Les enjeux de la société de service

The industrial Society produced by two centuries is on its way out. While the main aspects of the current révolution in services are clearly visible, they are not easy to interpret, nor does the économie crisis context help us to understand them. Service activities seem fragile and inconsequential, incapable of assuring the wealth of nations, even though they turn the économie and social structures upside down. Jean-Claude Delaunay and Jean Gadrey think that they cannot be analysed seriously without a theoretical approach. A thorough study of économie thought over the last two centuries enables them to establish the social relation of service as a concept for the study of post-industrial society. Services are a new way of producing, consuming and living in society. Their specificity demands a reconsideration of the existing framework of the statistical and conceptual approach. The authors show how thèse tendancies hâve been integrated by the capitalist économie structure ; how the market is both fascinated by this frontier open to conquest and suspicious of the mass of « improductives » who make it up. The service society thus appears not as an abstract or idéal model, but as a trend, a trial and above ail a stake