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- Historiography, Emile Durkheim, Crowd Behaviour and Psychology, Testimony, Great War, First World War, and 19 moreViolence, Holocaust Studies, Ritual, Durkheimian Studies, Hertz Robert, Social Movements, Historical Sociology, Collective Behavior, Political Sociology, Social Movement, Sociological Theory, Contemporary History, 20th century France, First World War Literature, Social History, Class, French History, Microhistory, and Socio-Histoireedit
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Quels sont les liens ordinaires des Français à la politique ? Les études réunies dans ce volume reprennent cette question classique en montrant tout à la fois ce que la politique signifie dans les situations routinières et quotidiennes... more
Quels sont les liens ordinaires des Français à la politique ? Les études réunies dans ce volume reprennent cette question classique en montrant tout à la fois ce que la politique signifie dans les situations routinières et quotidiennes des citoyens, en quoi les rapports au politique sont inscrits dans des trajectoires biographiques autant individuelles que collectives, et finalement ce qu'est le « cours ordinaire » de nos sociétés démocratiques. L'analyse de ces rapports profanes au politique est conduite à partir de terrains très variés, depuis les lieux d'habitation ou de travail jusqu'aux rares situations de contact avec les élus, en passant par la reconstitution détaillée du lien qu'un seul individu entretient avec la politique le temps d'une campagne présidentielle.
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This article discusses the shared idea that dehumanization plays a fundamental role in mass killings, helping executioners in no longer perceiving as fellow human beings those they had to kill. Using perpetrators' letters and judicial... more
This article discusses the shared idea that dehumanization plays a fundamental role in mass killings, helping executioners in no longer perceiving as fellow human beings those they had to kill. Using perpetrators' letters and judicial interrogations from German people involved in the War in the East between 1941 and 1944, the article questions what some of the killers say about their victims' attitudes and actions, and their observations of them. It examines the recognition of attitudes of humanity by some of the executioners themselves and asks a simple question: What are we to do with these traces? The answer is that these last exchanges between some executioners and their victims deserve our attention because they compel us to argue that the executioners killed in spite of having sometimes recognized the humanity of their victims. Such an argument (killing nonetheless) has strong implications for interpretations of extreme violence.
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The First World War has been described as an exceptional moment of comradeship, so great that it was able to break even the strongest class barriers. Were social distances and class hierarchies temporarily forgotten or abolished for the... more
The First World War has been described as an exceptional moment of comradeship, so great that it was able to break even the strongest class barriers. Were social distances and class hierarchies temporarily forgotten or abolished for the millions of Frenchmen of diverse origins who were called to arms in defense of their country? The article is about this novel experiment , provoking encounters and contacts on a huge scale and often for the first time, between an overwhelming majority of manual workers and petty employees of humble extraction, and a small number of bourgeois and intellectuals. It tells the story of the discovery, by the French bourgeoisie of the Belle Epoque, of the ordinary people who fought in the trenches.
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The historiography of the Holocaust’s victims is mainly written from a selection of survivors’ testimonies. In this chapter we propose to adopt a prosopographical approach based on archives. This allows comparing all persecution... more
The historiography of the Holocaust’s victims is mainly written from a selection of survivors’ testimonies. In this chapter we propose to adopt a prosopographical approach based on archives. This allows comparing all persecution trajectories: those of the dead as those of the survivors. The contribution shows how micro analysis is compatible with quantitative methods. Drawing on the case of the Jewish community of Lens, in northern France, the making of a collective biography questions the role and the weight of social determinants (sex, age, family size, income or nationality) in the choices made by families and individuals (to leave or not its home, switch identity or not, etc.). Finally, the chapter highlights a few limitations of this approach, mainly the difficulty to reflect the chronological changes.
