David Lepoutre is a sociologist. Known for his studies on working-class youth in suburban areas, on immigration, and on the bourgeois urban life, he is a professor at the university of Paris-Nanterre and a member of the “Institutions et dynamiques historiques de l’économie et de la société” laboratory. He has given many speeches in France and abroad. He is notably the author of Coeur de banlieue (European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and Social Sciences) which was a best-seller, and which has become a classic in ethnology and sociology.

Confronted with a problem in life, our first reaction is to wonder “why:” why isn’t my child doing well in school? Why isn’t my marriage working like it used to? Why am I always getting sick? Why am I so uninterested in my work? Etc.

For the sociologist David Lepoutre, this way of asking oneself questions is not the most likely to lead to answers: it is better when one raises questions about a marriage, education, a business, or health, for example, in an attempt to understand what is happening by replacing the “why” with “how.” Because it is by replacing what happens to us in time and by considering facts as the culmination of a process that we can, through truth, understand the existence that we lead or the difficulties that we encounter.

Drawing inspiration from some twenty great classics in sociology, ethnology, and history, this book thus aims to provide enlightening answers to some big social questions that have an impact on our daily lives: how is individual talent developed? How are couples formed, and come apart? How are students directed in secondary schools? How do executives establish their careers? And more…