TORONTO, April 24, 2008 -- York University will confer an honorary doctor of laws degree on internationally-recognized sociologist and author Alain Touraine tomorrow.
“In awarding this honorary doctorate, we are recognizing the importance of Alain Touraine’s work as a sociologist, not only in France, but in Europe, Latin American and Canada,” said President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. “We are fortunate to count Professor Touraine as a longtime friend of York and Glendon College.”
Glendon College Principal Kenneth McRoberts will present the honorary degree to Mr. Touraine, who is serving as honor president at the conference “Canada and the Americas: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Transculturality”, which concludes tomorrow.
Best-known for his pioneering work on social movements, Mr. Touraine is a research director at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, where he founded the Centre for the Study of Social Movements in 1970. He is also known for coining the term “post-industrial society”.
Mr. Touraine began studying social movements in the 1950s in France, Latin America and later Poland, including the student uprisings across Europe in May 1968 through to the rise of Poland’s Solidarity movement in 1980. From 1952 to1953, he was Rockefeller Fellow at Harvard, Columbia and Chicago universities. He founded the Research Centre for the Sociology of Labour at the University of Chile in 1956 and the Industrial Sociology Workshop of Paris in 1958.
Considered by many as a maverick, Mr. Touraine’s main focus is the sociology of labour and workers, social movements and social issues that arise as a result of development. He continues to be a keen analyst and political commentator on social movements in France, the United States as well as Latin America.
Mr. Touraine has written about 20 books, a number of which have been translated into English, including “A new paradigm for understanding today’s world (Polity Press, 2007), Beyond Neoliberalism (Polity Press, 2001), Can We Live Together?: Equality and Difference (Stanford University Press, 2000), Critique of Modernity (Blackwell, 1996) and Workers Movement (Cambridge University Press, 1987).
In addition, Mr. Touraine is an officer of the Légion d’Honneur and of the Ordre National du Mérite.
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Media contact:
Keith Marnoch,
Media Relations, York University,
416-736-2100 ext. 22091
