L’ouvrage publié par Frank Dobbin aux Presses de l’université de Princeton en 2009 sous le titre Inventing equal opportunities offre une contribution innovante et stimulante sur les thèmes de la diversité et de l’égalité des chances aux États-Unis mais aussi sur ce qu’il nous permet de comprendre en creux sur le cas français. Pour rendre pleinement compte de la richesse de cet ouvrage, nous avons choisi de solliciter des auteurs s’inscrivant dans différentes perspectives disciplinaires car Frank Dobbin mêle analyse des mouvements sociaux, de l’action publique, du système juridique et des mobilisations professionnelles.

Frank Dobbin’s Inventing equal opportunities, published by Princeton University Press in 2009, has arrived at just the right time in a France where the theme of “diversity” has permeated big firms and where equal opportunity policies are being debated in the educational system, which, from kindergarten to university, is being accused of fostering inequality. This book provides a stimulating, innovative contribution to our understanding not only of these questions in the United States but also of the French case. We thought it was time to organize a symposium on a book that recounts and dissects nearly fifty years of development in equal opportunity policies in the United States. To fully describe the wealth of information in this book, we asked authors with different disciplinary perspectives to take part. By analyzing social movements, public actions, the legal system and occupational forms of mobilization, Frank Dobbin has revitalized and challenged accepted ideas about the role of public players in regulating behavior. He has also shown that legal uncertainty in civil rights cases has led to the formation of corporate standards that, though private, have the value of public ones.