Jean-Pierre Pélissier (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique INRA, Paris, France)

 

Contact details:

INRA
Unité STEPE,
63 Bd de Brandebourg,
94200 Ivry-sur-Seine, France

Tel: +33 (1) 49-59-69-01

E-mail: pelissie@ivry.inra.fr

Career :

I started my research in field of biochemistry. I obtain my Ph.D from Paris-VII University in 1973. I entered the same year in INRA as researcher and obtain my "Thèse d'Etat" in 1984. I am now "Director of research" in this Institute. I spend a year, 1983-1984, to the Laboratory of Historical Demography of the CNRS in Paris.

In 1990 I was transfered to the Rural Economic and Sociologic department of INRA to develop a program on mobility of populations in France (XVIII-XX centuries) based of the records of births, marriages and deaths to work on geographical and social mobility, effect of administrative boundaries, ....

In 1993, the CNRS proposed me to take the direction of the large inquiry, started 10 years before and now common between INRA and CNRS, to study the mobility of French population from 1803 to 1990 based on the genealogical reconstitution of the family of all peoples whose name started by the letters TRA (as Travers, ...). The activity was mainly up to know concentrated on the development of the data base (collected in all the 36 000 communes) and the analysis of social mobility. But we are now developing analysis on the geographical mobility. On this line, we prepare data to be able to make maps to follow all the modifications of administrative boundaries.

Selected Publications :

J. Dupâquier and J-P. Pélissier, 'Mutations d'une société : la mobilité professionnelle' (Society mutations : professional activity mobility). In J. Dupâquier and D. Kessler (eds) La société française au XIXe siècle. Tradition, transition transformation (Editions Fayard, Paris, 1992) pp 121-235.

C. Motte and J-P. Pélissier, 'La binette, l'aiguille et le plumeau, les mondes du travail féminin' (The worlds of women activities). In J. Dupâquier and D. Kessler (eds) La société française au XIXe siècle. Tradition, transition transformation (Editions Fayard, Paris, 1992) pp 237-342.

J-P. Pélissier. 'Paroisses et communes de France. Pyrénées-Orientales'. (Parish and communes in France. Pyrénées-Orientales). Editions du CNRS.

P. Leroy, D. Nicolas, J-P. Pélissier. 'Mobilités et aires matrimoniales (Mobility and marriage area) in G. Brunet, A. Fauve-Chamoux, M. Oris (Dir.) Les chemins de la Recherche. Le choix du conjoint (Programme Rhône-Alpes de Recherches en Sciences Humaines, Lyon, 1998) pp61-75.

Jean-Pierre Pélissier : Current Research

I am in charge of two different projects. The first one is a specific INRA project on the mobility of populations in the past (programme PAGI). The second one is the inquiry, common with the CNRS, on the mobility during the last two centuries based on the analysis of all peoples whose name start with the letters TRA. The aim of this inquiry is to analysis the social and geographical mobility of all these peoples (around 6 000 genealogies) with the descending patronymic genealogies.

Program PAGI

With the collaboration of genealogical associations we develop a data base of parish and commune registers of births, marriages and deaths. Today the data base contains more than 1 500 000 informatised certificates.

In this program, we are particularly interested by the analysis of geographical mobility. Is it possible to determine local countries where marriages occurred preferentially? Did this small countries have "borders" which is possible to identify with parish registers? Did these "borders" move when we take different place of a local country to determine them? Is there a relation between these "borders" and the administrative borders? How these "borders" change during time? This is any of the questions we try to analyse. We have series of data on some departments mainly Corrèze, Eure, Pas-de-Calais, Seine-Maritime, Yonne, ...

Another analysis concerns relations between a small town and its rural environment. For this problem we work on the town of Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher) from around 1600 to 1945.

Program TRA

The TRA program is based on the genealogical reconstitution of patronymic descending genealogy of all peoples whose name started by the letter TRA in all part of France. Normally all the births, marriages and deaths certificates of these peoples must be collected. The aim of this project is to study the social and geographical mobility on two centuries.

We are currently working on collecting and controlling data, on development of programs for family reconstitution and on the geographical mobility by analysis of 73 000 marriages from 1803 to 1990.

Related programmes

To study the mobility of population on a long period, it is necessary to be able to characterised and localise every person in our data. This is particularly important for activities and geographical mentions.

For activities, we collaborate with an international researcher group, mainly European grouping sociologists and demographers, to establish an international historical classification (HISCO) derived from ILO classification (ISCO68). We furnished the French data derived from the TRA research. This classification will be presented at the European Social Science History Conference in Amsterdam in April.

For geographical identification, it is necessary to have a good list (and map) of the evolution of the boundaries during time. In relation with researcher in cartography of ENS, in Paris, we are preparing a thesaurus of geographic name and administrative division in relation with map presentation. We take into account modern authority list, but also develop "gazetteers" of historical modifications since the end of the XVIII century (before French revolution). In parallel a data base of the polygons useful for map representation is developed.


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