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L'oeuvre des auteurs comme Foucault et Baudrillard a mis au defi les theories conventionnelles en sociologie quant au pouvoir de l'etat et de l'economie politique. Malheureusement, la recherche au Canada ne s'est peu orientee vers ces etudes theoriques. Cette communication cherche a demontrer l'utilite des notions de “surveiller” de Foucault et de la “codification” de Baudrillard pour mieux comprendre les composants et les pratiques quotidiennes des commissions des accidents du travail au Canada. The work of theorists such as Foucault and Baudrillard has posed a significant challenge to more conventional sociological frameworks for dealing with issues of state power and political economy. Yet empirical work on the state-political economy relationship in Canada has, so far, made little use of these theoretical insights. In contrast, the specific aim of this paper is to display the usefulness of Foucault's concern with surveillance and Baudrillard's concern with codification so as to better understand the constitutive features and the mundane practices of Canadian workers' compensation boards.

A generation ago, Hall et al.'s (1978) work Policing the Crisis gave a sophisticated analysis of the British media's mundane ability to 'encode' events so as to help produce a moral panic about mugging. Although this work remains relatively neglected in its home country, it has begun to be utilized for empirical analysis in North America. This article suggests, however, that Hall et al.'s analysis remains a poor import. This is not, however because of its age or cultural specificity. Instead Policing the Crisis fails, quite simply because it repeats in its own analysis the same 'ideological practices' (albeit at a higher logical level), which it discovered in its empirical investigation of the British media.

A generation ago, Dorothy Smith's groundbreaking work (1974) inspired numerous sociological neophytes to not only prioritise their own embodied experience, but also to question the hitherto taken for granted methodological conventions of the then current sociology. Yet for some students growing up on Smith's Marxist-influenced "nourishment," worrying problems remained. Fortunately, with "textual maturity" some resolution of these problems can now be proposed. Thus, this paper introduces readers to Donzelot's genealogical analysis of the "social" (Donzelot 1984) in order to show that Smith's original critique of conventional sociology must now be re-evaluated. Specifically, it will suggest that Smith's unquestioning usage of Marxist discourse needs to be subjected to critical analysis, because Marxism itself was heavily implicated in the original "invention" of sociology, and the "social" more generally. Resume: Il y a une generation, los travaux revolutionnaires de Dorothy Smith ont inspire un grand nombre de socio-neophytos a non seulement privilegier leurs experiences interiorisees du monde. mais aussi a questionner los conventions methodologiques, prises pour acquis jusqu'ici dans l'acceptation de cette version theorique de la sociologie. Cependant, pour certains etudiants de l'ecole de pensee de Smith, dont la theorie se nourrit de l'influence marxiste, des problemes inquierants restent a etre resolus. Heureusement, grace au "textual maturity" certaines solutions a ces problemes peuvent maintenant etre suggerees. Ainsi, cet article propose aux lecteurs les analyses genealogiques de Donzelot sur le 'social' (Donzelot 1984), tout en demontrant que la critique originale de Smith sur la sociologie conventionnelle doit faire maintenant l'objet d'une re-examination. En effet, cet essai emettra l'hypothese que l'usage inconditionnel du Marxisme chez Smith doit se preter aux analyses critiques, car le Marxisme lui-meme etait lourdement implique dans l'invention originelle de la sociologie, et, par extension, du "social" en general. ********** I was weaned on ethnomethodology/conversation analysis (Wootton 1975, Atkinson and Drew 1978, Drew 1978, Benson and Drew 1978) and simultaneously exposed to Dorothy Smith's early articles (1974a, 1978), as she began developing what would later become her institutional ethnography (1987), her feminist textual analysis (1974b, 1990a, 1990b) and, more recently, her "intertextual" concern with "writing the social" (1999a). In this intellectual infancy, the ethnomethodological critique of sociology (Garfinkel 1967, Zimmerman and Wieder 1970, Blum 1970a, 1970b Mehan and Wood, 1975, Filmer et al, 1972) and its associated "methods" (Cicourel 1964, Atkinson 1971, McHugh 1970) was absolutely foundational for my later development, (1) while the attraction of Smith's work was that it pushed this critique of conventional sociology further, so as to explore those everyday relations of power which remained rather marginal in the ethnomethodological literature of that time. (2) Yet, throughout this scholarly socialization, I constantly experienced "a feeling of uneasiness ... some disquiet" (Smith 1999a:8-9) about Smith's own (apparently straightforward) use of Marxism to ground her feminist career. (3) No doubt influenced by my own working class upbringing, and the apparent inability of Marxist discourse to explain that embodied experience, I initially attempted to go beyond Smith's sociology as "ruling apparatus" (Smith 1981a:3) thesis, by using Foucault and his (novel, at the time) conceptualisation of power/knowledge. (4) Not surprisingly, perhaps, in those formative years of my sociological education, my attempted "genealogy" of sociology, focussing on the "social control" (5) element within contemporary sociology, as well as the subjugation of both Comte's and Garfinkel's thought in its theoretical development (Doran 1984), was rather rudimentary. As a result, that particular project remained unfinished for some considerable time. …

La premiere partie de la carriere de Dorothy Smith s'est axee systematiquement sur l' etude methodique les pratiques ideologiques de la sociologie conventionnelle. Elle a egalement mis l'accent sur la necessite de baser la recherche sur l'experience concretisee. Mais malgres ses efforts pour etablir une micro-sociologie critique, son travail est lui-meme ideologique (selon le sens qu'elle donne elle-meme a ce terme). A partir d'une analyse des textes de ses travaux, l'A. demontre les pratiques ideologiques tacites presentes dans ses recherches sur le maternage dans la societe canadienne contemporaine et les consequences de telles pratiques qui l'engagent dans une boucle recursive, ou, curieusement, elle renverse ses positions theoriques.