methods in favor of more qualitative approaches, development of studies on non-Western societies, as well as on so-called unlikely mobilizations of groups lacking resources, dialoguing with closely related sub-fields such as the study of interest groups or the sociology of social problems.