Bessière Céline

Biography

I am currently a Professor of sociology at Paris Dauphine University (PSL University) and IRISSO and a senior member at the Institut Universitaire de France. I study the material, economic and legal dimensions of family, in particular through the analysis of inheritance and marital breakdown. My new project is about gender and wealth accumulation in Europe. My research is at the crossroads of several fields: economic sociology, sociology of law and justice, sociology of gender, class and family.

My last book, The Gender of Capital. How Families Perpetuate Wealth Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2023) co-authored with Sibylle Gollac, demonstrates the existence of a gender wealth gap in formally egalitarian societies and analyzes the social mechanisms that cause it within the family, as revealed in moments of marital breakdown and inheritance. Through these gendered mechanisms, certain social classes monopolize wealth and strive to preserve it when passing it on to the next generation, while other social classes are persistently deprived of wealth. In France, The Gender of Capital was recently adapted into a graphic novel with Jeanne Puchol (Paris, La Découverte/Delcourt, 2023). A Chinese (Shanghai People’s Publishing House), Korean (Book 21) and a Greek translations will be soon available.

Maude Pugliese and I are currently curating a special issue of Socio-Economic Review as Guest Editors, on the theme “Gender and Wealth Accumulation: an Intersectional and International Perspective” (to be published in 2025). With Katie Higgins and Hanna Kuusela, I am also co-editing a special issue of the British Journal of Sociology on the theme Families and Wealth (to be published in 2025). 

In 2024, with Muriel Mille and Gabrielle Schutz I will publish an article in the Law and Society Review: « Putting the Client to Work: Power Dynamics in the Family Lawyer-Client Relationship".

I am also the co-author of a book drawing on a vast research on family courts in France (Collectif Onze, Au tribunal des couples, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2013 ; adapted into a graphic novel, by Baptiste Virot Casterman, 2020) and the author of a book on Cognac winegrowing family businesses (De génération en génération, Paris : Raisons d’Agir 2010).

In 2016-2017, I was a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. In 2018, I participated to the History Working Group and co-authored a text “The Institute at Crossroads: Gender, Work and Family in a Scholar’s Paradise“. In March 2022 I was a Visiting Scholar at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. In January-March 2024, I was a Visiting Professor at the Institute of French Studies at New York University and in August 24, I was a Visiting Professor at the Universidad Nacional de San Martin (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires.

More on my personal website

Publications