Louis Roussel (1921-2011)

Abstract

Louis Roussel died on 26 January 2011, just before his 90th birthday. Widely acclaimed by his colleagues at INED and University of Paris- Descartes, as well as by members of general public who had become fervent readers of his works, Roussel was one of first French authors to use demographic analysis to describe evolution of family structures, thus giving family sociology - a hitherto neglected speciality - its rightful status in this country. His best-known writings were published between mid-1970s and late 1990s. Affable yet reserved, Louis Roussel never spoke at length about his past. It is worth tracing his career, however, which followed a remarkably coherent course. While best known for his essays on changes in family, in which he showed great perspicacity tinted with nostalgia, he personally placed greatest emphasis on his qualification as an expert demographer: he long gave priority to observational data before feeling free to express his personal opinions about what was happening in society. Many people were surprised when this rather belated about-turn occurred in late 1980s: Roussel had already reached age of 68 when his best-known essay, La famille incertaine (The uncertain family), was published. For most of Parisian sociologists in vogue at time, this change of approach came out of blue. With hindsight, there is no doubt that Louis Roussel made an outstanding contribution history of social science in France.Louis Roussel's youth was marked by Second World War, which forced him to interrupt his education. In 1943, he trained as a member of resistance group called Pericles, which was set up in Haute-Savoie before moving to Jura region. After being mobilized in October 1944, he was awarded Croix de Guerre and mentioned twice in dispatches. He graduated in philosophy at University of Aix-en-Provence in 1947, then worked for ten years as a secondary-school teacher. His real vocation lay elsewhere, however. The writings of Jean Stoetzel, Pierre George and Alfred Sauvy inspired him to pursue further university studies at age of 35. After graduating in social psychology and political economy, he enrolled at Sorbonne Institute of Demography and qualified as an expert demographer at age of 40.Louis Roussel resigned from his secondary teaching position in 1961 and joined Societe d'etudes pour le developpement economique et social (SEDES), an organization linked to Caisse des depots and Banque francaise pour le commerce exterieur, forebear of today's Agence francaise du developpement. In wake of decolonization, SEDES was conducting market research on various third world nations, but these missions were soon replaced by more general surveys on socioeconomic changes occurring in these countries. In this context, Roussel drafted several demographic and sociological monographs on Cote d'Ivoire and other West African countries (see bibliographical references). These surveys were cited for many years by French ethnologists working at organizations such as EHESS(1) and ORSTOM(2) (which later became IRD(3)), and Roussel himself made a few discreet allusions to his early findings in works he published between 1970 and 1980.Reading these early studies, one is struck by fact that Roussel was already addressing themes he was to develop later in setting of French society. When studying Senoufo populations of Cote d'Ivoire who began migrating in large numbers after period of forced labour, he described many different forms of union between sexes, customary practice of extremely free sexual relations prior to marriage, and fact that couples still did not form a real decision-making unit: husband was a sort of visitor, and a woman's children were under authority of her brother. However, as modernization took hold, Senoufo witnessed the break-up of general system of their institutions, and young people looked for a means of escape by joining rural exodus, driven by aspirations which focused less on seeking employment than on their need for independence and recognition. …