Abstract
An overview of the history of demography and of its institutionalisation in France and an analysis of the main actors of demography in teaching and research are required in order to understand the development of demography and the tensions in the field. This chapter has two purposes: firstly, to examine the development of demography as an academic discipline and the place of the demography of development within the discipline as a whole and, secondly, to consider the opportunities for interdisciplinary dialogue provided by institutionalisation.
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In French universities, professors (professeurs) and senior lecturers (maîtres de conférences) are ranked as enseignants-chercheurs (literally teacher-researchers). The conjunction of the two terms is designed to imply that university academics are required to devote half of their time to research and the other half to teaching. The term was introduced in 1984 as a result of a reform of French higher education and was designed in part to reassert the value of research among university academics. It is worth noting that in France, the assessment of university academics is based exclusively on their research output (especially their publications), while teaching and administrative duties play little or no role in the promotion process, despite the fact that these encroach significantly on the required amount of time devoted to research. The status of French university academics was altered in 2009 to take better account of the full range of tasks that they are required to perform (i.e. teaching and supervision, distance learning, integration of graduates, international cooperation, training courses, tutoring and pastoral care, promotion of research, dissemination of scientific culture). The consideration given to non-research activities is the responsibility of individual departments in accordance with the law on the autonomy of universities.
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It should be kept in mind that researchers at INED have the status of civil servants with lifelong guarantee of employment and total immovability. To that extent, their situation is exactly the same as that of academics teaching and doing research in University Paris Descartes, Paris Ouest Nanterre and a few others in France. The institutional context is far less flexible than in the USA.
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In the nineteenth century, these statistics became the comptes de la justice civile et criminelle.
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The Physiocrats were a notable exception since they believed in the importance of informing public opinion. But this can be explained by their desire to extend their influence through the ‘true’ laws of political economy (Charbit 2010).
- 6.
Dominique Schnapper (2001b) also showed that the policy of nationalisation has its limitations and is part of the ideology of nation states aiming to unify its regions and to create a common national identity. For instance, the use of the French language only became compulsory in the twentieth century.
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Jacques Peuchet, Description topographique et statistique de la France (1810–1811) and Mémoires tirés des archives de la police (1837–1838).
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In 1912, the surgeon Alexis Carrel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- 9.
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1843–1916) was a liberal economist who supported and inspired the policy of colonial expansion of the Third Republic promoted by Jules Ferry. In 1874, Leroy-Beaulieu published De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes. His attachment to the principles of liberal economics was never an obstacle to his social concerns. For example, Leroy-Beaulieu studied working-class wages, local administration in England and France and female labour in the industrial sector.
- 10.
Michel Chevalier (1806–1879) was a French economist and politician. A former student of the famous Ecole Polytechnique and a member of the Council of State, Chevalier obtained the chair of political economy at the Collège de France in 1841, before becoming a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques and a senator in 1860. A Saint-Simonian at the beginning of his career, Chevalier later became a liberal and an advocate of free trade. For a detailed study of Michel Chevalier, see Yves Charbit (1981: 193–208).
- 11.
The chair was held (among others) by Louis Chevalier. A former student of the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure and a historian, Chevalier worked as a researcher at the INED and taught general history and demography at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. In 1951, Chevalier defended a doctoral thesis entitled Les Fondements économiques et sociaux de l’histoire de la région parisienne at the Sorbonne. He was subsequently elected to the Collège de France, where he held the chair of the history and social structures of Paris and the Paris region from 1952 to 1981. It was thanks to the appeal he made to his former fellow student, President Georges Pompidou, that the INED was not suppressed in the early 1970s. Gérard Calot then became director of the INED.
- 12.
Anecdote recounted in personal correspondence by an INED researcher.
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Petit, V. (2013). The Institutionalisation of a Wild Science. In: Counting Populations, Understanding Societies. Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5046-3_2
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