Pierre Tripier, Claude Dubar, Valérie Boussard, Sociologie des professions, Armand Colin, 3rd edition, 2011
Claude Dubar, Pierre Tripier and Valérie Boussard we propose here the third edition of the Sociology of the professions, now has become a classic of the university libraries. It will be noted that a third author comes to assist the two authors of the first and second edition of this manual. The first edition published in 1998 took note of the absence until then of a manual entitled ” the Sociology of professions in France, with the notable difference of the Great Britain and the United States.
The term profession is indeed in France, subject to acceptances fort heterogeneous and no term is really the English term profession as it is defined in 1915 by Flexner and Cogan in 1953. It is on the basis of this observation of the senses diversified of the term in the French language opens this manual. The authors identify four definitions of the term profession. In a first meaning, the profession is understood as “a statement which sets out publicly and that as the vocation, is related to the beliefs, the ideological-religious” (p. 11) : this is the profession in the sense of ” self “. In a second sense, the profession is the “kind of work one does, the employment, since it allows you to live with an income” (P. 11), the third meaning is defined as “the set of people who are performing the same job” and a fourth acceptance, the profession is “a function, a competency recognized within an organization” (p. 12). These four definitions allow to point to the extension of the term and the ambiguity of its use.
The challenge of this manual is to provide a set of sociological and historical studies, empirical design professions. Thus examined, the sociology of the professions proposed by Claude Dubar, Pierre Tripier and Valérie Boussard has for object “the social organization of activities of work, the subjective meaning and the modes of structuring of labour markets” (p. 15) and does not overlap with neither the sociology of work, or the sociology of organizations.
What is the strength of this manual is that it is strongly tied to case studies. The review of the literature it offers, as should any good manual, don’t forget the revivals of recent that affect the professional groups. The studies mobilized are diverse and cover a wide range of occupations that are found in a final index. Work the founders of the discipline, and recent work are therefore to be articulated in a harmonious way.