Socialisme et sciences sociales : Sidney Webb et la création de la London School of Economics

• Main Author: Arnaud Page
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherche et d'Etudes en Civilisation Britannique 2010-06-01
• Series: Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/6136

This article analyses Sidney Webb’s project for the London School of Economics, created in 1895. Rather than studying Webb’s utterances as reflections of a homogenous ideological project, however, it attempts to analyze them as acts performed in different pragmatic contexts. This paper thus argues that the creation of the School was not the result of a simple and coherent ‘neopositivistic’ vision but that Webb’s discourse on the question of objectivity must to an important extent be seen as a means to support his primary objective, the development and consolidation of the School.