Quality: a debate

Christine Musselin (1) , Catherine Paradeise (2)

1 CSO - Centre de sociologie des organisations (Sciences Po, CNRS)
2 LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés

Over the last 20 years, major innovations in the French social sciences emerged from focusing on quality and qualification (of work, of products, of technical and management tools, etc.). It opened new ways to conceptualize social and economic exchanges. Our journal offers a tribune for further elaboration, from different disciplinary perspectives. Christine Musselin and Catherine Paradeise present a brief review and raise three questions. 1) how are attributes of quality defined and evaluated ? 2) What types of intermediation link supply and demand and how far do both interact; 3) How is price set in quality-based economic exchange? Five social scientists provide personal answers to these questions. Two are sociologists (Michel Callon, Lucien Karpik), two are economists (François Eymard-Duvernay, Jean Gadrey), one is an historian (Alessandro Stanziani). Altogether, the file includes six contributions: [Premières lignes].

Mots clés: démarche qualité; qualification; norme; incertitude

Domaines: Sociologie

Christine Musselin, Catherine Paradeise. Quality: a debate. Sociologie du Travail, 2005, 47 (Supplément 1), pp.89-123. ⟨10.1016/j.soctra.2005.09.002⟩. ⟨hal-02899405⟩