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interview with Isabelle Lespinet-Moret professor of contemporary history at the University of Paris1-Panthéon Sorbonne
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through
Eliane Patriarch
/ October 19, 2021
“Work” was the theme of the Rendez-vous de l’histoire 2021, organized from October 6 to 10 in Blois. Member of the scientific council of the event, historian Isabelle Lespinet-Moret explains the reasons for this choice.
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Why this theme of “work”?
Isabelle Lespinet-Moret: It imposed itself on us because the history of work is a field of research in full renewal, generational and thematic. In addition, it is on the program of the Capes of History-Geography and External History Aggregation competitions for 2022, with the title: “Work in Western Europe from the 1830s to the 1930s.” Or les Rendez part of the mission of history is to take part in the training of students.
What does this renewal consist of?
I. L.-M. : In the years 1960-70, the history of work was a very powerful field of study, focused around the history of the workers. In the 1980s and 1990s, social history, and that of work in particular, declined. Cultural history was on the rise. At the end of the 1990s, our generation revisited social history. We proposed another way of approaching work, more focused on the evolution of companies, with the theses of Nicolas Hatzfeld on Peugeot and Gérard Vindt on Péchiney, or on the history of institutions: Vincent Viet explores the origins of the Labor Inspectorate and I devote my …
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