Alain Touraine (Hermanville-sur-Mer, 1925 – Paris, 2023) died early Friday morning in Paris at the age of 97, his family confirmed to Le Monde newspaper. He was one of the last survivors of a brilliant generation that shaped social science and Western thought from the mid-20th century to the early 21st century. As a sociologist, his research has ranged from the post-war factories that built the country to post-industrial society, and from social movements to the crisis of modernity. With his interventions in the public debate – in France, but also in other European countries such as Spain and Latin America – Touraine became the benchmark for what is called the second left in his country – social democratic and clearly anti-totalitarian in nature.
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The sociologist shared the 2010 Prince of Asturias Prize in Communications and Humanities with fellow thinker Zygmunt Bauman (Poznan, Poland) for his “luminaries of European thought who have contributed to a better understanding of the social reality of a particularly unique world”. . explained the jury.
Touraine began his career studying the evolution of work in Renault factories (1945). In the 1970s she was not only interested in trade union movements, but also in new social movements such as the Students of May 68th, environmentalism and feminism. He was not convinced of the need to create a global social movement, but of the need to reclaim the actors invented centuries ago: political parties to enforce civil rights and unions to enforce social rights.
He was a great analyst in times of political and economic crisis. In the midst of the pandemic, Touraine reflected on the current situation in the world in an interview with EL PAÍS: “What strikes me most now, as a sociologist or historian of the present, is that it was a long time ago.” I felt such an emptiness. There is a lack of actors, meaning, ideas, even interest: the virus’s only preference is for the old. There is also no cure or vaccine. We have no weapons, we walk with our bare hands, we are locked up alone and isolated, abandoned. You don’t have to be out of touch and lock yourself in at home. This is not a war!”
As a survivor of World War II, he was 14 at the time when he recalled the war and the present moment, he made a clear distinction: “The occupation afterward shaped my entire youth. It’s different now: we’re in a vacuum, reduced to nothing. We don’t speak, we’re not allowed to move and we’re not allowed to understand either.”
Touraine described itself as “very European, probably too much”. He regretted Brexit and the arrival of ultras like Matteo Salvini in Italy. “This epidemic comes at a time when we don’t know how or why. It is still too early to know what to do financially,” he assured in EL PAÍS. His prognosis for Europe was clear: “Now there are two fundamental decisions to be made. First, women’s liberation. That is, the collapse of reason at the center of personality and the recomposition of affections around reason and communication, a caring society [en inglés, cuidados]. And secondly, the reception of migrants, which I think is a serious problem. Our European countries are now defined by their attitude towards migrants.”
He wrote various essays on labor movements around the world, especially in Latin American countries. Since 1960 he has been head of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and since 1989 he has been a member of the College de la Prevention des Risques Tecnologiques. His extensive work includes books such as “What is democracy?”, “Equality and diversity (new tasks of democracy), “How do I get out of liberalism”, “Can we live together?” or In search of oneself.
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