The science that never was: 'Communal science' in France, 1913-1949

Contemporary European History

Volumn 11, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 529-547

  Payre, Renaud ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33646923285     PISSN: 09607773     EISSN: 14692171     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0960777302004022     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. André Morizet, Du vieux Paris au Paris moderne. Haussmann et ses prédécesseurs (Paris: Hachette, 1932), 7
2. Maxime Leroy (1873-1957) read law at the University of Nancy, where he obtained his doctorate in 1898. Before the First World War, most of his works were devoted to trade unionism and the legal changes it had induced. Between the two world wars he moved closer to the technocratic reform movements
3. Maxime Leroy, La ville française. Institutions et libertés locales (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1927), 26
4. This approach to municipal reform is inspired by Christian Topalov's work on the 'nebula' of social reform in turn-of-the-century France. Topalov stresses that science was one of the reformers' chief tools for producing new forms of action, formulating problems and finding solutions. See Christian Topalov, 'Les réformateurs et les réseaux: enjeux d'un objet de recherche', in Christian Topalov, ed., Laboratoires du nouveau siècle. La nébuleuse réformatrice et ses réseaux en France 1890-1914 (Paris: EHESS, 1999), 39-40
5. i.e. examining certain historical junctures and their varying probabilities, in an attempt to explain why what actually did happen happened, instead of all the other things that might have happened. As Charles Tilly remarks, this 'involves hypotheses about events and processes that did not in fact occur': Charles Tilly, As Sociology meets History (New York: Academic Press, 1981), 212
6. Cf. Renaud Payre, 'Un possible non institutionnalisé: socio-histoire de la "science communale" (1900-1950)', in Yves Déloye and Bernard Voutat, eds., Faire de la science politique (Paris: Belin, 2002), 169-84
7. This notion of a 'failed' science needs to be relativised. Libby Schweber, in a study of the alleged failure of demography in nineteenth-century France, re-examines the notions of a failed or successful discipline in terms of the goals which those involved set themselves, rather than in terms of 'universal theories of discipline formation': see Libby Schweber, 'L'échec de la démographie en France au XIXe siècle?', Genèses 29 (Dec. 1997), 5-28
8. Schweber refers to the work of Lawrence Goldman, who has looked into the 'absence' of sociology in nineteenth-century England and sees its institutionalisation as a university 'discipline' as an intrinsically defensive move, a consequence of the frustration of the political ambitions of the English 'liberal bourgeoisie'. See Lawrence Goldman, 'A Peculiarity of the English? The Social Science Association and the Absence of Sociology in Nineteenth Century Britain', Past and Present, 114 (Feb. 1987)
9. Anne Rasmussen, 'L'internationale scientifique (1890-1914)', doctoral dissertation, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1995, 8
10. Jean Joana, 'Par-delà les notables. Une sociologie historique des espaces politiques locaux sous la III̊ République en question', in Déloye and Voutat, Faire de la science politique, 137-54
11. Premier congrès international et exposition comparée des villes (Brussels: Union Internationale des Villes, 1913), xi
12. Marie Charvet, 'La question des fortifications de Paris dans les années 1900. Esthètes, sportifs, réformateurs sociaux, élus locaux', Genèses, 16 (June 1994), 23-44
13. On the Groupe d'Etudes Socialistes see Christophe Prochasson, Le socialisme normalien. Recherches et réflexions autour du groupe d'études socialistes et de l'école socialiste, mémoire de maîtrise (Paris: Université de Paris I, 1981)
14. Christian Topalov, 'Maurice Halbwachs et les villes (1908-1912). Une enquête d'histoire sociale des sciences sociales', Annales HSS, 5 (Sept.-Oct. 1997), 1057-83
15. Henri Sellier, 'Préface', La vie communale, special issue (July 1920)
16. Henri Sellier, Le socialisme et l'action municipale, Discours prononcé à Lille le 28 octobre 1934 au Congrès de la Fédération des municipalités socialistes (Paris: La Vie Communale, 1934), 11
17. Cf. Fabio Rugge, 'Le scienze comunali in Germania. Il kommunalwissenschafltliches Forschungzentrum', Amministrare, 3 (1986), 439-54
18. L'action communale, 503 (16 June 1929)
19. Archives municipales de Lyon, 93 WP7, extract from town council minutes, 13 June 1938
20. Rugge, 'Le scienze comunali in Germania'
21. L'écho des communes, 24 (15 December 1934), 306
22. Henri Sellier, 'L'importance des questions édilitaires', Les collectivités publiques, 1 (March 1939), 5
23. Bulletin de l'Association des Maires de France 1 (1 October 1925)
