HomeStudying Demands for State

Studying Demands for State

Enquêter sur les demandes d’État

From Practical Tensions to Generalised Crises

Des tensions pratiques aux crises généralisées

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Published on Monday, June 12, 2023

Abstract

This study day intends to interrogate the notion of “demand for state” in different fields and from different social sciences disciplines such as sociology, history and political sciences. By “demand for State” we mean the process by which social groups come to invoke a certain ideal of the state through criticism, demands and reflexive practices. We will pay attention to the different levels at which these demands for State become manifest, in order to open up some major areas of discussion: how to overcome the 'civil society/State' opposition, the emergence of demands for a social State in different historical and national contexts, or the place of demands for State in generalised crises. 

Announcement

Argument

This study day intends to interrogate the notion of 'demand for state' in different fields and from different social sciences disciplines such as sociology, history and political sciences. By 'demand for state' we mean the process by which social groups come to invoke a certain ideal of the state through criticism, claims and reflexive practices. These moments manifest particularly clearly the specificity of the state, being both a situated bureaucratic body, and a point of view on points of view. From an Eliassian perspective, we suggest that these demands become meaningful in light of an ongoing process of differentiation and integration. Indeed, this process leads to an increasing consideration of the growing density of ties that groups, especially professional groups, nurture with each other and with the state, and not only of the action of the state apparatus 'on' society.

Indeed, whether examining a family allowance fund (Dubois, 2010), a police court and the services of the Ministry of Agriculture (Weller, 2018) or the Conseil d'État (Latour, 2002), social science research has revealed how different public services employ and adjust 'state categories'. However, it has sometimes given the impression that the agents of these administrative and bureaucratic services are the only ones who employ these categories. This study day invites us to further the analysis of the state beyond the analysis of the actors working in the state apparatus, and to place the evolution of the state’s definition in a historical perspective. We can then observe how actors from other social groups, and in particular professional groups, aspire to more debates on these  state categories. This methodological and theoretical shift extends an understanding of the state as a 'point of view on points of view' (Bourdieu, 2012), but from the normativity immanent to practices. This implies no longer considering the state solely from the perspective of the double imposition of the symbolic order, through the objectivity of classifications and the mental structures of individuals, but rather apprehending it as a historical process of socialisation of reflexivity on a state scale. Seen in these terms, this reflexivity emanates dynamically from society and from the differentiation of the social groups that compose it, insofar as they maintain conflictual and solidary relations. 

This relational approach through 'demands for state', and no longer solely through State acts, thus leads to the avoidance of an excessively sharp division between society and the state. Early research on the analysis of social movements and collective mobilisations (Shorter and Tilly 1974, Birnbaum 1984, Johnston 2011) emphasised how these movements represented the manifestation of society against the state. The aim here is to extend the research that has sought to deconstruct this dualistic approach. We will consider political systems as a whole, within which these events agitate state groups and the social groups with which they are interdependent around a given social issue (Neveu 2019) - for example industrial inequality, or civil rights (McAdam 1982). Talking about 'demands for state' therefore makes it possible to account for the equilibrium that characterises the existence of the state, which is always liable to offer a point of view on points of view - at the risk of an excessive idealism that neglects the fact that this reflexivity is tied with conflicting social relations - and always liable to be treated as a group of actors like any other - at the risk of forgetting that the aspirations manifested by the state emanate from the whole of social groups and their relations. 

This study day proposes to contribute to the displacement of the very definition of the state, by no longer considering it as “the Other” of political society, but rather as a joint process of the Statisation of society and the socialisation of the state (Linhardt, 2018). We suggest the presenters analyse this process in its concrete expressions, namely in the antagonistic demands it generates between social groups. Interrogating the critical practices of social groups in terms of demands for state implies questioning how these groups politicise their daily practices, expressing an ideal of what society should be, by taking the point of view of the state (Lemieux, 2018). 