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This short paper aims to revisit what researchers do when they attempt, through questionnaires, interviews, or archives, to collect actors’ beliefs about highly regulated and institutionalized events (such as exams, ceremonies, official... more
This short paper aims to revisit what researchers do when they attempt, through questionnaires, interviews, or archives, to collect actors’ beliefs about highly regulated and institutionalized events (such as exams, ceremonies, official speeches, etc.). Three cases of non-response in surveys are examined in an attempt to interpret these silences. What do they indicate? At the end of this study, two points of view are advanced. The first is that collecting reasons is often a pointless exercise because it only serves to demonstrate the infinite diversity of actors’ reactions. The second is that it is problematic in the sense that the quest for beliefs leads the researcher to forget that, very often, the actors manage very well without them while still behaving “as they ought.” It is a question of activities where individual actions can be supported by social institutions.
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Bypassing Birkenau, Autumn 1942 : Re-examining the diary of SS-Doctor Johann Paul Kremer in Auschwitz The article takes another look at a classic document in the historiography of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex: the diary that SS doctor... more
Bypassing Birkenau, Autumn 1942 : Re-examining the diary of SS-Doctor Johann Paul Kremer in Auschwitz
The article takes another look at a classic document in the historiography of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex: the diary that SS doctor Johann Paul Kremer kept during his stay at the camp, between early September and the end of November 1942. After examining the judicial, historiographical and negationist purposes for which this document has been exploited, we demonstrate the interest of cross-referencing this Nazi source, contemporaneous with the camp’s industrial-scale implementation of murder, with individual data regarding the Jewish victims, made available by the International Tracing Service (ITS). This diary is one of the very few sources allowing us to establish a precise and accurate date not for the disappearance, but in fact for the murder of thousands of deportees from Western Europe between the summer and winter of 1942.
The article takes another look at a classic document in the historiography of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex: the diary that SS doctor Johann Paul Kremer kept during his stay at the camp, between early September and the end of November 1942. After examining the judicial, historiographical and negationist purposes for which this document has been exploited, we demonstrate the interest of cross-referencing this Nazi source, contemporaneous with the camp’s industrial-scale implementation of murder, with individual data regarding the Jewish victims, made available by the International Tracing Service (ITS). This diary is one of the very few sources allowing us to establish a precise and accurate date not for the disappearance, but in fact for the murder of thousands of deportees from Western Europe between the summer and winter of 1942.
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The Vicissitudes of Interdisciplinarity. Genèses and the French Social Sciences. Interdisciplinarity has become a buzzword in the academic world. This article examines how the goal has effectively been pursued in Genèses, a French social... more
The Vicissitudes of Interdisciplinarity. Genèses and the French Social Sciences.
Interdisciplinarity has become a buzzword in the academic world. This article examines how the goal has effectively been pursued in Genèses, a French social scientific journal established in 1990 in order to foster interdisciplinary exchanges. Based on bibliometric methods, it studies the everyday practice of interdisciplinary discussion. Three levels of analysis are analyzed in turn : firstly the interconnections between French social scientific publications ; second the authors of Genèses, whose properties have significantly evolved since its creation and third the references that are made within the articles, that offer a glimpse into other, more suddle forms of hybridization. From this specific but telling site, this article shows a decline in the practice of interdisciplinarity in the French social sciences in the last two decades.
Interdisciplinarity has become a buzzword in the academic world. This article examines how the goal has effectively been pursued in Genèses, a French social scientific journal established in 1990 in order to foster interdisciplinary exchanges. Based on bibliometric methods, it studies the everyday practice of interdisciplinary discussion. Three levels of analysis are analyzed in turn : firstly the interconnections between French social scientific publications ; second the authors of Genèses, whose properties have significantly evolved since its creation and third the references that are made within the articles, that offer a glimpse into other, more suddle forms of hybridization. From this specific but telling site, this article shows a decline in the practice of interdisciplinarity in the French social sciences in the last two decades.
