Raymond Boudon is a sociologist French born the January 27th 1934 with Paris.

Former student of ENS, aggregate of philosophy, it teaches sociology at the university of Bordeaux then is named professor with the university Paris Iv-Sorbonne. In 2002, he became professor emeritus. He directs, parallel to his activity of teacher, a research laboratory, the Group of Methods engineering of the Sociological Analysis (GEMMATED). He is also member of the Institut of France (Academy of Science morals and political) since 1990 and of the High council of science and technology since 2006. Raymond Boudon is member of the Think tank of center right: the Foundation for the political innovation; created by Jerome Monod and become operational in 2004. With Alain Touraine and Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Boudon is one of most important contemporary French sociologists the.

During the years 1960, R. Boudon leaves to the United States and collaborates with the American sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld. To the image of other French sociologists, his step then will be influenced by the American theoretical currents of the time. Thus, it will direct towards the quantitative Sociologie, and publishes in 1967 its thesis, with the eloquent title: mathematical analysis of the social facts under the direction of Jean Stoetzel; the thesis complementary to Boudon, under the direction of Raymond Aron relates to structuralism: Do has what serve the structures?

In France, R. Boudon affirms like the leader of the methodological Individualisme, current which it introduced into the French landscape sociological, and which it then largely promoted. Claiming Emile Durkheim, which it reads again in a critical way or Tocqueville, it is especially influenced by certain aspects of the work of max Weber, from which it built his theory of methodological individualism.

Methodological individualism

See also: methodological Individualism

For Boudon, the individual is “the logical atom of the analysis” because it constitutes, in its eyes, the element first of any social phenomenon. To include/understand the social one, it is, from this point of view, to analyze rationalities of the individuals, then to seize their “effects of composition”, i.e. the way in which the whole of the individual actions are incorporated to create a social phenomenon. Boudon thus highlighted what it names of the “perverse effect”, i.e. “phenomena of composition” where the addition of rational individual actions produces unexpected and contrary effects for each one. Thus, stock exchange panics constitute a typical example such perverse effects. When a great number of individuals, by fear of a fall of the courses, sell their credits, they cause what they feared: a fall of the price of the actions.

Started from a rather narrow interpretation of methodological individualism, near to the theory to the standard rational actor, such as it exists in economy, Boudon since the years 1990 widened its analysis. In the place of this instrumental rationality, where the actor maximizes his utility, Boudon thus insisted on the importance of the beliefs in the individual action, developing the concept of cognitive rationality.

Principal works

  • the Inequality of the chances , Paris, Armand Colin, 1973 (pocket publication: Hatchet, Plural, 1985).

  • Perverse effects and social order , Paris, PUF, 1977 (out of pocket: Quadriga, 1993).
  • the Logic of social the , Paris, Hatchet, 1979 (out of pocket: Hatchet, Plural, 1983).
  • Dictionnaire criticizes sociology , (with F. Bourricaud), Paris, PUF, 1982.
  • the Place of the disorder. Critical of the theories of the social change , Paris, PUF, 1984 (out of pocket: Quadriga, 1991).
  • the Ideology, or the origin of the generally accepted ideas . Paris, Beech, 1986 (out of pocket: Threshold/Points, 1992).
  • Art to convince itself, of the doubtful ideas, fragile or false , Paris, Beech, 1990 (out of pocket: Threshold/Points).
  • the Juste and Truth: studies on the objectivity of the values and knowledge , Paris, Beech, 1995.
  • the Direction of the values , PUF, 1999.
  • the Explanation of the social norms , coéd. with P. Demeulenaere and R. Viale, Paris, PUF, 2001.
  • (with Robert Leroux), " There is still a sociologie" , Paris, Odile Jacob, 2003.
  • Tocqueville today , Odile Jacob, 2005
  • Why the intellectuals do not like liberalism , Odile Jacob, 2004. 252 pages. ISBN 273811398 (Work drawn from a conference given in 2003 to the invitation of the Swiss Liberal party.)
  • To renew the democracy. Praise of the common direction , Odile Jacob, 2006

External bonds

  • Raymond Boudon (THESE)

  • Holisme at Boudon
  • card on the logic of social the

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