Alain Touraine was a French sociologist. He was research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he founded the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux. Touraine was an important figure in the founding of French sociology of work after World War II and later became a sociologist of social movements, particularly the May 68 student movement in France and the Solidarity trade-union movement in communist Poland.
