UMR 8504 Géographie-cités/PARIS

L'analyse des utilisations du concept de hiérarchie dans les sciences sociales depuis qu'elles se sont institutionnalisées passe non seulement par une étude de l'histoire du concept en tant que tel, mais encore par celle de ses usages. Quant à l'histoire du concept, il convient d'évoquer sa lente diffusion depuis la théologie au XVIIIe siècle à l'ensemble des disciplines à la fin du XXe siècles. Ce qui importe est le changement de statut qui s'opère. La hiérarchie qui avait longtemps été un élément majeur de la description du monde en tant que système — cela quelle que soit l'échelle adoptée — devient, avec sa diffusion, un élément d'explication de ce monde, subissant de façon croissante les critiques liées au débat entre nominalistes et réalistes. Cela se traduit principalement par des questionnements sur l'aspect continu ou discret de l'objet étudié.
Quant aux usages, ils semblent avoir longtemps varié en fonction de l'importance de deux critères : la référence aux révolutions des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles et celle au marxisme. L'adhésion aux principes révolutionnaires qui amènent la démocratie pousse souvent à nier le maintien de hiérarchies dans la société. Plus qu'une hiérarchie, on aurait alors une utopique arborescence égalitaire. L'analyse marxiste d'autre part, qui réduit souvent la société en deux classes (bourgeoisie et prolétariat) se concentre plus sur les conflits comme facteurs d'évolutions que sur cette hiérarchie simplifiée. Les évolutions récentes enfin, qui insistent souvent sur la faible relation interscalaire et sur les acteurs disqualifient les hiérarchies selon deux autres registres qui recouvrent parfois les premiers. Dans le premier cas, chaque niveau d'interprétation est autonome, cette absence de lien dénie toute place au principe explicatif hiérarchique. Dans le deuxième cas, les études des acteurs valorisent l'étude des configurations et des relations interpersonnelles, réduisant les conflits ou les différences à des procédures de négociation.

This article presents the way in which the French territory was gradually equipped by the network with the roads with Horse Post. The study was undertaken by using GIS. The most important elements are the growth of the density of the network, like its complexification in time. These evolutions are studied on a French territory scale, initially by analyzing the morphology of the network, then by observing the great distributions. The result shows forms and methods of divergent growths on the territory.

French social sciences knew since the beginning of the years 1980 a connection with the memory whose strong markers are the choice to make year 1980 like year of the inheritance, and the publication, as from 1984, of a work-headlight of historiography: Les lieux de mémoire. This movement, to be understood must be analyzed by taking account of the evolution of the relations t between the history and the geography, quasi-Siamese disciplines of French secondary education. The analyzis of histories of France, successively published schow the recent separation of the two approaches. The geography which had a long time been an introduction to the history of France is almost completely excluded from these works to the profit of mentalities and a common culture. In same time, the reference to the History in the Geography is reduced, with the profit of a study of the time present which is often based on the space analysis. At the time of the sudden appearance of the memory in social sciences, these two university disciplines they probably arrived at the one of the moments of stronger ignorance of the other discipline. From there will be born from at the very least dissimilar uses of the memory and the places. Some historians accept an idea of place without topographic fastener. The geographers who are interested in the memory and the places make it mainly, on the one hand within the framework of the installation of the renewed concept of territory, and on the other hand in that of a renegotiation of the relation to temporalities.

The investigation presented here aims at determining the rhythms and the moments of interests for the cities in the French historians production. It is based on the exhaustive analysis of the 400 articles relating to the city in three great French reviews between 1876 and 1968. The principal conclusions are that after a first phase of research (until
about 1928) which is characterized by its diversity, one second phase, mainly made up around the productions of Annales, organizes research around two questions: economy and the society. In other words, the development of research on the city thanks to Annals is accompanied by an impoverishment of the sets of themes.

The topic deals with the question of relationships between the creation of a new transportation network and its effects, in terms of space shaping, here in the “Ancien Regime” France. Using a modelization approach, we aim to build the postal relation space of pre-industrial France and its evolution through two centuries. Postal roads are digitalized from historical lists of post houses, at seven different dates. Using a 900 points grid, we calculate the accessibility “at every place in France”, with a Shimbel index, and we take into account a secondary road network, characterized by a slower transportation speed. We weight the accessibility values by geometrical accessibility, and we generalize the results by interpolation methods. This methodology enlightens major regional differences, with some regions that have been favored by postal roads creations and other, less provided. The regional differentiations and their evolution reveal some planned decisions taken by French State as soon as the 18e century.

In France relations between history and geography have been strongly influenced by the existence of tensions on the long run. These come from separation between these two disciplines during the erection of geography as university discipline at the end of the XIXth century. With highly marked historical contents theses, the geography of the first half of the XXth century has had to build its identity against history. Recurrent justification gave then at the idea of a ladder of incommensurable time with that of history. From 1950s till 1980s, tensions have consolidated around the topic of the treason preventing the creation of single social science, in the same time, criticisms related to the determinism, which, due to a growing ignorance, does not correspond any longer to geography being made. Since the beginning of 1990s, the interest of the historians for anthropology or sociology have led to an appeasing of relations. In addition, researches which link history and geography are not any more recovering from an interdisciplinary logic, but are at the level of relation between researchers on a limited project.