Project description
France’s shifts from solidarisme to syndicalism
In the late 19th century, France faced significant changes due to industrial growth and the rise of mass democracy. This era saw the emergence of three key ideas about how to govern economics: solidarisme (a political philosophy emphasising the interdependence of individuals within a society), social Catholicism, and revolutionary syndicalism. Yet, studies often overlook how these ideas interacted and influenced each other. The MSCA-funded ECOCIT project explores these interactions. Specifically, it uses both traditional historical methods and new quantitative approaches like social network analysis to uncover how these ideas shaped views on welfare, democracy, and government from the late 1800s to the interwar period. ECOCIT charts a course towards an interdisciplinary understanding of pivotal socio-political debates.
Objective
Focusing on the intellectual history of the early welfare state, ECOCIT examines three discourses of economic governance of the early French Third Republic: solidarisme, social Catholicism, and revolutionary syndicalism. My innovative research hypothesis is that these traditions emerged from a same late 19th century context, marked by rising tensions between an expanding industrial capitalism and the consolidation of mass democracy. Representing alternative answers to the same set of questions, these discourses not only interacted with each other, but also set the key terms of the later interwar debate on the compatibility between parliamentarism and economic-based forms of citizenship. Two research objectives follow: examining previously neglected interactions between these discourses and, second, mapping the debate in terms of their vision of the relation between welfarism, democracy, and the state, so as to better trace their interwar legacies. Methodologically, I integrate the traditional tools of intellectual history with quantitative methods borrowed from sociology – social network analysis, essential for exploring interactions – and a morphological approach developed in the field of ideology studies, important for mapping the welfare debate. Complementing my previous work on Sorelian syndicalism, the project contributes to a wider research agenda that investigates how late 19th century discourses of economic governance shaped the much more well-known ideological clashes over liberal democracy in the interwar years. A book proposal on this wider theme is among the project’s deliverables. Besides rejuvenating the historiographies of the three discourses (which fail to address the question of interactions) and granting me competence in new research methods, the project allows me to begin tackling a question that is relevant both to welfare state studies and to the history of political thought, allowing me to develop my work towards greater interdisciplinarity.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- social sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systemsdemocracy
- social sciencessociologyideologies
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionreligionschristianity
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
30123 Venezia
Italy