UN RENOUVEAU DE LA PARTICIPATION ASSOCIATIVE ? L'engagement et le militantisme au sein du comité Attac Isère

2.1.1.2 Prevalence of the middle class

Alain Touraine is the sociologist who placed the middle class, as an actor, in the center of the process of social change^374(*). The concept of conflict, as we saw, is essential with its sociology. However, the object of this conflict is not the monopolization of the means of production, contrary to the prospect Marxist, but historicity. Such is the stake of the reports/ratios of classes^375(*). The industrial company was based on the role occupied by the working class. The advent of the post-industrial company generated very an other configuration. Indeed, the emergence of better graduate average categories, better represented upset the social conflicts. The values defended by the social movements are not any more those which were defended by the labor movement, namely the rise in the standard of living. These values replaced the defense of nature, the research of personal blooming, the access to the knowledge, and more recently, the assertion of new social rights. Modernity, according to Touraine, would be characterized by the separation of the orders economic, political, social and cultural. Consequently, the participation in the social conflicts would be carried out, above all, within the average social categories while the most threatened social categories would be excluded from it. Cleavage would not be any more between « high » and it « low » of the company, but between those of « inside » and those of « outside »^376(*).

This theory has a strong heuristic value in order to clarify engagement within Attac. First of all, the absence of workmen would not be explained only by one deficit of cultural and school capital, as we have to postulate it from the point of view of Bourdieu, but also by the dissimilarity between the values represented by Attac and those to which the categories resulting from the industrial period are identified. The shift enters the claims carried by association and the values « industrial » impossible the participation of certain actors would make. A movement such as Attac would make visible this cut about which Touraine speaks, between in and out. Moreover, the on-representation of « Frameworks, higher intellectual professions » and of « Intermediate professions » a better representation of the values of the middle class would translate within association.

On the other hand, Martine Barthélémy accounts for the on-representation of the middle class within associations using the concept of social mobility. For example, according to it, the intermediate professions which are in situation of upward social mobility^377(*), i.e. which comes from a social category considered as lower, testify to one « social desire of recognition » which results in a political engagement^378(*). Louis Chauvel considers that « the aspiration upwards » is a key concept in the analysis of the evolutions of the social structure in France »^379(*).

The concept of social mobility would also account for the weak political engagement of the employees. The employees besides under-are very represented within the members of Attac. Whereas they account for 15,26% of the national members and 9% of the readers of the diplomatic World, they account for 27,4% of national P.A. The category of the employees knew a strong progression since the Fifties. However, their place in P.A was stabilized since the beginning of the Eighties^380(*). Contrary, the progression of the other components of the middle class was done in a linear way. Louis Chauvel puts forth the assumption then that the progression proportionally less strong of the employees translates their social downgrading. That Ci would be with a rise in the necessary training levels^381(*). The social downgrading would bring closer, more and more, the employees of the workmen thus breaking with « the assumption according to which the tertiarisation implies an ascending mobility mechanically^382(*). The homogeneity with the other categories composing the middle class is thus only relative. The similarities of economic capital do not mean, as recalled by Thomas Marty, an equivalence of cultural capital^383(*).

* ³⁷⁴ Cf, Ansart (Pierre), contemporary sociologies, op.cit, pp. 121-128.

* ³⁷⁵ «  The reports/ratios of class are not only related to forces of production, a state of the economic activity and technical division of work; they are the expression in terms of social actors of the historical action itself, of the capacity of the company to act on itself by the investment  » Touraine (Alain), Production of the company, Paris, ED Threshold, 1973, p.31. City in Ansart (Pierre), contemporary sociologies, op.cit, p. 123.

* ³⁷⁶ «  We live in this moment the passage of a vertical company, which we had taken the practice to call a company of classes with people in top and people in bottom, at a horizontal company where the importance is to know if one is in the center or the periphery  ». Ibid, p. 125.

* ³⁷⁷ For example, one can note that in 1993, 40% of the occupied active men belonging to the GCV intermediate Professions had a father who was a workman. Cf, Investigation F.Q.P 1993. The study relates to 6.022.000 men from 40 to 59 years. Cf, Beitone (Alain), Dollo (Christine), Gervasoni (Jacques), Masson (Emmanuel), Rodrigues (Christophe), Sciences social, Paris, ED Dalloz, 1997, p. 349.

* ³⁷⁸ Barthelemy (Martine), «  Associative militancy  », in Perrineau (Pascal) to dir., political engagement, Paris, Press of the FNSP, 1994, pp. 87-114.

* ³⁷⁹ Chauvel (Louis), the destiny of the generations. Structures social and troops in France at the 20th century, Paris, PUF, 1998, p. 34.

* ³⁸⁰ From 1960à 1980, the progression of the employees passes from 18% to 26% of P.A, while it is stabilized starting from the beginning of the Eighties around 29%. Cf, Chauvel (Louis), op.cit, pp. 39-40.

* ³⁸¹ «  The category of the employees is thus registered, more tardily than that of the workmen, in a process with through which its weight within each great sector of paid employment tends to decrease with the profit of less qualified categories  ». Chenu (Alain), the archipelago of the employees, Paris, INSEE Studies, 1990, p. 41. City in Marty (Thomas), op.cit, p. 71.

* ³⁸² Chauvel (Louis), op.cit, p. 38.

* ³⁸³ One can notice that the threshold of the number of graduates is very weak to the employees. Whereas the intermediate professions count to 41,5% graduates, the employees count only 16,5% of them. Cf Desrosières (Alain), Thévenot (Laurent), op.cit, p. 84.