General Seminars (2022-2023)
Friday 10 March 2023 - Guest: Emmanuel Pedler
In 1987, a team of investigators led by Jean-Claude Passeron and Emmanuel Pedler followed visitors to the Granet Museum in Aix-en-Provence, chronometer in hand.
The aim was to highlight the social forces behind the 'time given to paintings'. This original study is the subject of the book Le temps donné aux tableaux, originally published in 1991 and now republished by the Bibliothèque idéale des sciences sociales (ENS Editions).
This is supplemented by several important texts in which the two sociologists continue their analyses of the reception of artistic works in the fields of painting and music.
By endeavouring to describe and measure precisely the 'pacts' of artistic reception that are formed between works and their audiences, this work sets itself apart from surveys of cultural consumption, which are still largely dominant in the sociology of culture, by proposing an approach centred on the fate reserved for singular works.
On the occasion of the general seminar of the Mesopolhis laboratory, Emmanuel Pedler, French sociologist and Director of Studies at the EHESS, looks back at this new edition.
Friday 10 February 2023 - Guest: François Héran
Friday 13 January 2023 - Guest: Rose-Marie Lagrave
Rose-Marie Lagrave is a sociologist specialising in gender issues. As such, she created the EHESS master's degree in gender studies, "Genre, politique et sexualités". As part of the general seminar, the sociologist presented her latest book, Se ressaisir. Enquête autobiographique d'une transfuge de classe féministe. The book, which was awarded the Ecrit social prize the year it was published (2021), is a rich reflection on Rose-Marie Lagrave's unique career: a woman from a large, Catholic, rural family, who experienced a meteoric rise through the ranks of society, becoming Director of Studies at EHESS. Based on her own story, Rose-Marie Lagrave criticises the meritocratic discourse and the myth of the social lift, in favour of a narrative that reveals all the twists and turns of a feminist class defector.
As part of the general seminar, an interview with Rose Marie Lagrave on the occasion of the presentation of her book "Se ressaisir. Enquête autobiographique d'une transfuge de classe féministe" (La Découverte, 2021) was conducted by the blog "Un Oeil sur la Cité".