Michel Wieviorka

Michel Wieviorka (born 23 August 1946, Paris) is a French sociologist, noted for his work on violence, terrorism, racism, social movements and the theory of social change.

Michel Wieviorka is the son of a Jewish family of Holocaust survivors. A former student of Alain Touraine, he is now one of the most renowned sociologists and public intellectuals in France and abroad. Together with Touraine and François Dubet, Wieviorka developed the method of intervention sociologique and employed it to the study of militant social movements, in particular French anti-nuclear activism and student leagues, but also the famous trade union Solidarnosc in Poland. Following Max Weber's classic concept of interpretative sociology (verstehende Soziologie), intervention sociologique aims at understanding the subjective rationale of actors in the context of larger social conflicts. Wieviorka is the director of the Centre d'Analyses et d'Interventions Sociologique (CADIS) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, which was established by Alain Touraine in 1981. He is the founder and editor of the sociological journal Le Monde des Debats and was, with Georges Balandier, co-edited the Cahiers internationaux de sociologie until its publication was stopped at the end of 2010.

Some of Wieviorka's most aclaimed works are L'Etat, le patronat et les consommateurs (1977), Le pays contre l'Etat (with Alain Touraine, François Dubet, Zsuzsa Hegedus, 1981), L'espace du racisme (1991), La différence: Identités culturelles: enjeux, débats et politiques (2001), Manifeste pour les sciences sociales (with Craig Calhoun, 2015).

Image source: Wikipedia/Llann Wé