The image of the suburbs

In a book with alert and precise style, Julie Sedel restores most of her thesis work carried out between 1999 and 2006 in two working -class districts of the Parisian suburbs and in the newsrooms of several press organs. By mobilizing sociology, political science and analysis of discourse, she studies three dimensions which, closely articulated, reflect the construction of the media representation of the suburbs: the transformations of the media world, the economic, cultural and social developments of the districts Hlmthe symbolic struggles of the various actors concerned for the legitimate production of the image of the suburbs. The description of the interactions between journalists, political and residents on the ground as the observation of the labor division in editorial staff makes it possible to increase knowledge of the collective processes of the production of information and to draw the theoretical lessons which largely exceed the theme of the suburbs.

The first two chapters propose a context that is necessary to understand the continuation of the work: developments in the media coverage of large social housing complexes since the 1960s and the transformations of the two districts studied since their construction in the late 1950s (the Luth in Gennevilliers and the courtesy in Pantin). The already informed reader can quickly travel these first 80 pages which are based on both existing scientific literature and original research on these specific terrains. Those who are not very customary of these questions will find a summary of the social construction of the “ suburbs And its determinants objectives.

The first chapter recalls in particular how, from a “ Uncommon category “, The object of relatively ambivalent journalistic curiosity (between hygienist and dehumanization progress), the big sets will become a subject of concern in the early 1980s when the first riots staged children of immigrants. After the sequence “ anti-racist “And the” Beurs march From the mid -1980s in response to the electoral rise of the National Front, the political and media framing gradually asserted itself in the 1990s around the notion of “ urban violence “And the theme of” Islamism ». Julie Sedel shows in these pages how much the media categories are first built by institutional and political actors rather than journalists. Starting from the observation, recalled by Ian Hacking, that the character “ made Reality should not make us forget the objective realities to the foundation of its existence, the second chapter endeavors to show the economic, political, social and demographic transformations of large sets of social housing. The social history of the two districts studied is thus resituated in the more general history of the French suburbs: the progressive passage of an ideal of “ social mixture »At the concentration of poor households and/or of immigrant origin ; the appearance of indicators of the degradation of living conditions and the development of a “ city ​​policy »Supposed to answer them ; The transformations of the left, and in particular of the Communist Party, which struggle to represent politically the inhabitants of these districts in the process of downgrading and which convert into an increasingly technical management of the populations and the “ Urban renovation ».

The third chapter comes to the heart of the matter by detailing the logic of information production in the suburbs. Julie Sedel shows the few own resources that journalists have on this particular field. They are in competition with the discourse of educators, associations, sociologists or local political elected officials, who try to impose their own framing of social reality, meet the distrust of the inhabitants, not to mention the more or less declared hostility of certain young people who consider the media as the allies of the police. The lack of time and economic constraints alone do not explain the difficulty for writing to build up networks of informants in the suburbs: the author explains how little object is not very prestigious in the journalistic field, in particular by detailing structural oppositions between journalists debut/seated, specialists/general practitioners, company/various/national facts section. In addition to appearing to journalists a “ distant object », Information in the suburbs is always located at the dominated pole, which discourages the investments of the editors in this theme. In addition, the dominant framing has been reduced since the 1990s to that of insecurity, around the opposition between “ angelist ” And “ realistic Which prevents any new discursive formatting from the social reality of these neighborhoods.

To illustrate the strong division of editorial labor and the weak margins of maneuver of journalists, Julie Sedel takes the example of the visit of Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, at the Cité des 4000 de la Courneuve in June 2005. By following step by step the process of media coverage of this event caused by the death of a teenager during a shooting between “ bands », We take the measure of the heteronomy of the journalistic field, very strongly dependent on legitimate political discourse. Although journalists can be critical of the latter, the power to constitute “ public problem And even more the imposition power of another angle of approach and evaluation escape them in practice completely. The author then insists on the collective character of the media system and underlines the recent transformations of which it was the object and which strengthens its dependence (rise in commercial logic, loss of influence of the “ reference press For the benefit of television, increasing division of work and homogenization of the titles and methods of processing of the press, etc.)

Finally, the author examines the effects in the districts of the media treatment of the suburbs through the reactions of the inhabitants, and especially elected officials, in an attempt to counter the negative image given to them. Again, the demonstration is based on rigorous field work. In Gennevilliers, the author is based on Hervé Chaballier’s report for Canal + which in 1989 presented the lute as a “ drug city ». In addition to the conditions of the survey, it details the reactions of the report in the entire media field and then the short and long -term strategies of the municipality to restore its media credit at a time when competition between the territories to attract investors, businesses and easier population is increasing. In Pantin, other strategies are implemented (notably the production of a film by the “ young people themselves ), Without symbolic repairs being obvious. On the contrary, we note that the new spokespersons secreted by these policies active in media non-fires are struggling to subvert the formats and the representations imposed in the dominant media to which they can have access. Each time, the “ entry To express themselves in the media sphere is such that the produced discourse fails to break the dominant perception schemes. Condemned to “ positivate the suburbs “As much as it can, these alternative speeches end up referring to an idea of” normality “School, family and professional which is not that of working -class neighborhoods but that of a” Average France “Which is common sense impermeable to the lived experiences of” suburb ».

With a follow -up in the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Patrick Champagne on the production of symbolic goods, the book Julie Sedel makes it possible to deepen the reflection on the functioning of the media field and the way in which journalists participate in the construction of social reality. He explains in particular the “ media paradox “According to which” The more a field is publicized, the less journalist are real information producers ». Social reality and its representations are first of all the product of social relationships, the media space being one of the scenes where they are played out. The author conveniently recalls that the knowledge of the material conditions of the production spaces of informational goods as that of the objective realities of mediatized objects are fundamental to understand the mediaization processes. As Gérard Mauger specifies in his foreword, the development of the media increases their importance in manufacturing-or destruction-of reputations, a particularly efficient form of social capital in political struggle. In this sense, the symbolic domination suffered by popular suburbs comes to redouble the economic and social difficulties that their inhabitants experience objectively.

Photo (CC): Alain Bachellier