ABSTRACT
The France of Malthusianism had been a land of small family-owned firms, many clinging to a distinctly artisanal organisation of work and nearly all pervaded by a deeply paternalistic management ethic. The relative gain in the importance of Sociology is one of the incontestable data of French intellectual life in 1945–1975, and there can be little hesitation in recognising its ultimate precondition in the material alteration of economic and social structures. Socio-economic change in France after 1945 helped render the social sciences in general, and Sociology in particular, more prestigious in the public eye and more attractive to aspirant intellectuals, and to upvalue their utility. Although the social and political history of postwar France has not been narrowly determined by economic changes, there can be little disagreement that the process of accelerated industrialisation which commenced around 1950 is the central datum for understanding French social development.
