The Max Weber Center, is a general sociology laboratory, which gathers most of the sociologists from the Lyon/Saint-Etienne site. Located in Lyon and Saint-Etienne, it is institutionally attached to four trustees: the university Lumière Lyon 2 (principal guardianship), the CNRS, the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, and the Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne. The Center is a member of the Institute of Human Sciences, named after a great founder of sociology, who, even today, still marks the most diverse contemporary sociology through his work as a sociologist and epistemologist of the social sciences. The members of the Max Weber Center demonstrate their commitment to a theoretical, methodological and epistemological pluralism. On January 1, 2016, the Max Weber Center had 265 Members: 222 members on a permanent basis and 43 members on a part-time basis. Amongst the 222 permanent members: there are 105 PhD students, 14 engineers and administrative technicians (CNRS and the Universities), 5 CNRS researchers, 63 researchers and teacher-researchers from the universities, and 35 contractual researchers. The Max Weber Center’s scientific policy is deployed through cross-cutting research activities and also the activities of its six teams:

• Work, institutions, professions, organizations
• Social and political dynamics of private life
• Knowledge Policies: Located and Democratic issues
• Public cultures
• Provisions, powers, cultures, socialization
• Modes, Spaces and processes of socialization

Its fields of specialization are work, family and relationships, gender, pragmatic approaches, knowledge, the study of socialization, culture, and urban mechanisms.