French sociology has lost one of its most famous representatives. Michel Pinçon died at the age of 80, Monday September 26, according to information published by Humanity Wednesday, and confirmed with the Monde by his publisher, La Découverte, which states that he had Alzheimer’s disease.
Former director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Michel Pinçon began as a worker sociologist, before turning to the transmission of wealth in the nobility and upper middle class. It was this work on the richest, carried out in tandem with his wife, Monique Pinçon-Charlot, which had made the duo famous. “I always say that we wrote twenty-seven books with four hands”said the latter to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Born May 18, 1942 in Lonny, a village in the Ardennes, Michel Pinçon grew up in a working-class family. “He was passionate, inhabited by sociology since his childhood, with his working-class origins in the Meuse valley, and his attachment to the welfare state which gave children like him the opportunity to study”said his wife.
“Two lame”
They met in 1965 during their studies in Lille. “It was a reciprocal love at first sight, between two lame people who had reversed class neuroses”, commented Monique Pinçon-Charlot, who is of bourgeois origin, daughter of a magistrate. Fascinated by the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, they pursued a long career as researchers from the 1970s. “Michel has always been inhabited by this desire to understand injustices, whether social, economic, and above all symbolic, those from which he himself suffered the most”explained his wife.
In nice neighborhoods (PUF, 1989) or even The Ghettos of Gotha (Threshold, 2007) are among the most emblematic works of the duo, who knew how to get away from the classic formats of sociology, by delivering, for example, in 2009, a study of some Parisian districts presented in the form of a travel guide (Paris: fifteen sociological walksPayot).
“Excellent contribution”
Retired since 2007, the Pinçon-Charlots had since left the rigor of scientific canons to engage in more impressionistic observations. Highly politicized, the couple was marked on the left, and resolutely opposed to Emmanuel Macron, as evidenced by their work The President of the Ultra-Rich (The Discovery, 2019).
The sociologist’s death sparked several reactions on Twitter from left-wing politicians. “I pay tribute to this fellow traveler, a great sociologist, who never ceased, with Monique, to decipher the relationship of domination in all its forms”commented Fabien Roussel, deputy for the North and national secretary of the French Communist Party.
“The work of Pinçon-Charlot on the sociology of the oligarchy is an excellent contribution to our political fight for equality and justice”, wrote Raquel Garrido, deputy La France insoumise of Seine-Saint-Denis. “ Michel Pinçon has never pretended to be neutral. The work of Michel and Monique has inspired our fights against inequalities”also considered Benoît Payan, the mayor (union of the left) of Marseille.