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Lecture pour Genèses
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“I think they don’t hate me”. Throughout the Great War men from different social milieu found themselves compelled to live together. In some cases, trust could take root. In others, the expression of social disgust took hold. This article... more
“I think they don’t hate me”. Throughout the Great War men from different social milieu found themselves compelled to live together. In some cases, trust could take root. In others, the expression of social disgust took hold. This article concerns the written traces of these expressions of hostility. It explains why they appeared and have lasted only in the learned testimonials written day to day. For members of the lettered bourgeoisie of the period, they were first of all a reaction to discovering their own alterity. But as the conflict drew out, tales of the other confirm writings’nature as a class exercise. Writings from the front not only bear witness to social promiscuity, they are an expression of a practice of intellectual self-reclamation.
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« With whom are we writing history ». How many published eyewitnesses have the attentions of specialists in the First World War ? What proportion do they represent of the sum of « available » authors ? And most importantly, who are they... more
« With whom are we writing history ».
How many published eyewitnesses have the attentions of specialists in the First World War ? What proportion do they represent of the sum of « available » authors ? And most importantly, who are they ? Based on a tally of French witnesses mentioned in the indices of academic texts devoted to the world of combatants, this article aims to evaluate the size and uses of the corpus of authors actually shared by researchers. At the end of the analysis, the article shows both the bourgeois nature of the common textual content used in French historiography in the 2000s, and how narrow it is : of a total of sixty witnesses, nearly all came from the learned elite of the Belle Époque. The article concludes in evoking some of the problems this overrepresentation of upper-class authors raises in writings about the conflict.
How many published eyewitnesses have the attentions of specialists in the First World War ? What proportion do they represent of the sum of « available » authors ? And most importantly, who are they ? Based on a tally of French witnesses mentioned in the indices of academic texts devoted to the world of combatants, this article aims to evaluate the size and uses of the corpus of authors actually shared by researchers. At the end of the analysis, the article shows both the bourgeois nature of the common textual content used in French historiography in the 2000s, and how narrow it is : of a total of sixty witnesses, nearly all came from the learned elite of the Belle Époque. The article concludes in evoking some of the problems this overrepresentation of upper-class authors raises in writings about the conflict.
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DIFFERENT REGIONS, UNEQUAL CASUALTIES ? SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF FIRST WORLD WAR DEATHS AND ITS PROBLEMS This paper discusses the statistical analysis of French soldiers’ death during the Great War, on a methodological, empirical and... more
DIFFERENT REGIONS, UNEQUAL CASUALTIES ?
SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF FIRST WORLD WAR DEATHS AND ITS PROBLEMS
This paper discusses the statistical analysis of French soldiers’ death during the Great War, on a methodological, empirical and historiographical level. It shows that such a research derives from a specific context in which wartime regional identities have attracted a growing interest among scholars and the general public. It emphasizes the convincing results of this geographical study, namely, the fact that no regions appear to have suffered excessive casualties with regard to their social and economic characteristics. Finally, some further lines of enquiry, among which the possibility of collective research projects focusing on the wealth of numerised sources, are discussed.
SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF FIRST WORLD WAR DEATHS AND ITS PROBLEMS
This paper discusses the statistical analysis of French soldiers’ death during the Great War, on a methodological, empirical and historiographical level. It shows that such a research derives from a specific context in which wartime regional identities have attracted a growing interest among scholars and the general public. It emphasizes the convincing results of this geographical study, namely, the fact that no regions appear to have suffered excessive casualties with regard to their social and economic characteristics. Finally, some further lines of enquiry, among which the possibility of collective research projects focusing on the wealth of numerised sources, are discussed.
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Why Did Students Die en Masse in 1914–1918? A Structural Explanation. École Normale Supérieure in Rue d’Ulm is regularly mentioned when historians summarize the ravages of World War I in France as this institution embodies the commitment... more
Why Did Students Die en Masse in 1914–1918? A Structural Explanation.
École Normale Supérieure in Rue d’Ulm is regularly mentioned when historians summarize the ravages of World War I in France as this institution embodies the commitment of intellectuals on the front line. This paper offers an interpretation of mortality rates in this institution that allows us to understand why it is primarily students (namely the 1910–1913 cohorts) who were heavily affected. Rather than basing the interpretation on the single assumption of sacrifice, it puts forward arguments pertaining to the history of the Institution in the immediate pre-war period, including the introduction of military training following the 1905 reform of the military service, competition with the École Polytechnique to retain the best science students, and finally, the forced commitment of its students in the territorial army.
