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Politics in the fire station ?

Political Sociology
Methods
Qualitative
Romain Pudal
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Romain Pudal
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Abstract

When I decided to sign on as firefighter in the outer suburbs of Paris fifteen years ago, I anticipated questions of a political nature to arise relatively infrequently in such a predominantly working-class setting. Indeed the environment appeared to be highly unpoliticized, regardless of how broad the definition of the term. As time went on and I gained more experience, I began to witness increasingly open and straightforward political discussions, debates in which my opinions were solicited, problems and opinions were shared. This unexpected situation drove me to radically rethink my initial hypothesis and to consequently become more attentive to the ways in which political opinions were manufactured and expressed in a working-class environment. This « discovery » also steered me towards a more interactionist approach to politicization seeking to elaborate an ethnographic study of ordinary relationships to politics. Political opinions appeared less as a deliberative choice based on free will according to everyday notions of the political game, surveys, and political intellectuals, than as variable translations of specific social and professional conditions as I will explain in this paper.