Un savoir en pratique : les professionnels de l'expertise et du conseil
Institution:
Paris, EHESSDisciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
This study gives an analysis of the correspondances between the professions of "consultants" - here defined both through the conditions of their work and their social positions - and the totality of the caracteristics of these who enter into these professions. From a variety of indicators like their school career, their social and family background, we have been able to construct some "ideal types" to describe and explain the various ways to enter into the profession and how the profession is being perceived from various stend points. Like other news or remode professions the profession "consultants" is being invaded by both those coming from power middle class who have suceed in gathering an important and almost incredible school capital and by those from the old "bourgeoisie" who have not succeeded completely to convert their inherited social and economic capital into school capital. There is also a third group - with social caracteristics that differ from the others - that seems to head for the consultant business : students ho have made a heavy investment in a school career in an institution whose symbolic value is declining or threatened. Common to all three groups, here studied, semm to be a feeling of incertainly or ambiguity concerning their individual school orientation and the value of their school investment. The disappointment with the out come of the school career that we find in these groups may also be a result of the intensified competition that has taken place in the educational field during the second half of the century. Since the profession of consultant is not very well defined and strickly regulated it seems to give those who hold it a "flowing value" that obscures the social and school trajectories so far accomplished.
Abstract FR:
Ce travail analyse les correspondances etablies entre les professions du conseil - definies comme des postes de travail et comme des positions sociales - et les ensembles de dispositions de ceux qui viennent investir ces metiers. A partir d'un ensemble d'indicateurs tels que les trajectoires scolaries, sociales et familiales, nous avons construits quelques types ideaux qui permettent de rendre compte de differents "choix" d'entree dans la profession, des representations et modes d'investissement de ce metier. Les professions du conseil sont, comme d'autres professions nouvelles ou renovees, investies a la fois par des agents issus des classes moyennes ou populaires et ayant acquis un important et improbable capital scolaire et par des agents issus de la bourgeoisie ancienne n'ayant pas completement reconverti leur capital social et economique herite en capital scolaire. Un troisieme groupe d'agents, aux caracteristiques sociales differentes, semble s'orienter vers le conseil : il s'agit d'agents ayant accompli un fort investissement scolaire au sein d'institutions scolaires dont le prestige symbolique est menace. Un des points communs a ces trois groupes pourrait etre le rapport ambigu et incertain vis-a-vis de la scolarite effectuee et du rendement des titres scolaires acquis. Ces representations desenchantees de l'identite scolaire pourraient etre aussi le resultat de l'interpretation de la concurrence scolaire qui a debute au cours de la seconde moitie du siecle. Mal definis et peu reglementes, les metiers de consultant semblent apporter, a ceux qui l'investissent, un profil de flou qui brouille les trajectoires scolaires et sociales realisees.