ABSTRACT
Alain Touraine’s work was in industrial sociology, based on extensive research on patterns of work organisation and worker action at the Renault factories. In 1967 Touraine went to Nanterre, a new social sciences university on the outskirts of Paris, as Professor of Sociology. Nanterre was one of the centres of the May student movement that shook France in 1968. Touraine played a key role in attempting to mediate between the university and student revolutionaries. Touraine developed the hypothesis that new social conflicts were forming which opposed new forms of technocratic power. Modern societies for Touraine are defined in terms of their self-transforming capacities. On this basis he argues that we need a concept of ‘types’ of society, representing the level at which a society transforms itself. Touraine’s earlier research indicated the extent to which social actors have a dual identity: on the one hand, attempting to monopolise social change, on the other, taking up a defensive identity.
