French sociologist Alain Touraine, a pioneer in the study of contemporary social movements, died this Friday in Paris at the age of 97, his daughter, Marisol Touraine, told the AFP agency.
An intellectual on the left but esteemed on the right, Touraine signed several works on social and labor issues, being one of the “progenitors” of the concept of post-industrial society.
Some of his work is published in Portugal.
After May 1968, a movement in France marked by strikes and student occupations, he turned his attention to “new social movements”, which focused on issues other than the socialist working class.
In “La Voix et le Regard” (The voice and the gaze) from 1978, Alain Touraine summarizes the sociology of these movements (students, feminists, regionalists…).
His first book, in 1955, was an analysis of work and labor relations in the factories of the car manufacturer Renault.
Despite being very left-wing, he was highly critical of Marxist concepts, such as class struggle.
In 1947-1948 he was a miner in northern France to closely study the relations between miners and their employers.
His interest in the work of miners later, in the 1970s, spread to the mining movements in Chile.
Touraine also carefully studied the origins and development of the independent Polish trade union Solidarity, whose success ended in 1989 with the communist regime in Poland, which was the first chapter in the end of the Soviet empire.
In 2010, the sociologist was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Social Sciences for “fundamental work on post-industrial society”.
“Critique of Modernity”, “After the Crisis”, “Think Another Way” and “What is Democracy?” are some of Alain Touraine’s titles published in Portugal.
Source: DN
