The world of letters mourns the death of Alain Touraine. His daughter, the former minister Marisol Touraine, announced early this Friday that the French sociologist and intellectual has died in Paris at the age of 97.
Born between the First and Second World Wars in Hermanville-Sur-Mer (Calvados), into a conservative family, he was a relevant figure in his field thanks to his works and essays, where he portrayed the social world and its profound changes. . His main vocation was to relate the conflicts of society and decipher the transformations of a post-industrial world where the social movement was, according to him, “the engine of each change”.
His intellectual trajectory and his scientific production had a notable impact on the social sciences, especially in Europe, the United States and Latin America. He considered himself a great connoisseur of the latter and wrote several volumes, such as Vida y muerte de Chile popular (1973), Death of a gaucho (1979) or La palabra y la sangre. Politics and society in Latin America (1988).
He began his career with the study Evolution of labor in the Renault factories (1955), in which he analyzed the variations in labor after the incorporation of machinery. In its pages, he left evidence that, although at first the gadgets perform numerous tasks under the control of workers, as these specialize, the worker is relegated to maintenance and supervision functions, thus depriving him of an active role in the production.
Both this and other of his works have been translated into several languages. In addition to those already cited, Sociology of Action (1965), Workers’ Consciousness (1966), The Post-Industrial Society (1969) or Labor Movement (1984) stand out.
An intellectual legacy that makes him one of the most outstanding contemporary sociologists of the 20th and 21st century and that has earned him several awards, such as the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, which he received in 2010 together with Zygmunt Bauman.
In that same meeting he debated whether or not liberal democracy was in danger. “It must be founded on the priority respect for fundamental human rights. Today, the number of countries that give priority to the developmental state, that is, capable of ensuring national and ideological defense against the other world power centers, is increasing. This triumph of the state defending an identity and a community, therefore xenophobic and ultimately racist, is a threat that brings war. The strength of the European Union is not in its weapons or in the disciplines it imposes on its citizens, but in its internal pluralism. It is the only region in the world that has been given as a motto: Let’s live together with our differencesâ€.
