La carrière symbolique d'un père fondateur. André Siegfried et la science politique française après 1945

Abstract

The Symbolic Career of a Founding Father. André Siegfried and French Political Science after 1945 The case of André Siegfried and his Tableau politique de la France de l'Ouest : is examined here as a social history of the reception given to scientific works. The article attempts to understand how A. Siegfried became the "founding1 father" of French political science and to reconstruct the successive moments in which three methods for interpreting this : work appeared in the discipline: The : beginnings of electoral sociology in the Forties all the way up to the end of the ; Fifties correspond to a moment of significant cognitive and symbolic: investment in the Tableau politique de la France de l'Ouest. During the Sixties and Seventies, the Tableau became an icon for the discipline, at the very moment when its aura began declining. In the most recent period, we have witnessed a new approach to writing the history of the discipline, a return to an historical: study of the work and its author, which have brought about a revision of their, status. Through these steps, the Tableau was turned first into an object of reference, then an object of reverence and finally an object of history.