Los enfoques teóricos y metodológicos de la militancia

Abstract

Social science studies about militancy in France have strongly evolved during the final half of the last century. This brief work, dedicated to the evolution of the modalities of analysis of militancy, aims at presenting an outline focused on the French case but open to Anglo-Saxon theories. It associates objects (types of militancy), researchers (types of researchers), paradigms (how to elaborate a problem) and methods (survey techniques) studied within relatively stabilized configurations during a relatively long period of time. Chronologically, four “configurations” can be distinguished for didactical purposes, although they are naturally intertwined. The first one, the “heroic” configuration, is focused on the worker activist, specially the communist militant. The second begins around 1975 and can be named as the “rewarded” militant configuration. The third configuration starts in France with the big strike movement of 1995 and could be called the “new militants” or, if preferred, the “distantiated militants” configuration. Finally, the fourth configuration characterizes itself by expanding the previous forms of militancy. It invites to fix the terms of a controlled comparison between the worker activist and the distantiated militant instead of opposing them. This last configuration also assumes new challenges: disengagement, militant lethargy, the consideration of both psychological and social mechanisms of disengagement, etc. Curiously, beyond its differences, these configurations remain comparable.