Alain Touraine Research Articles

Touraine’s Thesis: End of Political Sociology

Elections in capitalist democracies in Western have changed recently to such an extent that one is inclined to look upon election results as crucial evidence for Alain Touraine’s argument in favour of a transformation from a Durkheimian (”structure”) to a Weberian world (”actor”) in his La fin des societies (2013). The central aspect of party systems in Western Europe is not social structure today but now voter volatility, which can be measured allowing for an empirical application of Touraine’s thesis.

Touraine’s Thesis: End of Political Sociology

Elections in capitalist democracies in Western have changed recently to such an extent that one is inclined to look upon election results as crucial evidence for Alain Touraine’s argument in favour of a transformation from a Durkheimian (”structure”) to a Weberian world (”actor”) in his La fin des societies (2013). The central aspect of party systems in Western Europe is not social structure today but now voter volatility, which can be measured allowing for an empirical application of Touraine’s thesis.

VOLATILITY AND WESTERN EUROPEAN PARTY SYSTEMS: TWO NEW APPROACHES

The sharp rise in electoral volatility in the last two decades calls for a new explanation of Western European party systems. The established party system theory—Lipset and Rokkan’s “freezing hypothesis”—is not confirmed by today’s data. But what framework should replace Lipset and Rokkan’s? One option is to focus on values in postmodern society, as French sociologist Alain Touraine does, by emphasizing how individualism trumps social cohesion formed by social cleavages. The rational-choice approach, combined with a principal-agent model perspective, offers another lens for exploring electoral volatility in Western Europe. In this paper, gross and net volatility are analysed with both Touraine’s sociological approach and with a new principal-agent model of political election, underlying dynamics.

Alain Touraine’s study on politics and democracy

Current article analyzes the influence of Alain Touraine’s ideas and theories on discourse on contemporary sociology and political sociology. How do structural transformations of society, processes of social fragmentation and atomization influence the essence of democracy, public consciousness, interaction between citizens and the state? Such global questions pose difficult tasks for scholars, who need to revise and renew the traditional approaches to be able to respond to challenges of our time. Controversial and deep heritage of Alain Touraine doesn’t give answers to all questions, but it’s able to generate new kinds of discourse in sociological community and this is the reason it’s still valuable.

Sociology’s interventions: Engaging the media and politics while remaining a social scientist

Public sociology implies not simply a general orientation to social research but also a methodology that connects the sociologist to a ‘public.’ This is the case, with some provisos, for the method of sociological intervention, invented by Alain Touraine, that I have pursued in studies of racism, anti-Semitism and terrorism, as well as of anti-nuclear and labor movements. The approach has led to complicated relations with the media and with politics. In this article I give a series of examples of such engagement and the dilemmas it creates for the sociologist who wants to maintain a critical distance. Ultimately, the question and the challenge of public sociology boil down to how one can intervene in social life and, at the same time, remain a social scientist.

The Idea of Revolution

Alain Touraine’s theory of revolution is so-called theory of the “end of revolution”. According to the author, while revolution was “the common trunk of the modern world”, universalism of reason (inherited from Enlightenment philosophy) and the understanding of modernity as a change are displaced with the particularism of identity-searching and the understanding of modernity as conflict, as a sustainable equilibrium transforming revolution into “anti-revolution”. The singularity of A. Touraine’s approach consists of the fact that he refuses to define revolution and social movements reciprocally, one through another, or to consider them as closely related, as does European tradition. “Sociology of action” offers the opposite vision. Where social movements do not appear (or in the absence of an “anti-movement”, as Touraine calls it), revolution is possible; conversely, where there are social movements, revolution cannot occur (although “anti-revolution” could take place). Revolution opposed social movements in the same way as the universalism of evolution opposed the particularism of history. Touraine defends the view of modernity as something in between these two oppositions. Modernity as a complex and conflict-filled “alloy” of the universalism of reason and technologies, and the particularism of cultural, national and class identities. The “end of the revolution” does not imply the end of history, the end of social change, the end of the politics, or the end of the non-institutional power struggle. Anti-revolution, of course, has revolutionary aspects, but the struggle of social movements with the pervasive influence of the large centralized State machinery is primarily defensive, not offensive in character, as it is in the case of the revolution Anti-revolution is not a struggle “for” power, or for reducing the distance between rulers and the ruled; it is “against” universalizing “programming”, and a struggle for “happiness” as an individualized (and often “populist”) vision of a society that corresponds to the group identity.

