In 1977, the Center Pompidou inaugurated a new kind of library, entirely dedicated to children and representative of attempts at the center in terms of public democratization. Régine Sirota sheds light on the uses, between discovery, pleasure and appropriation of the premises – until its premature closure.
Shooting & editing: Carl Petersen
Professor emeritus of sociology at Paris-Cité University (ex-Paris-Descartes), Régine Sirota is a sociologist of education and childhood. She is a member of the Social Links Research Center (Cerlis).
She is the author of several books, of which Elements for a sociology of childhood (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2006). She directed the collective volume with Sylvie October Cultural inequalities: Back to childhood (Presses de Sciences Po, 2021) and the special number of Social Sciences Review titled Do with the crisis. Childhood and young people (2023).
Published in 1985 by the public information library of the Center Pompidou, the study Library ride for budding players is the fruit of research work carried out by Régine Sirota with Jacqueline Eidelman and Marie-Claire Habib on pioneering cultural equipment but today disappeared: the children’s library, installed from its inauguration in 1977.
Equipment at the unique time, the children’s library in the Pompidou center was relatively independent. The space, with an independent entrance, gave directly on the esplanade of the “ piazza Beaubourg, north of it, and was entirely dedicated to the reception of children, and endowed with an offer entirely thought of for them. “” It is a library which in a way is not a library “Explains Régine Sirota, stressing how much the equipment contrasts at its opening with the existing libraries at the time: space dedicated to consultation (without possibility of loan), free access (without registration) and multimedia, the library must stimulate autonomy in the face of books as well as reading practices in the strict sense.
The library as a place of investigation
The sociological survey carried out within the children’s library on its attendance results from an order from the Center Pompidou which, as such, is a stimulator of investigations in sociology of arts and cultural practices that work on school and school inequalities, the three sociologists, including Régine Sirota, quickly see in the library an ideal place to enrich their work on cultural practices on cultural practices children’s curricula, starting with reading. Also the library, while constituting a space still little studied for the sociology of childhood, made it possible to specify the role of socialization and habitus in the early construction of inequalities.
The children’s library is also a learning space “ Almost like any other », Like a practice of the youth sections of the municipal libraries which concern at that time in Paris around 11% of the small Parisians: children living nearby tamed the book there, but in the singular environment of the Center Pompidou. “” This asked a number of questions, on the definition of this library, and its insertion in a tourist, cultural monument, at the same time as neighborhood equipment. ». As a result, the investigation also sheds light on the place of the child in the city, at a time when the hyper-center of Paris is subject to particularly ambitious urban renovations which will lead to an accelerated gentrification of the district.
“” Beaubourg effect ” And “ district effect »»
Combining observation and interviews, the conclusions of the investigation “ combine two effects: Beaubourg effect and neighborhood effect ». The attendance observed by sociologists is indeed not homogeneous, and associates Parisians of the center of Paris (for 35%), Ile -de -France (for 17%), province (for 15%) and even children reside abroad: “ There is a certain heterogeneity in the childish population which frequents the library. In terms of cultural democratization, attendance was much more varied than what could have supposed. Indeed, the magnifying glass of cultural practices highlights the delayed effects of redevelopments from the point of view of the population of the district: the eviction of immigrant families has not been immediate and children of popular environments are more often involved in other audiences than in other municipal libraries where the upper classes are over-represented (by far). It is here that the heart of the survey resides which, for one of the first times, allows the study of the social stratification of childish cultural practices and in particular the relationship to the book of children from popular environment outside the school.
Thus, children of upper classes and intellectual environments frequent the library in the extension of a family habit – it is the “ Beaubourg effect ». Parents bring children from an early age, sometimes before they can read, and possibly leave them alone (while they visit an exhibition, for example). In this context, the library becomes a “ center of life In the continuity of the home. At the same time, children of popular backgrounds and immigrants from the neighborhood are looking for a place to document or do their homework at the library – it is “ district effect ». In this case, the library ensures, in support of school work, a compensatory role of family cultural inequalities.
These audiences coexist from different modes of socialization, and are also distinguished by the days and working hours: “ When you are in the Beaubourg effect, it is the family that encourages to come. When you are in the neighborhood effect, it’s friends. We come encouraged by friends, with friends, during the week rather than the weekend, as for neighborhood equipment. Parents, notably from intermediate categories such as artisans-merchants, deposit their children and come to look for them without going through the Center Pompidou.
A model for the child’s practice of reading ?
Paradoxically, the children’s library is closed shortly after the publication of the investigation. It is replaced, on the same location, by the Brancusi workshop reconstituted in 1997, in an annex to the museum designed by Renzo Piano. The equipment finds no other place in the Center Pompidou, which Régine Sirota regrets. Has the study really resulted in this closure ? “” We had shown that children were doing something other than the librarians were preparing. As they were in the library for a limited time, they took documents, comics, but not books. Critics also see it as a simple place of daycare for families of passage – where the authors of Library ride On the contrary, perceive that the invention of new cultural uses is played out, deviating from practices considered to be legitimate.
Behind this apparent discrepancy, two visions of culture compete. The first, traditional and legitimate, favors certain supports (book, childish literature). The second, more new, corresponds to the configuration of the place: free access, multiplicity of supports and media. Thanks to this differentiated approach to family habitus, source of cultural capital, the children’s library could help to build up a “ familiarity capital “, According to Régine Sirota, inducing an alternative relationship with book and reading.
Place at the forefront of what has become of children’s children’s rays today, the children’s library is expected to be reborn in 2030, with new equipment in the renovated Pompidou Center. Can its impact be the same ? The sociological evolution of the district, with a much smaller social mix in the Parisian center than in the years 1970-1980, indicates new issues for such a space to fully play a role of cultural democratization.