Suchergebnisse

Abstract
In the second part of this interview, Yves Dezalay – an Emeritus cnrs researcher who spent much of his professional career at the Centre of European Sociology in Paris – takes us even deeper into his trajectory as a scholar. In situating the institutional-intellectual spaces in which he circulated, Dezalay brings to life the inter/intra-disciplinary boundaries he regularly crossed and even forced open in his quest to understand the complexity of interconnections between the national and the international, the professional and the political, as well as the law and the state in overlapping processes of globalization. Speaking about his long-term collaboration with professor of law Bryant Garth, Dezalay also elaborates a collaborationist methodology of transversal, multi-sited research.

This interview with Yves Dezalay focuses on his research strategy and the link between a Bourdieusian approach and a multi-sited ethnography. Yves Dezalay explains his strategy of doing interviews with the lawyers who are part of their "state nobilities", in what order to interview them, with whom to begin and for what reasons. He warned about the dangers of trying to reproduce the ways of questioning elite actors as if they were important individuals without taking into account more socio genetic perspectives and especially the prosopography of the group and their respective positions. Collective biographies analysing the relations between the actors are the most important part of the research.

Looking back at eight years of controversies over Europe's future, this paper develops a new research agenda towards a political sociology of EU constitutional politics. As a preliminary step, we make the case for reflexivity, that is, for a critical appraisal of intellectual practice in the constitutional debate. Two research directions are then explored: an analysis of the changing forms of the "European public sphere"; a study of the "field of EU constitutional reform". As a polity, Europe is not a social continuum, but a mosaic of fragmented public spheres and social fields that, albeit undoubtedly interdependent, are largely autonomous from one another. In this configuration, informal scenes of power are as much important as institutional centres of command to set the agenda, promote new ideas and mediate contending interests. We therefore argue that a better understanding of both the European public sphere and the field of EU constitutional reform implies moving the research agenda from analyzing institutions to studying informal cross-sectorial arenas and trans-national networks, as well as the social and professional profiles of the agents making up these institutions, arenas and networks.

Cet article entend restituer l'articulation entre mobilisations politiques et sa-voirs académiques dans la promotion d'une Constitution européenne. En s'appuyant sur une analyse de l'expertise produite par tous ces laboratoires du constitutionnalisme européen que sont les comités de réflexion, commissions parlementaires, mouvements fédéralistes et autres think tanks, en pointant l'activité de différents entrepreneurs académiques de la cause constitution-nelle européenne, aussi bien dans sa genèse transnationale que dans ses usa-ges nationaux, cet article entend notamment s'interroger sur le rôle des pro-fessionnels du droit dans les transformations contemporaines du « champ du pouvoir » européen.