The purpose of this contribution is to explore historically the relationship between the social theory emerging at the Centre de sociologie européenne in Paris during the 1960s and the Parisian events of May 1968. Adopting the terminology of an article of 1981 by Pierre Bourdieu himself (‘Décrire et prescrire. Note sur les conditions de possibilité et les limites de l'efficacité politique’ [‘Describing and Prescribing. A Note on the Conditions of Possibility and the Limits of Political Effectiveness’] (Bourdieu, 1981), my purpose is to consider in what ways the work of the Centre de sociologie européenne could be said to describe or prescribe the May ‘events’. This consideration is a vehicle for an assessment of the diverging positions of Aron, Bourdieu and Passeron at the time, particularly by reference to their responses to the work of Weber.

The Centre de sociologie européenne was established by Raymond Aron in 1960. I shall explore the development of Aron's view of sociology in the context of his prior commitment to engaged historical observation and then consider his influence on Bourdieu and Passeron. My purpose is to ask what it meant (and might still mean) to regard objective phenomena or events as either social or political.

Mise-En-Scène

Raymond Aron was born in 1905 and was one of a famous cohort of entrants to the École normale supérieure in 1924, which also included Jean-Paul Sartre. His training was predominantly philosophical. In 1930, he obtained a post as Teaching Assistant at the University of Cologne.