El movimiento magisterial de la región Ciénega de Jalisco: en busca de la apropiación de un campo de la historicidad

Ante las crisis economicas del Mexico de finales de los anos setenta y principios de la decada de los ochenta, un grupo de maestros de la region Cienega de Jalisco decidio organizarse como movimiento social para luchar por la reivindicacion de sus derechos laborales y sociales. Desde su origen se ha caracterizado por su intensa participacion politica en favor de la democratizacion del Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores de la Educacion (SNTE) y por una serie de estrategias innovadoras, entre las cuales destaca su empleo de las redes sociales. El sustento teorico de esta investigacion radica en los campos de la historicidad de Alain Touraine: formas de organizacion en las cuales la reforma institucional es disputada

Pós-protestantismo: descrição e análise de um caso de dissidência religiosa na comunidade rural Noiva do Cordeiro, em Belo Vale, MG

Noiva do Cordeiro is a rural community in Minas Gerais that forged an alternative way of life, radical and sustainable, which includes women's political leadership, asset sharing, working together, abolition of civil marriage, and the end of religion. Begun in 1891 with Dona Senhorinha de Lima, who would be excommunicated by the Catholic Church and socially rejected for having decided to leave an arranged marriage to live with another man, going through a period of forty years of isolated and austere community life in Evangelical Church Noiva do Cordeiro, the collective decision to abandon all forms of religion, in 1991, to reach the distinctive way of life today, the story of Noiva do Cordeiro is charged events and characters paradigmatic schisms and ruptures. In addition to presenting the history of the community, this article presents sociological theories and theological explanations for this post-religious, post-evangelical and post-social moment that the community is living, especially the thought of Paul Tillich, Karl Jaspers and Alain Touraine, their concepts of Protestant Principle, Constitution of subjects, and Being-itself.

After the crisis. For a future without marginalization by Alain Touraine

After the crisis. For a future without marginalization by Alain Touraine

Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age, by Geoffrey Pleyers

Geoffrey Pleyers Alter-Globalization: Becoming Actors in the Global Age, with a foreword by Alain Touraine. Polity Press: London, 2010, 272 pp: 9780745646763 16.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) The alternative globalisation movement has long lost its once impressive media exposure, and has seen many of its prominent Western actors fragment or even entirely vanish from the agenda of social movement politics in the past few years. Yet the movement has survived and become increasingly active in numerous other geographies and venues of struggle, where its silent development has led to and maintained a healthy scholarly interest. Following important recent contributions to the literature by Graham Chesters and Ian Welsh (2006), and Paul Routledge and Andrew Cumbers (2009), in Alter-Globalization, Geoffrey Pleyers offers a new analysis of the movement that aims to grasp its unique composition on a conceptual level. In Alter-Globalization, Pleyers undertakes a difficult challenge, attempting to capture the specificities of the movement by constructing a dyadic framework. The theoretical contribution is built on an impressive research design, which, in Pleyers's own words, was produced by collecting material in '250 activist meetings, over 800 lectures and numerous actions', and through '152 semi-directed interviews' (p. 31). Pleyers's 11-year journey to witness the maturation of a multifaceted global movement becomes the backbone of the book, in which a plethora of activist voices, on-site analyses of the social forum processes and individual narratives from ali over the world come together to form an engaging oral history of the movement. As challenging as it may be in terms of its scope and its subject matter, Pleyers's theorisation of the movement rests on a simple categorisation between two poles. Pleyers argues that the movement should be conceived of as the amalgamation of two distinct modes of organisation and conceptualisation of social change. He defines these two approaches as the 'way of subjectivity' and the 'way of reason'. The former is understood as the approach adopted by mostly non-affiliated activists or autonomous groups that prioritise transformation in everyday life through radical reconsideration of social relations. The latter, on the other hand, captures a form of 'institutional activism' which brings intellectuals, 'ordinary citizens' and issue-oriented NGOS to challenge established channels of policy-making by means of lobbying, campaigning and debunking the orthodoxies of global governance. According to Pleyers, these two poles are based on different visions of 'another world', and they produce distinct methodologies and forms of action. While the way of subjectivity is taken up by those who are disillusioned with traditional social movement politics, and by activists who attempt to create 'spaces of experience' by building non-hierarchical, horizontal networks, the way of reason provides 'spaces of expertise' which 'aim to produce rational arguments in order to reinforce active citizenship' (p. 178). Put simply, Pleyers's framework is an elaborate reconstruction of the horizontalism/verticalism debate (see De Angelis, 2004; Nunes, 2005), but it also enhances the boundaries of contention by bringing other questions into the equation. The book is divided into four parts in which Pleyers unpacks his formula by dissecting various manifestations of the movement around the world. The main contribution of the book is offered in parts 2, 3 and 4 where detailed analyses of the aforementioned approaches and their convergence within the movement are presented. Starting with the way of subjectivity, Pleyers carefully builds his narrative by entering into a dialogue with Zapatistas, piqueteros and various other autonomous struggles, which aim to organise 'places sufficiently autonomous and distanced from capitalist society' (p. 39, emphasis in original). While, unsurprisingly, Zapatismo is portrayed as a major influence for the activists of the way of subjectivity, Pleyers refrains from romanticisation, and remains sensitive to the shortcomings and limitations of 'spaces of experience'. …

