LES NOUVEAUX MOUVEMENTS SOCIO-ECONOMIQUES AU REGARD DE L’HISTOIRE

Abstract

To understand Sustainable Development, Corporate Social Responsibility and the proc-ess of changing the
social compromise that result, the authors of the Montreal school of CSR developed the concept of New Socio
Economic Movement. They did so by relying on Alain Touraine’s concept of New Social Movement. Can this
concept, developed in the context of post-Fordism, be used to understand social and economic articulations
in other historic contexts? And if that is the case, what insights these historical examples can bring on sustainable development issues? I take as an example the French philan-thropic movement at the beginning of
the first industrial revolution in which several authors have seen an antecedent of CSR.