École Normale Supérieure in Rue d’Ulm is regularly mentioned when historians summarize the ravages of World War I in France as this institution embodies the commitment of intellectuals on the front line. This paper offers an interpretation of mortality rates in this institution that allows us to understand why it is primarily students (namely the 1910–1913 cohorts) who were heavily affected. Rather than basing the interpretation on the single assumption of sacrifice, it puts forward arguments pertaining to the history of the Institution in the immediate pre-war period, including the introduction of military training following the 1905 reform of the military service, competition with the École Polytechnique to retain the best science students, and finally, the forced commitment of its students in the territorial army.
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Does One need a Reason to kill ? This articles presents a critical review of several works that examine the explanations given for violence in war. It proposes to take a very close look at the postulates which form the basis for... more
Does One need a Reason to kill ?
This articles presents a critical review of several works that examine the explanations given for violence in war. It proposes to take a very close look at the postulates which form the basis for approaches focused on unearthing “systems of beliefs”. It underscores the problems raised by such approaches : How should witnesses be selected and how much importance should they be given ? Can one make the culture of war an explanatory motive for behaviours without demonstrating the shared, active nature of representations ? Why should the explanation be confined solely to “cognitive” components ? The author comes to the conclusion that by focusing on representations, these works exceed the limits of what they are in a position to demonstrate (they are unable to explain individual behaviours). The article then suggests a few directions for a sociologically informed treatment of violence by working on the hypothesis of a continuity between the “ordinary” civilian world and the “extraordinary” world of combat.
This articles presents a critical review of several works that examine the explanations given for violence in war. It proposes to take a very close look at the postulates which form the basis for approaches focused on unearthing “systems of beliefs”. It underscores the problems raised by such approaches : How should witnesses be selected and how much importance should they be given ? Can one make the culture of war an explanatory motive for behaviours without demonstrating the shared, active nature of representations ? Why should the explanation be confined solely to “cognitive” components ? The author comes to the conclusion that by focusing on representations, these works exceed the limits of what they are in a position to demonstrate (they are unable to explain individual behaviours). The article then suggests a few directions for a sociologically informed treatment of violence by working on the hypothesis of a continuity between the “ordinary” civilian world and the “extraordinary” world of combat.
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This reading of Luc Boltanski’s book, De la critique, tries to identify the “social moments” when reflexivity flourishes. It advances the hypothesis that, far from being continuously present in our actions, reflexivity mainly comes into... more
This reading of Luc Boltanski’s book, De la critique, tries to identify the “social moments” when reflexivity flourishes. It advances the hypothesis that, far from being continuously present in our actions, reflexivity mainly comes into play in situations that sidestep norms and the usual. In this sense, it can be said to be secondary to a preexisting reality and to be a complication in relation to the actions borne by institutions. It is essential to the social sciences to determine the equilibrium between routine and critical moments. Since these sciences ask questions of their informants and record their explanations, they tend to force the latter to adopt reflexive postures that they can usually do without.
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This text proposes to take “another look” at the archives that served as a basis for an article by Robert Hertz, a young disciple of Durkheim who died at the front in 1915. His work was devoted to the study of the cult of a saint in the... more
This text proposes to take “another look” at the archives that served as a basis for an article by Robert Hertz, a young disciple of Durkheim who died at the front in 1915. His work was devoted to the study of the cult of a saint in the remote valleys of the Alps, which represented an astonishing argument in favour of developing intensive monographies combining ethnographic surveys with historical investigations. Starting from the author’s archives, we return to the conditions, forms of implementation and fecundity of these methodological combinations and attempt to grasp why this work promoting direct surveys did not give rise to any echoes in the Durkheimian milieu, nor even, for a long time, any posterity within academia.