TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF THE RESISTANCE - INTENTIONALITY AND FUNCTIONALITY

This paper proposes a new approach of the resistance sociology. It des cribes the problems of counting the resisters that is done upon post-W ar archives. These archives lead to limit the resistance to the only m embers of the organizations. On the contrary, we propose to include in a global view of Resistance all those who, at one time, have done som ething against the Germans or have helped the organized resistance We consider Resistance more as a social movement than an organization. To interpret the involvement of the various social groups in the resista nce, we propose to use two different points of view, that are analyzed as complementary. The intentional principle describes what make actor s do resistance The functional principle describes the needs of the re sistance: as a matter of fact, the resistance, which is an action, nee ds to recruit in some specific social groups and not in other ones, ac cording to circumstances and to the forms of action. It leads to recon sider the sociology of Resistance, including for example peasants and women, and forbidding any value judgment about the earliness or the im portance of the engagement of such or such group that depends on the s ociology of the needs of resistance as much as on the sociology of the engagement of the social groups themselves.