“In sociology, taking into account feelings can help identify the most critical inequalities”

2023-11-20 16:00:11

Sociology cannot claim neutrality, since it is a science studying the society within which it emerges. She is caught up in social divisions and conflicts, she reveals forms of constraint and domination to which she cannot remain indifferent. Which way do we lean?, the American sociologist Howard Becker asked his peers, in a major text (« Whose Side Are We on ? », Social Problems, 1967). However, this discipline is not intended to replace politics and collective choices which are part of public debate. The contribution it can make is to formulate a diagnosis as precise as possible on social dynamics and the differentiation of their effects according to social groups.

Also read the editorial of “Le Monde”: Food inflation, between cynicism and disillusionment

Inflation and the very sharp rise in food prices since 2022 are affecting low-income households much harder. They in fact devote a larger part of their income to this consumption item. Noting it amounts to formulating an objective observation. Likewise, the rise in real estate interest rates excludes households without capital (rather young and from working-class backgrounds) more than others from access to property. This involves short-term developments, but also long-term ones: unemployment more strongly affects the less qualified, workers and employees, even if it does not spare executives, particularly aging ones; poverty affects young people more, even if it does not spare retirees.

Formulating a diagnosis involves avoiding two pitfalls which interact and saturate a public debate made up of oppositions, even polarization, to the detriment of an understanding of the state of society. The literature of the 19th century – like the social sciences with which it was then linked – often oscillated between on the one hand a miserabilist representation of the people, emphasizing the proximity of the working classes and the dangerous classes, and on the other a populist vision which exalts the virtues of the working classes. Claude Grignon and Jean-Claude Passeron showed this in a landmark book (The Scholar and the Popular, Gallimard, 1989). In the same way, public debate today seems to oscillate between an optimism specific to economically advantaged populations and a catastrophism of cultural elites.

Cruel paradox

Being able to envisage the future in a conquering way place on the side of the wealthy or upwardly mobile classes. This thesis has an obvious political issue: the subjective relationship to the future informs us about the social position occupied by an individual and not about their representation of society. To take just one example, on the divide between age groups, we are hardly surprised that in the midst of an inflationary period, renewed confidence in one’s individual future is the almost exclusive privilege of seniors. You have to be already old to think that you have a future, a cruel paradox of a society which places the weight of poverty and job insecurity on its youth, at the risk of sparking a mass revolt.

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