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Section : Doctorate school - 2nd Year - Crete 2006

« Changing social structures. Theoretical and methodological approach. »

Crete – September 2006

For twenty years, the structures of our modern societies have been deeply reorganised under the combined influence of neoliberalism, politics that have been implementing political spaces above States, and technological progress that has been responsible for the relocation of individuals and activities. Furthermore, modern means of communication enable the dissemination of information of all kinds in real-time and all over the world: stock market information which is essential to the development of financial capitalism, and also media-like information which participates in the production and the wide distribution of quite distorted social representations of the different national realities and therefore have a specific impact on migrating trends. This increasing internationalisation of social relations has some impact on the reorganisation of various national societies. Thus, the poverty and the insecurity of a growing portion of society, the increasing flexibility of labour, and job insecurity are responsible for a more indistinct definition of social categories, be they scholar or popular, and for a representation crisis regarding work related issues. To what extent are we not witnessing a major shift in the way domination works, the effective and concrete “boss” with which employees would negotiate their work conditions disappearing and being replaced by anonymous and inaccessible decision-making bodies incarnating the theoretical and purely financial logic of the market? The crisis that is striking the education system in Europe gives some indication about how necessary yet insufficient an institution it is as far as the access to various social positions is concerned. But it remains a socially selective and legitimating institution. What are the different educational strategies chosen by families of different social origins? What is the impact of the increasing number of people from the new generation getting into the education system on the structures of contemporary societies? Which role do the educational capital and more generally the cultural capital play in the structuring of the social world? Is the economic capital becoming more and more structuring, including of the education system through the social segregation factors of housing and the increasing cost of studies in private and public higher education?

This colloquium will also question the structural transformations within the various social fields (scientific, artistic, political etc.) and will gather experts who can give an account, based on their researches, of similar or different changing phenomenons according to their empirical field.

Meanwhile, ESSE’s doctoral school will give a comparative analysis of the theoretical and methodological approaches within the various national contexts in order to underline the fact that the sociological representation of social change may vary because of intercultural discrepancies.

These are major themes which have been looked at by Pierre Bourdieu (particularly in Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, Distinction, The State Nobility). Although he based his work on empirical data that necessarily referred to a specific time, he nevertheless managed to build theoretical tools (among which the concepts of habitus, capital and field) which can be applied to other objects. One can then say that Bourdieu’s theory is not only a theory of his time, but one needs to take into account the fact that his objects have changed. Because societies are permanently changing, concrete sociological analyses have to be constantly re-built, which can be done without radically challenge the old theory. However, one must be careful not to take older explanations for granted when applying them to newer social realities. It was Bourdieu himself who asked that his theory and his methodology should be confronted to new realities, through a comparative study of social transformations.

“ESSE summer university” 2006 wishes to welcome young researchers who question these matters. In addition to presenting their empirical studies, they will have to compare these researches in order to challenge or verify Bourdieu’s analyses based on French data from the years 1960-1980.

More concretely, this summer school will be organised according to its educational goals: to give a theoretical and methodological training. Therefore, we plan on inviting academics which are specialised in methodological issues (analysis of correspondences, analysis of content, biographical interviews etc.) as well as well-known theoreticians. Some time will also be dedicated to the presentation of the current work of the participating PhD students.

Doctorate students who wish to participate to the summer school will have to send their Master (electronic version) and their PhD project by pointing their theoretical and methodological approaches, to the following address esse@socio.unige.ch, and they are asked to mention the fact that it is an application form for the ESSE summer school 2006. A commission including three teachers will examine and choose among the applications.

Application schedule: November 15th, 2005: opening applications for the 2006 summer school February 15th, 2006: closing applications May 1st, 2006: applications selected * Travel and housing costs are supposedly paid by ESSE. However, in order to avoid withdrawals, we plan on asking participants to pay for their admission costs (from 50 to 100 euros) which will be refunded later.

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