Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe

Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe (born August 4, 1913 in Cambrai ; † January 11, 1998 ) was a French sociologist and can be considered the founder of French urban sociology and an early representative of milieu research in France.

Life

Chombart de Lauwe grew up as a half-orphan and received many suggestions from his musically interested mother. First he studied philosophy , then anthropology with Marcel Mauss . After completing his doctorate, he wanted to become a sculptor, but after a stay in Cameroon in 1935 he decided to work as a human scientist. The topic of his doctorate was the training of young people. 1940–1941 he worked at the Ecole des cadres d'Uriage . After 1989 he defended this school against allegations made by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Zeev Sternhell that the training center for the new elites , founded by Pierre Dunoyer de Segonzac (later leader of the Resistance and general) after the French defeat of 1940, was a think tank of French fascism. Rather, when it was closed by the Laval government at the end of 1942, it fought for considerable freedom from the Vichy government .

In 1942 Chombart de Lauwe became a member of the Resistance and went to Spain. From there he joined the Forces françaises libres in North Africa, for which he fought as a lieutenant in the fighter pilot on various European fronts. He wrote an unfinished autobiography about it. After the war he married the resistance fighter Marie-José Wilborts ("Marijo"), who had been deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1942, and became a member of the Legion of Honor .

plant

In 1945 Chombart de Lauwe joined the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and - influenced by the Chicago School of Social Ecology - carried out work on urban space based on systematic aerial photographs. In 1948 his first work, La découverte aérienne du monde, was published . In 1949 he founded a research group for social ethnology (later Center d'ethnologie sociale ), which he headed until 1980. Based on the analysis of the city's history, he influenced Paris's urban development planning and redevelopment policy and argued against the separation of functions between residential and commercial areas, which was propagated by urban planning based on the Athens Charter .

From 1960 he also worked at the École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), where he studied the rapid processes of social change at that time. The scientist, who was also influenced by Catholic social teaching but not actually belonging to a school, dealt with the working class environment and in particular with the everyday life of families and women. After 1968 he became increasingly concerned with social movements and the role of intellectuals.

Fonts

• Paris et l'agglomération parisienne. L'espace social dans une grande cité - Méthodes de recherches pour l'étude d'une grande cité , Presses universitaires de France, 1952.
• Les familles ouvrières en milieu urbain , 1956
• Familles et habitation (edited with Françoise Fichey-Poitret), CNRS, 1959
• Des hommes et des villes , 1965
• Images de la femme dans la société , 1965
• Aspirations et transformations sociales (ed.), Anthropos, Paris 1970
• La Culture et le pouvoir , 1975
• La Fin des Villes: mythe ou réalité? , 1982

Others

The eldest brother of Chombart de Lauwes, Jacques (1905–1975), was also a resistance fighter and became a politician. The second brother Jean (1909-2001) was an agronomist .

literature

• W. Brian Newsome: Paul-Henry Chombart De Lauwe: Catholicism, Social Science, and Democratic Planning. In: French Politics, Culture and Society , Vol. 26 (1998) No. 3.
• Thierry Paquot: La disparition de Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe (1913-1998) , In: Liberation , February 5, 1998, online: [1] (obituary, French)