Abstract

The article focuses on the strike of Parisian carpenters during the summer of 1845. In the first part, by using archive sources and judicial reporting, the author retraces the unfolding of this strike and highlights the role of "compagnonnage" societies, masters' Chamber, and public authorities. This event invites us to appreciate the importance of the "tarif" (the structure of negotiations and agreements between workers and masters) and the emergence of new relations of production. The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of the political dimension of the strike: the author investigates the various positions emerging from the public debate and illustrates the different concepts of society that confronted each other during this struggle, with special regard to the articulation between social space and legal-political framework.