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Ledent David : curriculum vitae

Tuesday 19 April 2005, by Ledent David

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David LEDENT

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Université de Caen - Basse-Normandie

Doctorant centre Maurice Halbwachs - LASMAS

ATER en sociologie

Research works: Music, cultural legitimacy, relationship between history and sociology, Civilizing process, sociology of symbolic forms.

My work studies the social and symbolic representations which take form around the feeling «to be civilized». Behind the law-and-order ideology conveyed by a hegemonic speech is in my opinion an ideal of softening of manners. Influenced by the theory of Norbert Elias’ «Civilizing process», we can connect this ideal to a redefinition of the living-together starting from the Renaissance. The will to pacify social relations appears as an ideal of life in society which is symbolized in various forms.

Bibliographic references:

Bastide, Art et société (1945/1971), L’Harmattan, 1997.

Duvignaud, Sociologie de l’art(1967), PUF, 1984.

Elias, La société des individus (1987), Fayard, 1991.

Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale, Plon, 1958.

Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie, PUF, 1950.

University works:

Juin 2002 : Mémoire de maîtrise : « Les concerts de musique classique. A la recherche du temps perdu ».

Juin 2003 : Mémoire de D.E.A. : « L’esthétique romantique comme résistance à l’aliénation. Le «réenchantement« du monde ».

Thèse en cours : « La musique symphonique comme symbole d’harmonie sociale. Contribution à une sociologie des formes musicales » (sous la dir. de Aldo Haesler).

Article : « Art et sociétéde Roger Bastide. De l’esthétique à une socio-anthropologie de l’art », in Bastidiana (sous la dir. de Philippe Laburthe-Tolra), Juillet-Décembre 2004.

Article à paraître : « Francastel », présentation de Pierre Francastel pour la revue Anamnèse.

My work concerns the sociology of art and music. Wondering about the significance taking by symphonic music and the ideal of harmony that it conveys, I study the revealing and indissoluble link between the symphonic form as a symbolic form and reflexive modernity. In other words, symphonic music is apprehended as a symbol of Western civilization. Following the social and symbolic representations which surround symphonic music at various times, the relevance is to understand why this form acquired such a cultural legitimacy in the West. The main hypothesis is in this way the following one: musical harmony becomes symbol of social harmony when a social configuration carries out an ideal of softening of manners. Then, the object of my thesis is to connect together ideas and ideals which appear in a homologous way in symphonic music and philosophical and literary thought.