Our project is to study the development of sociology from 1945 to 2010.Our perspective is socio-historical, at the crossroad of the history of ideas and the sociology of the academic world, with three axes of analysis : 1) the scientific debates, 2) the social issues and the socio-political  situations and 3) the organization of the the academic world. Our objective is to publish a book, and the main parts will correspond to the three periods of the history of the French contemporary sociology we have provisionally identified : The end of a world?  (1945-1965), Changing the society (1965-1985) and Risks and new incertitudes (1985-2010).

For this study we will use all the documents which have been published : biographies, autobiographies and interviews of sociologists, monographies of research centers and departments, governmental reports, etc. We will also do interviews (videos) with the main actors of the discipline and we will analyse the social and professional trajectories and networks of the different generations of sociologists, their main scientific contributions and the « impact » of their works at the international level  (citation analysis).