The aim of this study day is therefore to analyse the gradualist emergence of these conflicts. We will pay equal attention to the different levels at which these 'demands for state' manifest themselves: in the practical tensions and everyday affairs of social groups, in the formulation of a state critique in intergroup conflict, in the formation of public controversies leading to state reforms, and finally in political crises related to struggles for the state. How do these levels relate to each other? How does a 'demand for state' evolve along this gradient? How is it taken up or relativised? To what extent does it make the state manifest, sometimes to the point of making it falter? The study day thus invites us to question the processes of containment and decontainment of a 'demand for state' which may, for example, be circumscribed to the threshold of a professional group, or take the form of a collective mobilisation. Finally, this reticulated approach to the gradual sequences of demand for state allows us to relativise the eruptive and contingent character that is often attributed to generalised political crises. These considerations allow us to address the question of borderline cases, those in which the antagonistic interdependencies of social groups no longer support the loop through which a political society, through the intermediary of the state, represents itself and regulates the dynamics that agitate it. 

Programme 

Morning

8h30  Participants' arrival

9h Introduction by the organising comitte

Panel 1 : Overcoming the "civil society/State" opposition

  • 9h30 Laurene Le Cozanet (CEMS) : « Qui transforme les institutions ? Les universités aux prises avec la professionnalisation des études »
  • 10h Maxime Clément (LIER-FYT & EHESS) : «  Restaurateur.ice.s : de la crise à la formulation d’un idéal jusqu’aux demandes d’État »

10h30 Pause

  • 10h45 Discussion : Marie Alauzen (LISIS)
  • 11h05 Exchange

Panel 2 : Demands for a social State

  • 11h35 Lukas Posselt (CEMS & Université de Zurich) : «  Assistance sociale et Demande d’État. Réflexions à partir de l’étatisation de l’assistance sociale à Zurich dans les années 1920 »
  • 12h05 Céline Vaz (LARSH & Université polytechnique Hauts-de-France) : « Pour un État social et régulateur : mouvements sociaux urbains et demande d’État à la fin du franquisme »

12h35 Lunch

Afternoon

  • 14h Discussion : Nathan Cazeneuve (LIER-FYT) 
  • 14h20   Exchange

Panel 3 : Demands for State during generalised crises 

  • 14h50 Thibaut François (CHS & Université Paris 1) : «  Demander l’État en révolutionnaire, l’incarner en CDR. La construction étatique contrariée des Comités de Défense de la Révolution de Ouagadougou durant la Révolution burkinabè »
  • 15h20 Pierre France (Panthéon Sorbonne & Orient Institut Beirut) : « Les milices rêvent-elles seulement d’Etat ? Dégout de la bureaucratie, répertoire institutionnel et demande  d’entreprise »

15h50 Pause

  • 16h10 Discussion : Alexandre Rios-Bordes (ICT &  Université Paris Cité)
  • 16h30  Exchange

17h Collective discussion

18h Reception

Practical information

The study day will take place on 15 June 2023, at the following address:

Université Paris Cité

Condorcet Building

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Amphitheatre

4 Rue Elsa Morante, 75013 Paris

Organising Committee 

  • Alice Le Gall-Cécillion (LIER-FYT/EHESS)
  • Baptiste Legros (LIER-FYT/EHESS)
  • Théo Leschevin (ICT/Université Paris Cité, LIER-FYT/EHESS)

Scientific Committee

  • Nicolas Delalande (CSHP, SciencesPo)
  • Quentin Deluermoz (ICT, Université Paris Cité)
  • Laurent Gayer (CERI, SciencesPo) 
  • Anna Colin Lebedev (ISP, Université Paris Nanterre)
  • Dominique Linhardt (LIER-FYT, CNRS)
  • Lola Zappi (CHS, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

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Places

  • Amphithéatre Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Bâtiment Condorcet - Université Paris Cité, 4 Rue Elsa Morante
    Paris, France (75013)

Event attendance modalities

Full on-site event


Date(s)

  • Thursday, June 15, 2023

Keywords

  • état, mobilisation, mouvement social, conflit, crise, société politique

Contact(s)

  • Théo Leschevin
    courriel : theo [dot] leschevin [at] u-paris [dot] fr
  • Alice Le Gall-Cécillon
    courriel : alice [dot] legallcecillon [at] ehess [dot] fr
  • Baptiste Legros
    courriel : baptiste [dot] legros [at] ehess [dot] fr

Information source

  • Théo Leschevin
    courriel : theo [dot] leschevin [at] u-paris [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Studying Demands for State », Study days, Calenda, Published on Monday, June 12, 2023, https://doi.org/10.58079/1bdj

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