Résumé :

La démocratie participative et délibérative constitue un objet de connaissance largement investi par la communauté scientifique. Elle est aussi l’occasion d’interventions quand, sollicités comme experts, les chercheurs sont amenés à jouer l’un ou l’autre des rôles attendus des dispositifs mis en œuvre, comme ceux de garants ou d’acteurs de la gouvernance. Comme d’autres, mon engagement en contexte participatif et délibératif est ainsi caractérisé par un tour de rôles, qui met à l’épreuve l’éthos et le métier de sociologue. Par-delà les considérations épistémologiques, déjà documentées, on verra en quoi être sociologue s’avère toutefois une ressource en dépit de la mise en tensions du métier.

Résumé en anglais :

Participatory and deliberative democracy is widely invested by the scientific community with knowledge objectives. It is also an opportunity for interventions when researchers are called upon as experts and are requiered to play one or other of the expected roles of the participatory process, such those of « garant » or actors of governance. Like others, my commitment in participatory and deliberative contexts is thus characterized by a turn-taking, which tests the sociologist ethos and profession. Beyond the epistemological considerations, already documented, we will see how being a sociologist remains indeed a resource.

Résumé :

Comme d'autres disciplines des sciences humaines et sociales, la science politique a exploré ces dernières années des formats alternatifs de présentation et de valorisation des connaissances produites par les chercheur.es de la discipline. La « conversation méthodologique » du dernier Congrès AFSP en juillet 2024 à Grenoble s'est penchée sur la question avec quatre invités (Fabien Jobard, Camille Froidevaux-Metterie, Emmanuel Taïeb et Marieke Louis) qui sont porteurs d'expérimentations enthousiastes. Au fil des échanges, ces derniers font le constat que la narration littéraire des résultats scientifiques provoque un mouvement salutaire de valorisation des recherches. Ils soulignent aussi combien l’écriture sur ces formats transforme leur propre regard. La démarche va bien au-delà de la simple vulgarisation. Le beau produit du sens scientifique, nous a même dit une intervenante…

Résumé :

Research on territories which have long been subjected to nationalist violence has tended to focus on the most radical manifestations of these struggles and their electoral and institutional consequences. In certain configurations, the involvement of nationalist entrepreneurs in socio-economic initiatives, environmental causes or women's mobilisations reveals a broadening of activism to a larger political scope. This broadening can contribute to diluting or, conversely, reinforcing purely nationalist demands while creating new opportunities for alliances with non-nationalist mobilisations. The French Basque region illustrates such a discussion. Basque nationalist politics has not only taken the form of a political movement but has also constituted a culture of citizen opposition in which the nationalist demand is as much an end as support for other struggles, notably socio-economic ones. The article adopts a socio-historical approach by going back to the main arenas in which Basque nationalism was formed and the struggles that have shaped it. Once having defined the concept of the culture of civic opposition, the article analyses three historical sequences from the 1970s until the 2020s.

Résumé :

This article explores the scientific connection between Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s anthropological framework and Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of capitalism. Schumpeter incorporates Lévy-Bruhl’s concepts of “primitive mentality” and its contrast to “logical mentality” into his analysis of the cultural dimensions of capitalism. When characterising the “civilization” of capitalism, Schumpeter emphasises its “rationalistic” and “logical” aspects, drawing from Lévy-Bruhl’s depiction of “logical mentality.” Furthermore, Schumpeter adopts Lévy-Bruhl’s methodological approach, which posits that the mental structures of a society are shaped by its socio-economic organisation.

Résumé :

Few studies have estimated the frequency of e-cigarette use by smoking status among French young adults, and how those who smoke tobacco start and continue to use e-cigarettes. Our aim was to describe e-cigarette use among students who smoked tobacco. A multi-stage, mixed methods study was conducted at the University of Bordeaux between September 2018 and March 2020. The study consisted of three different sub-studies: 1) a cross-sectional study across five campuses (n = 211), 2) a qualitative study (n = 30), and 3) an online cross-sectional study (n = 415). These were combined to form an explanatory sequential design (stage 1) and then a convergent parallel design (stage 2). Although 41 % of students had tried e-cigarettes at least once in their lifetime, only 7 % were current users. Both e-cigarette experimentation and current use (i.e. occasional or daily use) were mainly found among current and former smokers. Student smokers started using e-cigarettes out of curiosity, with other vapers. Two main factors were identified as intervening in the transition from smoking to sustained vaping: the perception of smoking as problematic and personal commitment to e-cigarette use (i.e. by buying their own device, acquiring technical skills, and increasing the frequency of use). Among current vapers, exclusive vapers and dual users differed in terms of their smoking goals, the role they attributed to e-cigarettes, their identity development and their perceived social or personal benefits. This study highlighted the complexity of the decision-making process for transitioning from smoking to sustained vaping among university students. This required a socially supportive environment and some intrinsic factors, of which the problematization of smoking and personal commitment to vaping were key factors.