Teaching IS to the Information Society using an “Informing Science” Perspective

Introduction In a 2003 article, Nicholas Carr argued that, as the availability of information technology (IT) continued to increase and its costs continued to decrease, IT's ability to provide competitive advantage to organizations would diminish and eventually cease to matter (Carr, 2003). Many counter-arguments notwithstanding, it is clear that certain aspects of in organizations will indeed change in focus due to commoditization, on the one hand, and disruptive developments such as peer-to-peer computing, cloud and social computing on the other. These developments have already dramatically changed the ways by which affects individuals, organizations, and societies, and vice versa. What do these developments mean to the information systems (IS) field? The IS field is no longer just about the effective use of information systems in organizations. Instead, all IS professionals require a deeper level of understanding and proficiency on how to be effective in this complex, networked, information-rich global cyber facilitated by IT--that some have referred to as the Information Society. (We use the term IT interchangeably with ICT or Information and Communications Technologies. Today's cannot be separated from the communications technologies that enable even the most basic implementation). We examine the concept of the Information Society in greater detail in the next section, but argue that the notion of the Information Society--one which permeates all aspects of society--has, in turn, important ramifications for IS education. To be successful in today's Information Society IS graduates must not only know how to design, develop, and maintain information systems; they must also be keenly aware of the societal realities wrought and perpetuated by information technologies. They must be proficient not only with the mechanics of their profession, but also on all new developments and related aspects. It is critical for IS educators and students alike to recognize the trans-disciplinary nature of information systems. We therefore submit that IS education, regardless of geographic location, should take on more of an science approach as elucidated by Cohen (2009)--that the purpose of IS education is not to focus narrowly on managing information systems within organizations, or on specific topics such as systems analysis or data management, but instead to take a larger, sociotechnical perspective that seeks to inform managers, employees, and individuals about the Information Society in which they are all participants. There is another critical reason for taking this approach to IS education: it has been noted for several years now that the MIS academic discipline is failing in its role as informer to its external clients. This is noted by Gill and Battacherjee (2007), who comprehensively analyzed the impact of MIS academic publication outlets among practitioners. They noted that observations strongly suggest that the MIS disciplinary informing system supports very limited pathways, at best, from its sender side (researchers) to its practitioner clients (Gill & Bhattacherjee, 2007. p. 25). The IS graduate, i.e., the output of the MIS discipline, thus becomes an important component--the informer, as well as enabler of organizations and societies. This adds even more imperative to our central idea about making the IS curriculum more rooted in the Informing Science philosophy--i.e., teaching the Information Society. What is the Information Society? First, we need to gain a deeper understanding of what the term Information Society means. There is no single established definition for the phrase Information Society. It has often been used interchangeably with Nico Stehr's knowledge society (Stehr, 1999), Manuel Castells' and Jan van Dijk's network society (Castells, 1996; van Dijk, 1999), and Alain Touraine's post-industrial society (Touraine, 1988). …

