Faire groupe au sein d’un groupe : la structuration des segments professionnels

• Main Authors: Léonie Hénaut, Frédéric Poulard
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française 2018-11-01
• Series: Sociologies
• Subjects: professional identity; professional group; segments; cleavages; coalescence; museum curators
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sociologies/8798

Created in 1961 by Rue Bucher and Anselm Strauss, the notion of segment has been intensively used to describe occupations’ internal diversity. However, we argue, the usage of the notion is often too loose. Authors tend to identify the existence of segments in every single divide, a confusion which limits our understanding of professional dynamics. First, the paper suggests looking at intraprofessional segments using the notion of identity and Rogers Brubaker’s framework on social movements. Then, we examine a specific case study – the history of museum curators in France, and their segmentation in the 1960s and 1970s – to understand how internal divides combine and grow into agonistic segments.