Résumé :

À partir d’une enquête auprès de 4 072 personnes âgées de 40 ans et moins, cet article analyse les déterminants du soutien à différents modes de gouvernement chez les jeunes Français, pour comprendre de quelle manière les inégalités spatiales, sociales et politiques expliquent ces préférences. Des analyses descriptives confirment d’abord une certaine forme d’érosion du soutien à la démocratie au sein de la jeunesse française, moins susceptible de soutenir le gouvernement démocratique que ses aînés et plus attirée par un gouvernement militaire. Des analyses inférentielles démontrent ensuite le rôle négligeable du lieu d’habitation pour expliquer ces préférences, contrairement à celui du niveau de diplôme, mais aussi la spécificité des 18-24 ans, particulièrement prompts à soutenir un gouvernement militaire.

Résumé :

Objective: This study investigates the effects of paternal involvement on the frequency of gender-incongruent activities in children's play at age 2. Background: Recent research suggests that paternal involvement is associated with more gender egalitarian attitudes in children and a more egalitarian distribution of housework tasks between sons and daughters. Although previous studies have tested the effects of paternal involvement on teenage children, the process of internalization of gender norms and roles in early childhood has not yet been investigated. Method: Analyses are based on the French Elfe cohort with information at age 2 for 11,564 children born in 2011. Multivariate linear and multinomial logistic regression models were run separately for sons and daughters. Results: Paternal involvement in early childhood was associated with more frequent gender-incongruent activities in boys' but not in girls' play at age 2. The effect of paternal involvement further varied depending on the type of involvement: involvement in housework tasks and childcare was associated with more gender-incongruent activities for sons but paternal participation in children's play increased the frequency of activities gender-typed as masculine, independently of the child's sex. Conclusion: Paternal involvement in housework and childcare in early childhood shapes gender-typed activities in toddlers' play for sons but not for daughters. It contributes to "undoing gender" in play activities for boys and, in doing so, narrows the gender gap in children's play.

Résumé :

La Californie est en proie à une crise hydrique depuis plusieurs années. Face à cette crise, les acteurs de l’eau ont opté pour ce qui peut être considéré comme une (non-)solution néo-conservationniste : il ne s’agit pas tant de remettre en question le modèle économique et urbain qui conduit à une consommation d’eau supérieure aux ressources disponibles, que de trouver des arrangements contractuels et techniques pour une gestion plus « durable » de l’eau, afin de soutenir l’expansion économique et urbaine. Plus qu’un effet d’une domination indiscutable des élites politiques, d’une mobilisation de croyances néo-conservationnistes ou d’un effet d’une architecture institutionnelle fragmentée, nous soutiendrons que le néo-conservationnisme observé est le résultat des logiques de fonctionnement du champ des politiques hydriques, relativement autonome du pouvoir politique et économique.

Résumé :

Assessing empirically to what extent citizens’ preferences are considered during the elaboration of public policy remains a challenge for political science research, even though it concerns one of the central pillars of modern democracies. Governments in most democracies make extensive use of public opinion research, especially in times of multiple crises. However, we do not know much about the way they mobilize this resource. While recent research examines the factors that determine the intensity of government polling at different moments of the electoral cycle and the different logics of representation behind this activity (Durovic and Schnatterer 2023), empirical evidence on the more qualitative aspect of government polling is still lacking. What types of policy issues are covered by government polls? Why are some topics overrepresented at the expense of others? Our paper sheds light on issue selection in government-commissioned opinion polls. Understanding governments as actors in the production of public opinion, not just as passive consumers, we study government polls as dependent variable. Public opinion is often considered as a possible actor in the process of the emergence of new issues. In all these models, public opinion is regarded as an exogenous entity that is known to the researcher (or at least can be measured) and, as far as we know, there is no single study on the political agenda of survey opinion. If we consider, however, that public opinion, at least in its surveyed form, is itself a social construction, it becomes necessary to focus as a first step on the political agenda of opinion polls and their agenda-setting dynamics. To do this, we develop an innovative research design and systematically analyze the factors that determine why an issue makes it onto the government's agenda. We present evidence from Germany, mobilizing an original database of all survey questions directly commissioned by the German federal government during the 18th and 19th legislative periods (2013-2021). Using a conditional logit approach, we analyze how different types of issues (regulatory, distributive and redistributive), the interest group density in the policy domain and institutional constraints in the German federal system affect the likelihood that policy issues are covered by government polls. We also control for government priorities, different types of salience (national, personal and media salience) and issue ownership by government. Our findings show that the commissioning of public opinion polls by governments takes place in a competitive environment, and that governments are torn between citizen priorities, interest group lobbying, and institutional constraints.

Résumé :

This paper draws on a literature review to provide a comparative analysis of the short-term and long-term consequences of urban riots in France and the United States from the 1960s to the present. It explores how these events influence politics, public opinion, and policy. While the 1960s riots in the US catalyzed a conservative realignment and the rise of a law-and-order agenda, the riots happening along the recent Black Lives Matter protests have strengthened anti-racist activism. In France, riots have resulted in ambiguous policy and political outcomes. We conclude with a comparative discussion of the conditions for police behavior to become challenged in public debates.