 |
Études rurales | 113-128 Distribution électronique Cairn pour les éditions Editions de l’EHESS. © Editions de l’EHESS. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. Il est interdit, sauf accord préalable et écrit de l’éditeur, de reproduire (notamment par photocopie) partiellement ou totalement le présent article, de le stocker dans une banque de données ou de le communiquer au public sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit. |
La sociologie rurale et la question territoriale : de l’évitement à la réhabilitation
During the formation of rural sociology, it was important to examine the concepts for staking out this new disciplinary field. Among them, the concept of "territory" was "repressed" because it referred to a paradigm of rural life too close to the idea of a "community" with its implications of a homology between a social group and a spatial unit. This review of a seminar devoted to "space" in the late 1970s shows how the reluctance to use this concept by researchers who, laying a claim to Marxism, were critical of the Mendrasian approach amounted to a rejection of it, the "territory" being synonymous with a closed "rural object". Nonetheless, the concept of "space" enabled these same social scientists to raise the question of nature, while starting a new research program on questions related to the environment. Confronted with this new approach, rural sociology has rehabilitated the concept of "territory", but of a territory with groups of action and no longer tainted by the idea of a "social totality".
During the formation of rural sociology, it was important to examine the concepts for staking out this new disciplinary field. Among them, the concept of "territory" was "repressed" because it referred to a paradigm of rural life too close to the idea of a "community" with its implications of a homology between a social group and a spatial unit. This review of a seminar devoted to "space" in the late 1970s shows how the reluctance to use this concept by researchers who, laying a claim to Marxism, were critical of the Mendrasian approach amounted to a rejection of it, the "territory" being synonymous with a closed "rural object". Nonetheless, the concept of "space" enabled these same social scientists to raise the question of nature, while starting a new research program on questions related to the environment. Confronted with this new approach, rural sociology has rehabilitated the concept of "territory", but of a territory with groups of action and no longer tainted by the idea of a "social totality".