ABSTRACT
The first reason is that the social sciences are particularly exposed to the fashion of the time. When, at the end of the great post-war period of growth, the rejection of the consumer society became a popular theme for the ‘enlightened’ intelligentsia, certain sociologists developed theories demonstrating, or at least claiming to, that consumption benefited only the producers, and that one could thus rightly denounce the ‘system’ and call for ‘zero growth’. When the theme of ‘imprisonment’ was a winner, sociologists undertook to demonstrate that prison contributes in the aggregate to an increase in criminality.
