L’hospitalité urbaine au risque de la contagion.

Comment continuer à recevoir les plus précaires tout en les espaçant les uns des autres ?

This paper interrogates the social and spatial consequences of lock-down and “barrier” measures for newcomers and precarious foreigners in the city of Geneva. Linking these measures to the question of urban hospitality, the article documents the paradoxical transformations of the “hospitable milieux” that usually offer newcomers — and established “undocumented” migrants — the possibility to “take place” in the city and to stay there somewhat poorly. Addressing the case of “domestic workers” as well as “low-threshold” shelters and the [...]

Des effets d’une église détruite.

As the process of its reconstruction begins at the end of 2019, the aim here is to grasp the registers and devices through which the burning of a church in the heart of summer 2018, in the department of Doubs, is converted into a public problem in which the ways of problematising it as an event and authorising a reconstruction operate, and in the course of which a series of tests emerges in which the qualities of some and [...]

La métaphore spatiale : pour une lecture de Michel Foucault et Yves Lacoste.

Based on a close scrutiny of Michel Foucault's interview published in the very first issue of Hérodote, a journal dedicated to geopolitical approaches founded by Yves Lacoste, this article unfolds, thanks to the analysis of spatial metaphors, the conceptions and functions of space for the philosopher as well as for geographers. This symmetrical reading enlightens a subtle system of similarities, between Time and Space (two categories rejected by Foucault and the geographers alike, as they abandon grand concepts in [...]

Mobilités du quotidien et santé.

Un état de l’art basé sur le cadre théorique de la motilité.

The objective of this state-of-the-art article is to ask – based on the theoretical framework of the concept of motility – to what extent everyday mobility influences health. It is shown that this influence operates at multiple levels. In particular, following the example of active mobility, mobility can be a source of significant benefits, both in terms of physical health and mental and social health. But daily mobility can also be a source of accidents, air pollution, noise pollution, [...]

Journal d’un colloque de Cerisy.

The international cultural center of Cerisy-la-Salle (Normandy, France) has been organizing for many years residential, 7-day long conferences from the end of April till the end of September. Participants are hosted in the castle and the adjacent buildings. The author describes his participation to one of those conferences in order to make more concrete what he means by « enchantment », a notion he has been trying to ground for years on the basis of ethnographic accounts. [...]

Les citoyens-artisans dans la ville.

Réflexion sur la production symbolique et matérielle de l’espace public.

This article reviews the book L’espace public artisanal by Thomas Riffaud (2020). The book offers an interesting point of view by focusing on the figure of the « artisan », a citizen who by his appropriation of public spaces participates in their production. The volume is composed of three parts that describe this ideal-type, and the contours of his action in the contemporary city. Three case studies are also proposed in the last chapter. In this article, we review [...]

La guerre de l’habiter aura-t-elle lieu ?  

Reading the book “Where am I?” by Bruno Latour convinces that, at least as much as the ecological stake of the planet, it is indeed, in its fullness, the question of inhabiting it which is posed. Can ecological considerations, in particular the apocalyptic announcement of the end, be the exclusive inputs to this issue for all of humanity, that is, each and every one of its members, and well beyond? [...]

Comment habitent les sujets marginalisés ?  

Émotions des usagers et usagères de drogue.

The aim of this paper is to show how marginalized drug users who frequent low threshold drug facilities inhabit urban spaces in two cities, Bordeaux and Berlin. With a social geography approach informed with sociology of emotions and critical cartography methods, we led emotional mapping interviews and produced cartographic collages from the results. We present the inhabiting topography of each city, the constant production and movement of makeshift homes, as well as the relationships with others from the perspective [...]

Le rythme : une des formes concrètes du temps. 

Rhythm is certainly one of the concrete shapes of time. The Manifesto for a Politics of Rhythm develops a convincing argument on the power of the rhythmic approach to confront the pathologies of capitalism and, more broadly, to build an emancipatory choreopolitics. In an attempt to extend the reflection, the "wager of rhythm" is discussed here on the basis of one of the Manifesto's hypotheses: rhythm is a notion that allows for the articulation of space and time. Ethnographies [...]

Déterminations sociales et trajectoire individuelle.

L’exemple de Didier Éribon.

Didier Eribon’s autobiography is a magnificent example of socio-analysis. The present article details the main points: the journey of the defector, the opposition of social classes, feelings of shame, the stakes of school, the place of homosexuality, the role of the intellectual. It also points out a contradiction in the approach: Eribon intends to remain within the framework of a critical sociology, relating the trajectories of the agents to social determinations, but he breaks with this explanation when he [...]