Léon Gérin and the economy
This article discusses Léon Gérin and his relationship to the economy and to political economic discourse. Building on the work of his predecessors, namely Étienne Parent and Antoine Gérin-Lajoie (Léon Gérin’s father), who underlined the need for an economic modernization of French-Canadian society, Léon Gérin seeks to give political economics a scientific status by means of the monographic approach introduced by Le Play. His research overturns the notion of the economy from one based on material terms to one based on the characteristics of social groupings. Moreover, he views social groupings as the source of progress rather than as being determined by it. Léon Gérin distances himself from political economics to establish sociology as a field of knowledge. But in so doing, he does not invalidate the theory of the economic superiority of Anglo-Saxons developed by the proponents of the Le Play school and supported by the political economy prevailing in his time.