Les approches comparées face à la globalisation

Jürgen Kocka is a historian of work, the bourgeoisie, and the labor movement, and is one of the world's most eminent specialists in the comparative approach and not in the only social history. Now a permanent fellow of the Re :Work International Research Center (IGK) in Berlin, he has granted an interview with Sociologie du travail in which he reviews recent advances in the comparative approach in an international context that has been marked by globalization, the influence of new technologies on the working methods of specialists in the social sciences and the humanities, and the intensification of exchanges among national academic communities. His analysis of the phenomenon of globalization identifies different phases as well as issues for our disciplines and puts the contributions of the comparative approach into perspective with those of global history and entangled history (histoire croisée) while recalling the basic definition of comparison: focusing on similarities and differences. Finally, the Berlin-based comparative historian returns both to objects of comparison that the contemporary era has rendered particularly sensitive and to the methodological challenges faced by the comparative approach today. He concludes with his perspective on university reforms in the humanities and the social sciences and their pertinence with regard to the development of comparative approaches, which demand significant investments from both students and academics.