Volume 3, Number 7 · November 19, 1964
A Nous la Liberte
By George Lichtheim
The Technological Society
by Jacques Ellul, Translated from the French by John Wilkinson, with an Introduction by Robert K. Merton
Knopf, 449 pp., $10.95
Ou va le travail humain?
by George Friedmann
Gallimard, (revised edition), 450 pp., 23 F
Machinisme et Bien-Etre
by Jean Fourastié
Editions de Minuit, 251 pp., 15 F
Introduction a la modernite
by Henri Lefebvre
Editions de Minuit, 373 pp., 24.50 F
The French Bureaucratic System
by Michel Crozier
University of Chicago, 413 pp., $5.00
La nouvelle classe ouvriere
by Serge Mallet
Editions du Seuil, 266 pp., 12 F
If there is an important difference between French and Anglo-American sociological thought, it lies mainly in the greater prestige of social philosophy, as distinct from sociology properly so called. For example, the leading figure in post-war French sociology has been Professor George Gurvitch whose work remains curiously neglected in the United States. No one can dispute his claim to be regarded as an empiricist, but he is also the author of philosophical studies on Hegel, Marx, and Sartre, and his recently republished treatise on sociological method (La Vocation Actuelle de la Sociologie) carries the authority of a scholar who has mastered the corpus of modern philosophic thought, yet can be as rigidly empirical as any 'Anglo-Saxon': no follower of Talcott Parsons would find his methods strange, although the vocabulary is that of Durkheim and his school. Much the same could be said of M. Georges Friedmann's study of the social consequences of mechanization in such books as The Anatomy of Work, Industrial Society (paperback editions have just been issued by the Free Press of Glencoe) or the well-known publications of Raymond Aron.
Review, 3204 words
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