Axis 1 seminar
Katja Brogger & Michel Grossetti

Guests

Katja Brogger (Associate Professor in education policy and governance, at Aarhus University, Danish School of Education, Guest researcher at Sc Po Aix)

Michel Grossetti (Director of Research at the CNRS, University of Toulouse)

Morning programme

9:30-10:15 - Presentation of the work of Katja Brogger(Associate Professor in education policy and governance, at AarhusUniversity, Danish School of Education, Visiting researcher at Sc PoAix)

10.15-12pm - Speech by Michel Grossetti (CNRS research director and director of studies at EHESS) "Biographical forks in the road: when the unpredictability of situations leads to lasting consequences".

It is becoming increasingly common in the social sciences to use the notion of bifurcation to refer to the lasting effects of situations involving a greater or lesser degree of unpredictability. This is particularly true of life courses, where this type of process is frequently observed in the field. To avoid seeing bifurcations everywhere, without giving up on detecting and characterising them, it is useful to give a definition. The point of view presented in this paper is that the notion of bifurcation implies thinking about the place of unpredictability in social activities as well as the question of irreversibilities, i.e. configurations of people and resources whose maintenance over time has different causes from those that explain their emergence. While bifurcations are generally analysed a posteriori, from the outside, it is also interesting to consider how people view the unpredictability of situations and their possible consequences. This second aspect will also be addressed.
Michel Grossetti is Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of Studies at EHESS. His work focuses on innovation activities, networks of interpersonal relationships and social science theory. With Marc Bessin and Claire Bidart, he co-edited the collective work Bifurcations. Les sciences sociales face aux ruptures et à l'événement (La Découverte, 2010), and recently published Matière sociale: Esquisse d'une ontologie pour les sciences sociales (Hermann, 2022).

12h-12h30 - News from the axis and the laboratory