24. The term 'university institute' (institut d'université) was sanctioned by a law passed in 1920, which permitted French universities to open training schools financed by outside institutions. University institutes, though perennially short of money, provide a flexible space for disciplinary innovation. See esp. Gérard Chevalier, 'L'entrée de l'urbanisme à l'Université: la création de l'Institut d'urbanisme (1921-1924)', Genèses, 39 (June 2000), 98-120
25. Maxime Leroy, 'L'évolution des institutions municipales de 1789 à 1926', La vie urbaine, 2 (1930), 105-30
26. L'Administration Locale, doc. 72 (March 1934), p. 9
27. L'Écho des communes, 18 (15 Sept. 1934), 232-7
28. La Revue communale (Aug./Sept. 1932), 177
29. Guy Thuillier, 'Les projets d'École d'administration, 1936-1939', La Revue Administrative, 30 (1977), 236-53
30. 'Projet de création d'une École Nationale d'Administration', L'Écho des communes, 1 (1 Jan. 1938), 11
31. L'Écho des communes, 2 (15 Nov. 1938), 27
32. Louis Boulonnois, Une conception nouvelle de l'Autorité Municipale: l'administration locale arbitrale et synthétique (Pontoise: Lachèvre et Boulonnois, 1946), 30
33. Schweber, 'L'échec de la démographie'
34. See e.g. Robert Lainville, Libertés communales et politiques expérimentales (Paris: Sirey, 1948), 4
35. Vth International Congress of Local Authorities, London 1932 (Brussels: Union internationale des villes, 1932), 40
36. Guillaume Marrel and Renaud Payre, 'Le temps des maires', Politix, 53 (2001), 59-86
37. Archives de Paris, DE1 Morizet, letter from André Morizet to the editor of the Revue de Paris, 36, 1 (1937)
38. Since the notions of academic discipline, autonomy and scientific proof are so relative, some scholars have proposed a long-term study of these boundaries. 'We need to examine in detail the history of the relationship among the sciences and of what at various periods has been considered "non-scientific", whether it is then designated as "morality", "religion", "politics" or "ethics"': Laurent Loty and Marc Renneville, 'Penser la transformation entre le scientifique et le non scientifique', in Claude Blanckaert, ed., L'histoire des sciences de l'homme (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1999), 260
39. The 1890s, a period of rapid urban growth in the United States, saw the appearance of numerous municipal reform groups. The campaign for municipal reform in the States at the beginning of the twentieth century was part of a singular historical juncture known as the Progressive Era. The reformers' main target was the party system; the wanted to develop tools to increase the efficiency of government. Martin J. Schiesl discerns three key notions: freedom from party politics, a strong executive, and the separation of politics from administration: 'In this setting, government meant a nonpartisan or "businesslike" management of municipal affairs' (Martin J. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency. Municipal Administration and Reform in America: 1880-1920, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, 3)
40. These similarities between the discourse of reformers in Europe and America, notwithstanding the time-lag, should emerge more clearly from study of the growth in transatlantic links. These interconnections may even suggest the existence of a 'European progressive era' in the first few decades of the twentieth century (Renaud Payre, 'A European Progressive Era?', Contemporary European History, 11, 2 (2002), 489-97
41. Marc-Olivier Baruch, Servir l'État français, l'administration en France de 1940 à 1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1997), 229ff
42. Maurice Félix, 'Avant propos à la première édition (1922)', in Maurice Félix, Le régime administratif du département de la Seine et de la ville de Paris (Paris: A. Rousseau, 1946 [1922]), 17
43. Jacques Caillosse, 'La ville, le droit et la redistribution des territoires administratifs', Politique et Management Public, 3 (Sept. 1995), 85
44. In the interwar period, administrative science seems to have existed as a scattered collection of fragile and unconsolidated 'sites' which produced conflicting definitions of the 'science' itself. This is relevant to Stefan Collini's critique of 'discipline history', which he thinks is too obsessed with looking for the origins of problems arising from disciplines as they are today: 'Where discipline-history bores a "vertical" hole in the past (with all the consequent dangers of "tunnel vision"), intellectual history attempts rather to excavate a "lateral" site, to explore the presuppositions, ramifications and resonances of ideas, which may often involve pursuing them into neighbouring fields' (Stefan Collini, 'Discipline History and Intellectual History, Reflections on the History of Social Sciences in Britain and France', Revue de Synthèse, 109, 3-4 (July-Dec. 1988), 391)