35. Quelle place pour le pauvre ?
La place qu'une société réserve à ses pauvres révèle un mode majeur de l'articulation entre lien social et lien politique ; Que ce soit en Angleterre, en Argentine, en Inde, dans la Russie post-soviétique, ou au Brésil, identifier ou revendiquer une place pour les pauvres, ne revient-il pas en définitive à reconnaître l'incapacité de ces sociétés à assurer une mobilité sociale qui rejetterait tout forme d'assignation territoriale ou identitaire ?
The space that a society reserves for its poor reveals a major mode of articulating social and political relationships. In the societies in which inequality is considered as founded in the nature of things, the allegiance to a master, a political or religious power allows the socially inferior ones, however precarious and subordinate they might be, to construct a positive social identity for themselves. Being the source of very diverse exchanges and relationships, the existence of mutual obligations between the dominants and the dominated, codified or not by law or customs, constitutes in these societies a form of management of inequality and guarantees a minimum of social cohesion. The question of the space for the poor has to be framed in a very different way in the societies claiming to be democratic. As shown very well by Philippe D'Iribarne in a recent essay, the project of a society of legally equal individuals keeps from reflecting in terms of hierarchy and mutual dependence upon those of which condition is not compatible with the ideals of individual sovereignty, so characteristic of western political modernity. In these societies, the ones who cannot provide for their own needs without public or private assistance are often considered as inferior and relegated to the rank of second-class citizens or even rejected into a social off-side. By not only asking the question of how we relate to poverty from a European perspective, which is too often the case in France, the articles of this issue incite to reflect upon the diversity of the possible articulations between social and political relationships. They insist on the importance of keeping in mind that the political is constitutive of the social just as the social is constitutive of the political. Every article contributes in its way to a more general reflection on the transformations of the state and of the different forms of governmentality in the current context of globalisation.
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Une approche socio-historique de lerrance [Texte intégral]
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Russie : pauvreté de masse et stigmatisation des pauvres (Partie 1) [Texte intégral]
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Russie : pauvreté de masse et stigmatisation des pauvres (Partie 2) [Texte intégral]
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L'expérience de paupérisation de la classe moyenne argentine [Texte intégral]
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La pauvreté en Inde : une question de castes ? [Texte intégral]
