Civility and Democracy

By taking seriously the idea that democracy is a way of life, a pragmatist approach to democracy invites us to reconsider how manners and the political realm of free thought may be related. The present contribution argues that civil interactions are part of the experience of citizenship and represent one of the ways through which political principles can come to life. Civility is therefore described as an activity rather than a set of rules, the role of which in democratic life has been often underestimated. In civil interactions, people struggle and hesitate, and even fight to establish conditions of respect, trust, solidarity, or authority. They practically define the bond between people who have nothing more in common than living in the same society. Far from being a mere mechanical or conservative repetition of inherited habits, civil interactions, when studied closely, exhibit the constant effort people make to promote what they care about. Civility should therefore be considered as an activity the difficulties associated with which aim at embodying through sociability, the political link between citizens. Hospitality to difference, helpfulness, attention to others, even quarrels over what is fair, discussions and reflections about the relevance of the categories through which people perceive one another, have to be analysed in this perspective, as effective parts of the activity of caring for the common world

Sociologie des médias

Sabine Chalvon-Demersay, directrice d’étudesCarole Gayet-Viaud, maître-assistant associée à l’ENSAPLV Ce séminaire a été consacré aux héros de séries télévisées françaises et américaines. L’idée était d’essayer de comprendre comment les séries prennent place dans l’expérience morale des personnes au même titre que d’autres genres d’exemples qui structurent le monde de l’action et contribuent à en configurer les possibles. Dans cette optique, la fiction est abordée non pas simplement à partir ..

Sens du juste et sens de la réalité sociale

Isabelle Thireau, directrice d’études Enseignement suspendu durant l’année universitaire 2011-2012 Alain Cottereau, directeur d’étudesCarole Gayet-Viaud, maître-assistant associée à l’ENSAPLV Pratiques d’enquête et sens de la réalité sociale : approches sociologique, anthropologique et historique Suivant l’orientation générale du séminaire sur les pratiques d’enquête et le sens de la réalité sociale, du double point de vue de l’enquêteur et des milieux enquêtés, le séminaire s’est concentré c..

Normes sociales et légitimité dans la Chine contemporaine

Isabelle Thireau, directeur d’études Enseignement suspendu durant l’année universitaire 2010-2011 Alain Cottereau, directeur d’étudesStéphane Baciocchi, ingénieur d’étudesCarole Gayet-Viaud, maître-assistant associée à l’ENSAPLV Pratiques d’enquête et sens de la réalité sociale : approches sociologique, anthropologique et historique Poursuivant l’analyse des enquêtes de terrain, le séminaire de cette année s’est consacré plus particulièrement à un aspect négligé des expériences d’investigatio..

French cities. Struggle against incivilities: from theory to practices in regulation of public space

International audienceIn France, public policies began defining “incivilities” as a primary topic and target to focus on more than two decades ago. Yet what this term actually means is still somewhat unclear: almost every organization that uses it has its own definition, sometimes its own observatory. Despite, or perhaps because of, its very vagueness, the concept has become widely shared and used, securing itself a place on the agendas of most local security policies, becoming an explicit part of the remits of an increasing number of professionals, from police officers to social workers, including a wide range of municipal agents. The range of situations and behaviors potentially included in the list of “unruly conduct” is seemingly endless, from groups of teenagers hanging out to homeless people privatizing public places, and from using playgrounds as public toilets to noise, garbage, dog fouling, graffiti, queue-jumping, pushing and shoving, street harassment, insults of all kinds, badly parked cars, and so forth. However, not all of them provoke the same public attention. This article focuses on the way disorders are actually defined, measured, and dealt with in practice. Incivilities are often said to be growing because of increasing powerlessness. Our research proves action is far from being merely correlative to the legal capacity for sanction

As disputas de cortesia no espaço urbano: Quando a cortesia se transforma em violência

O artigo analisa, por meio da descrição de uma pesquisa etnográfica de cinco anos em uma vizinhança de Paris, França, um tipo específico de situação estabelecida nas relações entre atores na vida pública de uma grande cidade, aquelas chamadas aqui de “disputas de cortesia”. Trata-se daquele momento em que pessoas que não se conhecem põem-se a discutir por conta de algum discurso em sinal de reprovação apresentado por uma das partes e, devido a uma polêmica em torno de uma demanda de cortesia, podem chegar ao enfrentamento. The article Courtesy disputes in urban space: When courtesy becomes violence analyses, by the description of a five-year ethnography in a French neighborhood, the “courtesy dispute”, a specific type of situation established on the relations between actors in a big city public life. “Courtesy dispute” refers to the moment when people who don’t know each other start an argument because of a criticism made by another part and, motivated by a demand for courtesy, may follow towards violence.</p

Social civility and happiness of urban meeting. The figures of the "old man" and "baby"

La sociabilidad urbana fue durante mucho tiempo, y todavía hoy en día lo es, pensada de una manera negativa: ella es presentada en oposición a los espacios de inter-reconocimiento, a su inscripción en el tiempo, a su capacidad a poner en juego la singularidad de las personas. Debido a dicha comparación a todas luces desfavorable, las relaciones furtivas entre individuos anónimos son asociadas con todo aquello que la sociabilidad presenta como lo más factual: la superficialidad evidente de los “códigos”. El presente artículo, producto de una investigación etnográfica realizada en la región de Paris, propone reconsiderar esta perspectiva, con la finalidad de intentar identificar la positividad de los vínculos ligeros en la ciudad. La investigación se focaliza en aquellas situaciones en las que se manifiesta una apertura espontánea hacia los otros, un acercamiento en el que se dan ciertas formas de reconocimiento desinteresado, irreductibles a la salvaguarda de la faz o a la instrumentalización de los lugares o de las personas.  The urban social interaction was for long time –and it still is– thought in a negative way:  it is often defined as opposed to the social spaces of inter-recognition, to the long-standing enrollment of it in time, or to its capacity of setting at play the distinctiveness of individuals. By such a great unfavorable comparison, the fleeting relationships among anonymous individuals are linked with all of social relations representing the most factual things: the self-apparent evidence of the “codes”. This article, a by-product of an ethnographic research carried out in Paris, proposes to reconsider this perspective in order to try to identify the ephemeral social relationships’ worth of the city. The research focuses on those situations where spontaneous openness to the others is demonstrated, being this a set of close relationship where certain ways of disinterested recognition are present, which cannot be reduced to safeguard individual’s face neither to instrumentality of places or individuals

Le harcèlement de rue et la thèse du continuum des violences

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Du côtoiement à l'engagement :la portée politique de la civilité. L'activité pédagogique du Collectif Mort dans la rue.

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