The French sociological tradition has long regarded the ‘individual’ as a reality situated outside its area of intellection and investigation. According to Durkheim, the individual is a psychological object par excellence. Sociology has thus long favored the study of collectives (groups, classes, categories, institutions, microcosms), suggesting that the individual was a reality which, in itself, fell short of the social. The article discusses a method from the mid-1990s of researching sociology at an individual scale. This approach is essentially embedded in (...) the French sociological tradition, from Durkheim to Bourdieu via Halbwachs, despite the inflections and criticisms it might have of this tradition, while also drawing on the main theoretical knowledge of Norbert Elias’ relational and process-focused sociology. From empirical realization in methodological and theoretical reflexivity, this research program has progressed in dialog with various types of scientific knowledge more classically oriented toward the individual and their mental realities, such as cultural psychology, psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology or the neurosciences. (shrink)

S’interroger sur les variations intra-individuelles des comportements culturels, et notamment chercher à saisir les variations du degré de légitimité culturelle des goûts et des pratiques, selon le domaine ou le type de pratique considéré, permet de respecter un peu plus que d’ordinaire la complexité des patrimoines de dispositions et de compétences culturelles individuels. Mais la construction de profils culturels individuels rend nécessaire un retour réflexif sur les présupposés des habitudes intellectuelles qui consistent : 1) à agréger des individus dans des (...) groupes ou des catégories sur la base de propriétés communes ; 2) à lister les traits les plus fréquemment attachés statistiquement à ces groupes ou à ces catégories et 3) à brosser un portrait idéaltypique du groupe et de sa culture.Examining intra-individual variations of cultural behaviours, and in particular the varying degrees of cultural legitimacy of tastes and practices according to the sphere or type of practice considered, is a way of showing more than the usual respect for the complexity of individual inheritances of cultural dispositions and competences. But the construction of individual cultural profiles makes it necessary to look closer at the underlying assumptions of some intellectual habits. These consist of : 1) aggregating individuals in categories or groups on the basis of common properties ; 2) listing the features most frequently associated statistically with these categories or groups and 3) painting an idealtypical portrait of the group and its culture. (shrink)

En 1657, Nicolas Poussin peint une Fuite en Égypte au voyageur couché. La toile disparaît ensuite pendant plusieurs siècles. Dans les années 1980, plusieurs versions du tableau réapparaissent, de grands experts mondiaux s'opposent, des laboratoires d'analyse et des tribunaux s'en mêlent et nombreux sont ceux - galeristes, experts, directeurs de musée, conservateurs, etc. - à vouloir authentifier et s'approprier le chef-d'oeuvre. L'une des versions sera finalement acquise pour 17 millions d'euros par le musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. De quoi nous (...) parle cette histoire aux allures d'intrigue policière? Pourquoi une telle débauche d'énergie, de controverses et d'argent pendant autant d'années? Qu'est-ce qui fait la valeur - économique, esthétique - d'une oeuvre d'art? Et d'où vient cette aura attachée aux créateurs et aux oeuvres? (shrink)

La frontière entre légitimité et illégitimité culturelles ne sépare pas seulement les pratiques des différentes classes sociales, mais divise plus ou moins fortement, dans toutes les classes, les différentes pratiques et préférences culturelles des mêmes individus. Les processus de distinction culturelle ne mettent donc pas seulement en jeu les classes sociales et leurs luttes symboliques pour le monopole de la définition légitime des goûts légitimes, mais concernent tout aussi bien la variation intra-individuelle des pratiques. La figure du «populaire» sert ainsi (...) fréquemment de repoussoir dans les luttes de soi contre soi que mènent tous ceux qui, étant donné la mixité de leurs pratiques culturelles, expriment une peur de la régression ou de la chute culturelles. Si le monde social est, sans conteste, un champ de luttes entre groupes ou classes, les individus aux profils culturels hétérogènes ou dissonants sont souvent eux-mêmes les arènes d'une lutte des classements.The boundary between "cultural legitimacy" and "cultural illegitimacy" separates not only the different social classes, but also the different cultural practices and preferences of the same individuals in all classes. The cultural distinction process bring into play not only social classes and their symbolic struggles for the monopoly of legitimate definition of legitimate tastes, but also the intra-individual variation of behaviours. The "popular" figure frequently serves also as a foil in the struggles of oneself against oneself {illegitimate) that lead all those who express a fear of cultural regression or fall because of their cultural practices mixity. If social world is, indisputably, a field of struggles between groups or classes, individuals characterized by heterogeneous or dissonant cultural profiles are themselves often the arenas of a classifications' struggle. (shrink)

