Research directions
Intersectionnality
Voluntary work / free labor
Social work
Political action
This research area examines the sociology of social movements and activism. It engages with the academic literature on political behaviours and pays particular attention to the sociology of activism and forms of political engagement and participation. The CRAPUL research centre is committed to breaking down the barriers between research areas that are too often examined in isolation, to study collective action driven both by social movements and by trade unions, political parties, community organisations and interest groups, wherever they stand in the political space.
The centre's research is part of the move towards more interdisciplinary working found in area studies, promoting a comparative approach anchored in disciplinary debates and based on a detailed understanding of the field and its historical roots. It also examines the forms of political participation that can be observed at the national and regional level in liberal democracies and on partisan and community activism in authoritarian contexts.
Research carried out at CRAPUL pays particular attention to how social power relationships are interconnected and entwined in collective action. This cross-disciplinary dimension refers to the notion of intersectionality and the differentiated uses to which it is put in the social sciences, underpinning several research projects on the gendered structure of methods of political engagement in activist practices. A number of studies consider the issue of political identities, i.e. the identity-related dimensions at work in the mobilisation process and the claims made by social movements.
Finally, this research area produces projects on the uses of the legal repertoire in collective action; in this instance, the analysis focuses on the use of the "arm of the law" in defending certain social groups and the way in which action in the legal field affects the promotion of their cause in the public arena.
Socialisation
This research area explores the political dimension of socialisation processes. Based on the study of various contexts, activities and social environments, research in this area takes an empirical approach to the ways in which political opinions, representations and attitudes are formed. An initial series of projects explores socialisation in the process of formation. Based on a conception of the political as not simply reducible to identifying "strictly political" positions, this research examines all schemas of perception and action in relation to the political world or participating in a political relationship with the social world. It questions the notions of political competence and politicisation, and examines the links that exist between, on the one hand, a relationship to the world based on different forms of domination and on the other, relationships to the political space as manifested in voting, investment in the political craft and various forms of activist engagement. Several instances of political socialisation are investigated, including those with a more or less direct link with the political space and those viewed as ordinary, such as leisure, supervisory institutions, sport or popular forms of sociability. Adopting a dynamic and continuous conception of socialisation, research projects in this area are interested in different life stages, while taking into account the social position of individuals and their involvement in various spheres of life, in both the past and present. They therefore question the development of prior learning and the acquisition of new forms of know-how under the effects of various sources and periods of socialisation.
