Xavier Bernier est maître de conférences en géographie à l’Université de Savoie (Laboratoire EDYTEM, CNRS). Il étudie les sociétés au prisme de leurs mobilités et de leurs différentes façons de traverser l’espace. Le géotype montagne sert de cadre à une grande partie de ses publications où il est envisagé à travers les pratiques spatiales. Ses travaux sur la notion de traverser le conduisent à interroger ce défi social à travers les figures spatiales qui lui sont associées.
Une affiche dans le métro. Elle fait la publicité pour des psychologues venant au domicile des patients. Mais elle interroge aussi la nature de la relation entre les lieux et les habitants à travers les mots qui en résultent. Ce faisant, elle implique l’une des questions essentielles de l’habiter. Habite-t-on d’abord une langue ou des lieux ? [...]
Different kinds of conquest are more and more about circumterrestrial and interplanetary space. It concerns directly the meaning of the World and the place of humanity. What does it really mean to live outside the Earth ? Based on the recent spectacular promotional events of Elon Musk’s societies, this paper aims to give a social point of view. [...]
The ordinary people’s daily life is full of adventures and misadventures, but less and less of tragedies. This is the consequence of the growing density of the interactions they perform with their fellow humans, which protect them from disasters and even boost them towards happy endings. This emergence might be a typical feature of the contemporary world. [...]
Seen through the experience of a couple on their honeymoon, the bankruptcy of the Thomas Cook company is structurally revealed as the all too successful success of a project aimed at training residents in tourism. Tom and Amelia are trapped in this situation. But this is without taking into account their ability to turn an unfavourable situation around and give it a successful outcome... [...]
Seasons are commonly presented as meteorological cycles deriving from climatic phenomena. They rather are conventional divisions of time and are part of the ritualization of social life’s repetitive components. As a result, when the presence or the absence of "natural" seasons and their supposed qualities or flaws are simplistically invoked, vigilance might be required. However, societies constantly strove to bypass cyclic weather constraints. Contradictions between official seasons and climatic practices actually paved the way for worthy-of-attention imaginaries and aesthetics. [...]
Selfying is nowadays a massive and worldwide practice. Recently, certain types of schizophrenic selfies have increased, especially on social media. Pictures of oneself may be transformed, by image distortion but also by several concealment techniques. What are the real stakes of these developments in the space of societies ? [...]
A practice almost as old as humanity itself, the technique of tattooing, an injection of ink under the skin, continues to be interpreted and reinterpreted, according to the times and societies. The contemporary period does not escape the phenomenon and, faced with the multiplication of these forms of writing that take the body as a page, invites reflection and questioning : what meanings, for tattooed people as well as for those who look at them ? [...]
The word "barbecue" comes from an Arawak language, but it actually encompasses very ancient practices. BBQ has once epitomised a family-focused, partially communal lifestyle. Now, its presence in public space makes a difference and is playing a part in the emerging society of individuals as a global civil rhizome. [...]
Tourist and sports itineraries or routes of memory can often be identified with an extent of development work on the land, and it can take sophisticated forms. But GPS drawing is quite an innovative way of practicing space. It requires a lot of new instruments of geo-localization. When the exercise is completely accomplished, an image or a text may appear on a numeric map. This produces new spaces and new spatialities. [...]
Conducted in an innocuous manner, the search for the title of a song heard in a mini-series mobilizes, however, the tools made available to all by information technologies. The sociologies of everyone cross the algorithms and other "filter bubbles". These forms of intelligence as well as their combinations, far beyond their amazing efficiency, question. Do the constructions of this contemporary "sur-mesure de masse" open up to the world or do they lock everyone with what they already know ? [...]
