The French sociologist Alain Touraine passed away on 9 June, aged 97. He leaves us with a vision of the world and societies in constant transformation through the action and ideas of the actors and social movements. He won international recognition for his work on the post-industrial society and the new social movements and was a keen theoretician
of modernity. He remains one of the most influential sociologists in many European countries and across Latin America. Through his personal (his wife Adriana Arenas was Chilean) and intellectual life, Alain Touraine was closely linked to Latin America. They were in Santiago during Salvador Allende’s government and witnessed Pinochet’s coup
in 1973. Fifteen years later, his major work on Latin America, „The Word and the Blood“, portrayed the continent a few years after the fall of the military dictatorships.
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