ABSTRACT
In this paper we seek to explain why even the most activist of citizens, working in openly democratic settings, may fail to politicise issues close to their hearts, whereas others succeed, even while facing clientelism and other political constraints. In so doing, we take a meso-sociological approach to argue that group styles, which are recurring interaction patterns arising from a group’s everyday understandings of what it takes to be a good member, link social groups to national democratic models and are therefore responsible for being more or less conducive to politicisation.
Why is it that, in certain cases, even the most activist of citizens, working in openly democratic settings, fail to politicise issues close to their hearts, whereas others succeed, even while facing clientelism and other political constraints? The answer to this question does not lie in the goals of local social organisations themselves, as most of them seek to improve life in the neighbourhoods in which they are based and, everywhere, improving the neighbourhood tends to mean the same things: reducing violence and incivility, protecting the environment, and overcoming feelings of injustice about how the neighbourhood is treated by the authorities, as well as supporting meetings and celebrations among neighbours. Yet group boundaries, bonds and speech norms may be very different from one association to the next. The relationships between these groups and their political systems also vary widely. In this paper, we argue that it is precisely such differences, which we call differences in group style, which account for this variance in politicisation. More broadly, group styles tell much about the ways that citizenship is exercised in different contexts.
Our case studies offer an interesting puzzle: while both groups present their struggles in similar ways, their public images in their respective countries are very different. Citizen committees in France are seen as made up of relatively old, rather conservative people and as a place in which the ‘not-in-my-backyard’ (NIMBY) syndrome hinders any rise in the level of generality, so they are considered a vector of depoliticisation (Donzel, 2001; Mattina, 2007). Conversely, Quebec citizen committees, which belong to the autonomous community-groups movement that advocates civic and community rights, are thought of as favouring politicisation and a progressive social spiral.
We note, however, that if politicisation differs between the two groups, the discrepancies between them do not correspond to the above assumptions or to traditional explanations that presuppose that conservatism and State funding are a burden for politicisation (Putnam, 2000). In other words, just as the Marseilles citizens committee is not just a NIMBY organisation exclusively defending private interests and eschewing any politicisation, the Quebec City committee does not always engage directly in politics. Instead, we notice that politicisation and avoidance co-exist in both groups. Beyond the Marseilles committee’s vote-catching image, discussions within the group show a certain degree of politicisation, but one that evaporates when dealing with public institutions. The situation is the exact opposite in the Quebec City committee (public politicisation coupled with internal depoliticisation). How do we explain this fact? How can the same demand for neighbourhood improvement shape the scope of citizenship in such different ways?
To solve this riddle, we distinguish between two group styles: the civic group style in Marseilles’ Comité d’intérêt du quartier Saint-André (CIQ), and the empowerment group style in Quebec City’s Comité de citoyens du quartier Saint-Sauveur (CCQSS). The civic group style is permeated by the notion of the public good and the republican ideology, which refers to a social contract built on a central link between individual and State (and a consequent shrinking of traditional communities) in exchange for welfare (Ozouf, 2014). The empowerment group style is the result of a tradition of independent advocacy and community autonomy from the State (Jetté, 2011; Shragge, 2003). We do not portray these group styles as representative of France or Canada as a whole but rather highlight how these group styles illustrate specific sets of State-society relations. In this regard, our goal is to underline how these relations affect the ways social groups draw their boundaries and engage in collective activity. The problem is now how to link these group styles to national democratic models, thus moving from political anthropology to an institutionalist analysis of pluralistic systems (Neal & Neal, 2013).
We begin this article by defining the notion of group style and its contribution to civic engagement studies. Secondly, we briefly describe our theoretical background regarding the notion of politicisation and our method. In the third, empirical, section, we discuss paths to politicisation or its avoidance in each case, and the results of our comparison. Fourthly, we examine the link between group style and State-society relationships. The conclusion reviews our study’s insights and suggests new questions for future research.
