Georges Philippe Friedmann (Paris, 1902-id. 1977), French Sociologist.
Georges Friedmann was the founder of a human work sociology after World War II. In 1921, after studying industrial chemistry, he entered a teacher training college on the rue d'Ulm, in Paris, France. During the war, he was an intellectual Marxist and close to the communist party. Friedmann devoted the majority of his work to the study of relationships between man and machine in industrial societies in the first half of the 20th century.
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Friedmann's work, like Work in Crumbs (1956), was often reduced to be presented as a sociology of work.
In 1931, he approached the problems posed by work and techniques.
In 1946, his thesis Problems of Industrial Mechanization, introduced the new sociology of work to France. At this time, sociology had already been made known and was recognized both in France by Friedmann, and overseas by his American peers. However, Friedmann's journey and work exceeded this unique sociology identity of work by along way.
In 1960, he explored a different field of technical culture: communications and mass culture.
Friedmann's forte as a great organizer and initiator of research was seen during the time he headed the Center for Sociological Studies (CNRS).
During the rise of Fascism in 1930, Georges Friedmann, like certain other individuals of his time, wondered about the Soviet experience. He learned to speak Russian at the Institute of Oriental Languages, and between 1932 and 1936 made many trips to the USSR. From these travels he drew two works, in which he expressed his support for the then-current regime in Moscow.
With the declaration of war and signing of the German-Soviet Pact, Friedmann, with Jean Cassou at his side, engaged in resistance. Friedmann became a man of action. In 1987, ten years after his death, Friedmann's War Journal, recounting his experiences as a member of the reisistance, was published.
After World War II, Friedmann, along with other travellers such as Vercors, Jean Cassou, and André Chamson, drafted an account of travellers to, and sympathizers of, the USSR. The account, written in 1946, was entitled The Hour of Choice, and was published in 1947. The account can be summarized briefly by the following sentence: "The USSR was an example, but not a model."
George Friedmann, throughout his life, always took care to maintain the bonds between sociology and great Western metaphysical philosophy. As a great reader of Leibniz and Spinoza, Friedmann wrote his moral and philosophical reflections on the future of a technical civilization in Power and Wisdom, which was published in 1970.
La Puissance et la Sagesse (Paris, 1970) "Le Sage et notre siècle," Revue de Synthèse 99 (1978)
This article draws heavily on the Georges Friedmann article in the French-language Wikipedia, which was accessed in the version of March 27, 2006.