La méthode de l'intervention sociologique

Résumé La méthode de l’intervention sociologique, élaborée et mise en œuvre par Alain Touraine, est à l’origine d’enquêtes et d’ouvrages importants en sociologie. Toutefois, elle est restée dans l’ombre et demeure utilisée par un cercle plutôt étroit de chercheurs. Cet article lie donc deux aspects : il rappelle les grands principes de la méthode, tout en précisant les évolutions qu’elle a connues en passant de la problématique du mouvement social à la compréhension des problèmes sociaux ; il interroge ensuite la singularité de la méthode au regard des différentes modalités d’entretiens collectifs. Il apparaît alors que, originale et exigeante, l’intervention sociologique est aussi par certains aspects proche d’autres méthodes réflexives de groupe.

Introduction: Addressing the politics of fear. The challenge posed by pluralism to Europe

The introduction to this issue is meant to address the ways in which turbulent immigration is challenging European democratic countries’ capacity to integrate the pluralism of cultures in light of the current state of economic instability, strong public debt, unemployment and an aging resident population. The Reset-Dialogues on Civilizations Association has organized its annual İstanbul Seminars in order to fill the need for constructive dialogue dedicated to increasing understanding and implementing social and political change. Turkey’s accession to the European Union represents in this light a challenge to our liberal views, which must become more open-minded in order to address adequately cultural and religious differences, Islam included. We must set ourselves the task of finding a new perspective so that we may defuse the populist radicalization, fear-mongering politicians and xenophobia that are emerging in many countries. Yet it is equally essential that we reconfigure and recontextualize the traditional secular battle for freedom from the dominance of the Christian majority away from a binary opposition to a plural dimension that takes into account other religious communities. After introducing the major challenges our seminars were organized to address, the introduction will summarize and explain the articulation of the contents of this issue in the following three parts: (1) realigning liberalism in the context of globalization (with contributions by Nilüfer Göle, Alain Touraine, Albena Azmanova, Stephen Macedo, Zygmunt Bauman); (2) different paths: towards modernity and democracy from within different cultures and religions (Fred Dallmayr, Sadik Al Azm, Irfan Ahmad, Ibrahim Kalin); and (3) philosophical presuppositions of intercultural dialogue and multiculturalism (Maeve Cooke, Sebastiano Maffettone, Volker Kaul).

Doubt as Methodology and Object in the Phenomenology of Religion

The Holy Grail in the phenomenology of religion (and, to a lesser extent, the sociology of religion) is a definition of religion that actually works, but, so far, this seems to have been elusive. Classical definitions of religion—substantive (e.g. Tylor) and functionalist (e.g. Durkheim)—fail, in part because they attempt to be in three places at once, as it were: they attempt to distinguish religion from non-religion; they attempt to capture what religions have in common; and they attempt to grasp the 'heart', or 'core', of religion. Consequently, family resemblance definitions of religion replace certainty and precision for its own sake with a more pragmatic and heuristic approach, embracing doubt and putting forward definitions that give us a better understanding (Verstehen) of religion. In this paper, I summarise some 'new' definitions of religion that take this approach, before proposing and defending another one, defining religion as non-propositional and 'apophatic', thus accepting that doubt is central to religion itself, as well as to the analysis of religion.

Badanie zespołu Alaina Touraine’a nad Solidarnością. Historia i konsekwencje

Alain Touraine arrived in Poland in 1981 with a theoretically elaborated and empirically tested research programme. He engaged a few young Polish sociologists to his research group. The team members had an opportunity — both during the research and later in 1980s when they visited him in France — to get to know his sociology of new social movements. The article is an attempt to show how the experience of contact with the French sociologist was inscribed in changes which took place in Polish sociology and which were named “the antipositivist turn”.

