ABSTRACT
Alain Touraine is not only an acute theorist but also an astute researcher, a rare combination. Independently or in collaboration he has analyzed social movements in at least three different types of societies. The first is post-industrial (programmed) democratic capitalist society. Touraine frequently refers to ‘our type of society’ in his writings, and the referent could be France, Western Europe or the programmed society as a whole, although his empirical studies of this type of society are confined to France (e.g., the student movement of 1968, or anti-nuclear protest in France). Second are industrial, ‘socialist’ totalitarian societies. His analysis of the Solidarity movement in Poland refers to this type of society. If France is a sovereign state, the Poland of Solidarity is a client state, a term Touraine has not used but I am advisedly invoking. Third are the industrializing, non-democratic, dependent societies which are economically controlled by foreign bourgeoisie. His analysis of the revolution in Chile refers to this type of society.