Kafka and the Work of Domination Is it reasonable to look for an apprehension of the practices of domination in the œuvre of a writer ? To be more specific, in the writings of Kafka whose short stories and novels are characterised by their formal innovations and their break with the codes of realist narration ? The social and historical analysis of his work clearly demonstrates that Kafka constantly strove to elucidate the mechanisms of the domination which he personally had (...) suffered from , and which he had been able to observe in various professional contexts : the family clothes-shop, the bureaucratic world of an insurance company dealing with accidents at work, the companies he visited as an assessor of the professional risks to which workers were liable through their contact with machines, or the family asbestos factory. Through his representation of a range of situations which are oppressive, alienating, and frequently humiliating, to which the dominated parties participate, involuntarily and frequently unconsciously, Kafka was proceeding with his vast enterprise aimed at self-knowledge and the knowledge of inter-human relations. (shrink)

Kafka n’a jamais cessé, à travers ses textes littéraires, de mener l’analyse du pouvoir et des effets durables, sur les dominés, d’une constitution de leurs dispositions à voir, à sentir et à agir dans le cadre même de leurs relations aux pouvoirs. Partant de la volonté d’éclairer son expérience intime de la domination, de la culpabilisation et de la dévalorisation de soi, il n’a eu de cesse de déchiffrer les rapports de domination et les modalités d’action et de réaction des (...) dominés partout où il pouvait les observer : dans sa propre famille, dans le magasin paternel, dans l’usine familiale, sur son lieu de travail, dans les entreprises visitées pour le compte de sa compagnie d’assurances, dans les rapports hommes-femmes, dans les événements politiques et sociaux de son époque ou dans les interactions les plus ordinaires de la vie urbaine. (shrink)

Où commencent et òu s'arrêtent les domaines respectifs du sociologue et du psychologue? Durkheim se montre-t-il impérialiste lorsqu'il écrit que «la psychologie est destinée à se renouveler en partie» sous l'influence de la recherche sociologique ou lorsqu'il affirme que «toute la sociologie est une psychologie», au risque de brouiller les frontières disciplinaires? En fait, l'évolution des perceptions concernant ce qui est sociologique et ce qui ne l'est pas soulève le délicat problème de la définition du «social». Cet article défend l'idée (...) selon laquelle, pour gagner en autonomie scientifique et accroître son champ d'intelligibilité, la sociologie doit accepter la diversité des échelles d'observation et intégrer à la liste des variations de comportements sociologiquement étudiables les variations inter-individuelles et intra-individuelles des comportements laissées jusque-là à la psychologie.Where do the borders lie between the sociological and psychological domains? Was Durkheim showing an imperialist side when he wrote that "psychology is destined to be partly renewed" under the influence of sociological research or when he asserted that "the whole sociology is a psychology" and was he at risk of making the borders seem even less clear? In fact, the evolution of perceptions about what is sociological and what is not raises the tricky question of the definition of what is "social". This article argues that if sociology is to gain greater scientific autonomy and increase its field of intelligibility, then it must accept the diversity of the range of its observation. Within the list of sociologically studied behavioural variations it must include the interindividual and intra-individual variations that, until now, have been left to psychology. (shrink)

In 2008, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon acquired a painting called The Flight into Egypt which was attributed to the French artist Nicolas Poussin. Thought to have been painted in 1657, the painting had gone missing for more than three centuries. Several versions were rediscovered in the 1980s and one was passed from hand to hand, from a family who had no idea of its value to gallery owners and eventually to the museum. A painting that had been sold (...) as a decorative object in 1986 for around 12,000 euros was acquired two decades later by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon for 17 million euros. What does this remarkable story tell us about the nature of art and the way that it is valued? How is it that what seemed to be just an ordinary canvas could be transformed into a masterpiece, that a decorative object could become a national treasure? This is a story permeated by social magic the social alchemy that transforms lead into gold, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the profane into the sacred. Focusing on this extraordinary case, Bernard Lahire lays bare the beliefs and social processes that underpin the creation of a masterpiece. Like a detective piecing together the clues in an unsolved mystery he carefully reconstructs the steps that led from the same material object being treated as a copy of insignificant value to being endowed with the status of a highly-prized painting commanding a record-breaking price. He thereby shows that a painting is never just a painting, and is always more than a piece of stretched canvass to which brush strokes of paint have been applied: this object, and the value we attach to it, is also the product of a complex array of social processes – with its distinctive institutions and experts – that lies behind it. And through the history of this painting, Lahire uncovers some of the fundamental structures of our social world. For the social magic that can transform a painting from a simple copy into a masterpiece is similar to the social magic that is present throughout our societies, in economics and politics as much as art and religion, a magic that results from the spell cast by power on those who tacitly recognize its authority. By following the trail of a single work of art, Lahire interrogates the foundations on which our perceptions of value and our belief in institutions rest and exposes the forms of domination which lie hidden behind our admiration of works of art. (shrink)