Social theory: twenty introductory lectures

Introduction 1. What is theory? 2. The classical attempt at synthesis: Talcott Parsons 3. Parsons on the road to normativist functionalism 4. Parsons and the elaboration of normativist functionalism 5. Neo-utilitarianism 6. Interpretive approaches (1): symbolic interactionism 7. Interpretive approaches (2): ethnomethodology 8. Conflict sociology and conflict theory 9. Habermas and critical theory 10. Habermas' 'theory of communicative action' 11. Niklas Luhmann's radicalization of functionalism 12. Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration and the new British sociology of power 13. The renewal of Parsonianism and modernization theory 14. Structuralism and poststructuralism 15. Between structuralism and theory of practice: the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu 16. French anti-structuralists (Cornelius Castoriadis, Alain Touraine and Paul Ricoeur) 17. Feminist social theories 18. A crisis of modernity? New diagnoses (Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, Robert Bellah, and the debate between liberals and communitarians) 19. Neopragmatism 20. How things stand Bibliography.

The Emergence of a New Social Movement: Social Networks and Collective Action on Water Issues in Guelph, Ontario

For new social movement theorists, changes in Western capitalist societies brought about by the transition from an industrial to a post-industrial era are fundamental to understanding the formation, structure, and operation of new social movements. Using observational and interview data from a 2008 World Water Day rally, this article draws on and examines theoretical contributions of New Social Movement theorists Alain Touraine, Alberto Melucci, and Claus Offe to inform an exploration and analysis of growing collective action on water issues in Guelph, Ontario. The authors argue that growing citizen engagement in water issues in Guelph and area, operating primarily through loosely organized informal social networks, represents growing collective action that constitutes a vibrant New Social Movement. So conceptualized, the authors discuss implications for theoretical understandings of citizen mobilization in general and for the strengthening of collective action on water itself.

Touraine, Burawoy, Gramsci: do social ao político

O ensaio empreende uma discussão da proposta da sociologia pública de Michael Burawoy, nos anos 2000, a partir da confrontação com a intervenção sociológica de Alain Touraine, formulada nos anos 1970. Pontos de contato são detectados no que diz respeito à relação entre pesquisador e pesquisado, como atores sociais. Problemas e limitações, tanto da intervenção sociológica quanto da sociologia pública, são elencados, trazendo-se como apoio exemplos extraídos de trabalho de campo próprio. O texto vale-se também da inspiração de Antonio Gramsci e sua concepção da relação entre senso comum e intelectuais. Ao invés de um juízo conclusivo, propõe-se um diálogo entre os autores, todos preocupados, à sua maneira, com o destino público ou cívico do conhecimento obtido sobre o mundo social.

Gli effetti della demodernizzazione e della perdita d’individuazione nell’opera di Isabella Santacroce

This paper aims to define the issue of identity and the problems raised by globalization in relation to the search for the Self. The sociological theories of Zygmunt Bauman and Alain Touraine, specifically concerning the loss of perception on the Self, together with the loss of any reference structures typical of modern society such as family, sexuality and ethics, underpin the analysis. As Bauman points out in his works, postmodern society – or as he called it ‘liquid modernity’ – has a very strong impact on the postmodern subject, leaving him/her alone in the existential fight against the global and mass society. In this paper these theories find application in Isabella Santacroce’s works, specifically in the books where the main characters deal more evidently with the search for the Self as it collides with their families – in whom they do not recognize any morality, thus attempting to find a respite from the sorrow of psychological uncertainty through the abuse of alcohol. Similarly, these young characters misuse sexuality by making the female body an instrument of domination. In this “post-human” perspective, the characters expose their social malaise by degrading themselves in promiscuity and prostitution. Sexuality, on the other hand, also becomes the only chance to still enter into close contact with the other, a human contact that can bring love and a new dialogue.

Laïcité and the Challenge of ‘Republicanism’

This article examines how, with the aid of leading French intellectuals, the debate about laïcité and the Islamic headscarf apparently became transformed into a consensus in favour of banning the garment from state schools. It shows how ‘combative laïcité’, styled by its proponents as ‘laïcité républicaine’, triumphed with the assistance of figures who, in Gramsci's terms, played the role of ‘organic intellectuals’. The volte-face of sociologist Alain Touraine is emblematic of this process. In 1989, when Régis Debray, Alain Finkielkraut and other intellectuals called for a ban on the Islamic headscarf, Touraine spearheaded a counter-manifesto in favour of ‘une laïcité ouverte’. In 2003, however, Touraine joined other members of a presidentially appointed Commission in recommending that the headscarf be banned, paving the way for legislation passed in 2004 with the support of a wide consensus among politicians, intellectuals and the public at large.