Famed French sociologist Alain Touraine has died at the age of 97, according to his daughter, former minister Marisol Touraine.

A leftist intellectual who won the respect of the right, Alain Turenne described dynamics of social change during the decades of 1945-1975, the period of economic development of France (Trente Glorieuses) and beyond in the huge writing work that he left behind and marked his time.

Touraine was born on August 3, 1925 in Hermanville-sur-Mer, Normandy to a fairly conservative family. surrounded by books.

“I belong to the last generation that grew up on literature. My upbringing was more moral than political. For me politics then was “Hope” by André Malraux.he confessed himself.

His starting point was labor issues, and his doctoral dissertation was on Renault car factory workers.

Then, after May 1968, he turned his attention to “new social movements” from socialist labor.

“Has not the time of social struggle, class relations, social movements passed?” This was the question he posed in La Voix et le Regard in 1978, a synthesis work on the sociology of student, localist, feminist, etc. movements.

Source: Le Monde-AFP.