The mechanisms of ordinary resistance: for a cultural sociology of situations of domination – SOCIORESIST

The mechanisms of ordinary resistance: for a cultural sociology of situations of domination
Acronym : SOCIORESIST

Calling on multi-located ethnographies and an investigatory approach which owes much both to pragmatism and to American “cultural sociology”, the SOCIORESIST research programme intends to contribute to sociological enlightenment of the means of action, both practical and symbolic, developed by groups of actors confronted with different situations of domination or placed in a position of inferiority.
Whilst such situations may occur wherever dissymmetrical relations of power exist (in relationships between the genders, ethnic groups or social classes), until now French sociology has understood or explained them by insisting mainly on the same “side” of the relationship: that is to say power in the sense of what it says or implies (cf. Michel Foucault), considering the effects of imposition and the “symbolic violence” it produces (cf. Pierre Bourdieu). A sociological chart of these different forms of “ordinary domination” continues in France to sidestep the beginnings of a nonetheless real counterpart: the way it is received and forms of criticism that it can arouse in terms of “ordinary resistance” from those dominated. SOCIORESIST is thus the comparative sociology of a certain number of its mechanisms, seen as socially constructed forms of (counter)powers embodied by concrete actors. The ethnographical survey thus concerns certain groups among : the overseas minorities enduring our “sad tropics” and the descendants of immigrations caught up in the daily life of poor suburbs (Jérôme Beauchez), workers and farmers on the decline faced with the socio-economic system of globalisation (Anne-Sophie Sayeux, Sandra Trigano and Corine Védrine), the collectives of the unemployed and activist protesters (Christophe Trombert), the impoverished groups of squatters and/or homeless (Djémila Zeneidi and Jérôme Beauchez), homosexuals, bi and trans (Aurélia Léon), and the disabled (Eve Gardien).
The union of researchers brought together by the problematic of “ordinary resistance” – and the power to act that it supposes – is the response to the diversity of practical situations, transcending particular ordinary cases. The centrality of this work concerted around a diversely documented single problem is all the more the guarantee of the epistemological coherence of the project as it presents a proof of the solidity of our team, called on to take up the question formerly placed by Max Weber at the very foundation of sociology: the question of relationships of domination.