Bøger af Alain Touraine

Although the period of student protests of the 1960s and 1970s has long passed, Alain Touraine argues, in this wide-ranging and vigorous essay, that the period's problems remain with us. Higher degrees have become less and less valuable on the labor market and the demand for academic reform has become more intense. Community colleges still try to provide equal educational opportunities for the poor and the minorities, without much success. And the university has not yet resolved the conflict between being the home of impartial inquiry and research and serving constituent interests.Touraine views American higher education as a system within a definite, though changing, social context. He compares U.S. student movements with those of other countries. He is skeptical about the way Americans view the relationships between the university and what he regards as the ruling forces of the society, between knowledge and power, between production and education. He offers no facile solutions, but he presents an exciting, nontraditional analysis of the social and political forces that have shaped the modern history of higher education.In the new introduction, Clark Kerr contrasts his own views as an American observer to those of Touraine as a French intellectual. He asserts that the family, not higher education, is the most important "school" in the process of reproducing society. Kerr places more emphasis than does Touraine on the labor market, on the production functions (training of skills and advancing technology) of the vast nonelite segments of American higher education, on the long-term impacts of science in changing society, and on scholarly criticism in affecting transformations, and places less emphasis on sporadic political protests by faculty and students.He agrees with Touraine however, in his two great themes: (1) that you cannot understand the academic system unless you first understand society; and (2) that the rise of the university must be understood to understand modern society, where "knowledge is power." This volume will be important to all those interested in higher education, whether as participants or observers.

This 1983 book records an analysis of the Solidarity movement in Poland. Alain Touraine here proposes an understanding of the place of social movements in contemporary society, and a fresh means of analysing them through 'sociological intervention'. These research methods were used in 1981 to analyse to the Solidarity movements.

In his previous books Alain Touraine analysed the great changes that have transformed our personal and collective lives; in this new book he shows that we need to transform our ways of thinking about these changes.

Today neoliberals argue that we should let ourselves be guided by market forces and that there is little we can do to stem the flow of economic globalization. On the other hand, thinkers on the left continue to denounce domination and claim to speak in the name of victims who are powerless to change the circumstances of their lives.

In this provocative and timely new book, Alain Touraine explores the question of how we might live together in a truly globalized world society. Rejecting the seductive metaphor of a global melting pot, Touraine mounts a powerful attack on the idea that we now live together as equals, sharing the same social and cultural values.

What effects will the current economic crisis have on the long-term development of our societies? What does the future hold in store when we emerge from the crisis? These two questions lie at the heart of this important new book by the leading French sociologist Alain Touraine.

In this book, the author questions the social and cultural content of democracy today. He aims to aid in reconstructing the political space and to promote the rebirth of democratic convictions by combating two threats: On the one, it risks and on the other, its name.

It has been my object in the present work to investigate the problems of ethics in the light of an examination of the facts of moral life. One reason for this procedure is my desire to conduct the reader by the same path that I myself have followed in approaching ethical questions.

In this book, the author questions the social and cultural content of democracy today. He aims to aid in reconstructing the political space and to promote the rebirth of democratic convictions by combating two threats: On the one, it risks and on the other, its name.