A la recherche clivages occultés: Radioscopie d'un conflit universitaire hongrois

This article starts out from a conflict in a Budapest faculty about the reform of the teaching of a discipline. It endeavours to explore the hidden sociological dimensions of the relations of interest and the career strategies marking the opposition between "reformers" and "conservatives" among students and teachers. The positions taken by the actors in the conflict correspond fairly clearly to the positions they occupy in the university field. Thus, the trajectories of the "reformers", which are strongly opposed to those of the "conservatives", are characterized by "bourgeois", urban origins; by academic and scientific excellence objectified in many publications and their integration into the editorial committees of the major journals of the discipline; by the resolutely theoreticist orientation of their work; by strong national and international scientific consecration; by the weakness of their "political capital"; and by the relative under-repre-sentation of Jews among their number. Far from deriving from purely individual choices, reformism and conservatism are inseparable from the agents' objective social destinies and opportunities and from the professional options which underlie the competitive struggle pernianently waged by the different fractions of the faculty staff with a view to their symbolic upgrading and gaining access to the rare resources necessary for scientific activity.