Known for his work on the workers and the rich, the sociologist Michel Pinçon died at the age of 80. He suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
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© JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP
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Lhe world of sociology has lost a great name. Michel Pinçon died on Monday September 26 at his home in the Paris region. The 80-year-old was first interested in the sociology of workers, before turning to the transmission of wealth in the nobility and upper middle class. Former director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Michel Pinçon was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, according to his wife, Monique Pinçon-Charlot.
Most of Michel Pinçon’s work was written in collaboration with his wife, Monique Pinçon-Charlot. “I always say that we wrote 27 books with four hands,” she told Agence France-Presse (AFP). Their reference books are called The Beautiful Neighborhoods (PUF, 1989) or even The Ghettos of Gotha (Threshold, 2007). Since their retirement in 2007 and the abandonment of their reserve obligation, the Pinçon-Charlots have taken positions that are sometimes strongly criticized, especially for taxation of the rich.
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A childhood in the Ardennes
Born May 18, 1942 in Lonny, a village in the Ardennes, Michel Pinçon grew up in a working-class family. “He has been passionate about sociology since his childhood, with his working-class background in the Meuse valley and his attachment to the welfare state which gave children like him the opportunity to study,” said his spouse.
They met in 1965 during their studies in Lille. “It was a mutual love at first sight, between two lame people who had inverted class neuroses”, commented Monique Pinçon-Charlot, who for her part is of bourgeois origin, daughter of a magistrate. Fascinated by the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, they had a long career as researchers from the 1970s. he suffered the most himself,” his wife explained.