Against a vulgate which associates the post-68 with hedonism, the sociologist Lilian Mathieu draws up a panorama of protest movements and proposes a punchy political analysis. But these years are still of our present: this close past makes it possible to analyze the space of social movements.
Lilian Mathieu, sociologist at CnrsMarie with talent for several years empirical research and theoretical reflections on social movements. His latest book, published in the collection “ Small critical encyclopedia “That he co-edit with Philippe Corcuff, offers a summary of the protest movements that crossed France in the 1970s, in the wake of the events of May-June 1968.
A Tour de France des struggles
The first part of the work presents a panorama of the various protest movements, which are responsible for continuing the criticism of the domination relationships. Mathieu, well aware of the difficulties of a typological approach, is led to propose five categories of movements of which he retraces history from a remarkably up -to -date bibliography: disputes of the world of work, essentially workers ; the struggles of immigrants who associate strikesBONEstruggles for accommodation and the right to stay ; The politicization of the intimate which brings together the struggles for the rights of women and the mobilizations of homosexuals ; The question of territories and lifestyles subsiguing regionalism and the struggle for the improvement of the environment with the birth of political ecology ; Finally, opposition movements to authoritarianisms which bring together all resistance to repression, movements in justice or medicine, anti-militarianism and pacifism.
Touraine, Bourdieu, Boltanski… and Mathieu
Lilian Mathieu then engages in a critical review of the interpretations of these movements proposed by the social sciences. He first nourishes a vigorous refutation of the theory of new social movements, deployed by Inglehart and Melucci, but especially by Alain Touraine and his students. Touraine is thus criticized because “ His perspective is more than the sociological analysis of the contemporary, a form of social prophecy (P. 78), and by the symbolic disqualification of the workers’ movement in which he participated. The second interpretation, around the question of contestation cycles, leads Lilian Mathieu to discuss the fertility of the notion of structure of political opportunities, which refers to the political and institutional context more or less favorable to the emergence and the success of social movements . The interpretation by sociomorphological transformations proposed in particular by Pierre Bourdieu and Gérard Mauger is also discussed, in particular around the transformations of the education system. These authors indeed make downgrading one of the essential springs of the mobilization of this new little bourgeoisie. However, new works have invalidated this hypothesis, especially among students. Finally, Lilian Mathieu concludes his overview with the presentation of the thesis of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello on the changes in capitalism, which would have succeeded in disarming social criticism of capitalism and integrating artist criticism.
The third part of the book endeavors to complete these interpretations with a political reading in which Lilian Mathieu develops the space category of social movements that he set out to build. By this concept, inspired by that of field forged by Bourdieu, it designates “ the universe of practice and meaning formed by all the protest mobilizations of a given society (P. 103). He thus underlines the relations of interdependence between the various movements explained by the multiple commitments of certain activists (the “ multipositionality In the language of political scientists), but also of militant careers sometimes hit. The concept also aims to consider relations with other fields, including political and union. With this concept, and engaging in some way a retrospective analysis of the social movements of the 1970s in terms of his particularly fine knowledge of the social movements of the 1990s, Lilian Mathieu plans two successive processes of empowerment of the social movements space, especially thanks to the decline of “ militant leftism »From 1972, which allowed a particularly spectacular boom in said movements. This first step is followed by a phase of retraction of the autonomy of this space by the gradual capture of themes, watchwords and militants that the Socialist Party operates ; She finally leads to the “ quasi-absorption of social movements space by partisan and institutional policy “(P. 119) After the election of François Mitterrand in 1981. Lilian Mathieu thus underlines the entry of many union and associative executives, in particular those of the union of the magistracy and Gistiin ministerial cabinets.
68: generation (s) affairs ?
The work, as we can see, is much more than a synthesis and offers stimulating analyzes. He is scholar, without being a cook, precise, without ever gusting. It can certainly be regretted that analyzes on changes in the school system are so fast. More harmful is its focus on a only national framework, while this period and its activists were internationalists, and the circulation of themes, repertoires of collective action, activists, etc., reached a large scale. But that supposed a very large work that no one, again, was really risking to do. We would rather, from our position as historian, question the general analysis framework proposed by Lilian Mathieu. The latter made of “ May 68 ” A “ starting point »(P. 15) of his frame. Although he mentions the historiographical current of “ years 68 “, He somewhat twists his interpretative framework since the hypothesis, and in our sense the fertility, of this current reside in its identification of 68 not as a starting point, but as a pivot, or, for France, a” epicenter », In a broader protest phase. Likewise, the collective work essentially bringing together politicians and sociologists May June 68 considers a phase between 1945 and 1968 marked by “ Crises of authorities reports “And” Critical trajectories ».
By neglecting the upstream of 68 and stating only seventiesLilian Mathieu runs the risk of considering only one active generation in these movements, that of the sixty-eights, and first of all students, only a lazy historiography assimilated to baby boomers. Although implicitly, it is this generation that he places at the heart of his analysis when he plans to withdraw militant action (p. 93 in particular). Likewise, when he made 1970-71 the founding years of feminist and homosexual movements, he neglected the fundamental but anterior role of the French movement for family planning (founded in 1956) or Arcadia, which implied older activists. We could extend this analysis to the protest crisis that the Catholic Church is going through in these post-confiliary years and which provides, as Lilian Mathieu recognizes, “ A major militant recruitment home (P. 113). Consequently, the hypothesis, borrowed from Gérard Mauger, which must be sought in the decline of militant leftism, from 1972, the explanation for an empowerment of social movements compared to the political field (p. 110), we appears a little reductive. In our view, this empowerment could be envisaged in a more gradual way, from a growing disqualification of the political left, and in particular the Communist Party, in an increasing fraction of men and women on the left from Mitan from the 1960s, even the Algerian war.
But this enlargement of the chronological framework seems to us above all to enrich the concept of space of social movements that Lilian Mathieu offers. He insisted on the relations of interdependence between social movements, which are still in motion. Taking up the analyzes of militant sociology, he underlines how much the multiple commitments promote connections between mobilization sites and beyond between the movements. We would add modestly that taking into account a broader time frame would undoubtedly make it possible to better identify, within the framework of these interdependence relationships, the phenomena of “ hybridization »From one social movement to another, when the space of social movements is self -employed.