Group styles as an analytical framework
The concept of group style addresses the link between culture and collective representations. Collective representations are sets of publicly shared codes or repertoires, building blocks that structure people’s ability to think and to share ideas through shared assumptions about what constitutes good or adequate participation in a group setting (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Lichterman & Céfaï, 2006). They exert strong social forces by providing a limited set of resources, ‘tool kits’ or ‘cultural repertoires’ from which individuals and groups construct ways of giving meaning to and acting in the world (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003; Swidler, 1986). However, although people rely on symbols to make sense of experience, they still have to interpret the symbols they use. The challenge is thus to highlight ‘how people use collective representations to make meaning in everyday life’ (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003) or to understand how cultural capacities created in one historical context are reappropriated and altered in new circumstances (cf. Swidler, 1986, p. 283).
In this regard, group styles can be understood as the missing link between cultural repertoires and how people engage in meaning-making ‘on the ground’ in the context of interactive processes.1 Group styles filter collective representations, showing how people put them into practice in any given situation. For example, although many groups might share the same views on citizenship, they may express them in different styles of civic engagement (Schudson, 1989). The same collective representations can, therefore, foster different group styles, and individuals may embrace different group styles depending on the group they are engaged with at any given time —just as people wear different hats on different occasions. Citizens have a degree of freedom as regards the roles (neighbour, volunteer, activist, and so on) that they endorse, but scope for spontaneity is limited (Eliasoph, 1998). Group styles require people to choose among a set of pre-existing values. Though the presentation of self-changes according to context, people’s interactions and behaviours within contexts attest to some permanence (Goffman, 1959; cf. DiMaggio, 1997, pp. 263–287; Mischel & Shoda, 1995, pp. 246–268). Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003) give the example of observing people during their lunch break. This observation does not show how people will act at work, but it can help to predict their behaviour on their next lunch break.
The idea of group style underscores the fact that all citizens may have their own values in their inner selves, but they mobilise them differently according to the interactions and contexts involved (Eliasoph, 1998; Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003). Politicisation and the exercise of citizenship are thus not only linked to individual qualities or values but also created from particular interactions and contexts. Not only can people be civic in one context and not in another, but the meanings they ascribe to being civic also vary according to the context and groups in which they are acting. Being civic is not the result of values floating in the air or hidden in the heart (Polletta, 2003), but rather the result of ‘doing together’ through interactions (Lichterman, 2006).
The notion of group style makes several contributions to the understanding of politicisation. Firstly, it complements other reflections on active citizenship. Analyses in terms of vocabularies of politics (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985) or in terms of codes that organise public discourse tend to study people’s verbal interaction in specific situations (Alexander & Smith, 1993). The notion of group style broadens these reflections by considering both the discourse and the actions of people in mundane and concrete settings (Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003).
A second—and perhaps the most important—insight of group styles is to fuel research that complements Putnam’s perception of the role of associations in civic life (cf. Dekker & Uslaner, 2001). Putnam (2000) —and the neo-Tocquevillians more generally— take for granted the transitions between internal and external group processes in terms of trust and politicisation (cf. Hamidi, 2003; Warren, 1999). Their vision sees civic organisations as clearly separated from the State and neglects the fact that even if a civic sector separate from the State exists, this separation is moulded by the long-term relationships, over several centuries, that the State and the various social organisations entertain (Tilly, 1986). Furthermore, some associations that are financed by the State can contribute to civic or political practices (Garrow & Hasenfeld, 2014; Marwell, 2004; White, 2006). The notion of group style enables analysts to understand the relationship between the types of interaction that take place within a group and the links established outside the group. The objective of the notion is to illuminate how and under what conditions the expected ‘social capital spiral’ occurs (Lichterman, 2006). In a group-style perspective, the nature of links between the State and civil society is not taken for granted, but is rather a research object.
A third and more empirical benefit of the notion of group styles is that it reveals different forms of liberal individualism, in the US (Bellah et al., 1985; Eliasoph, 1998) and beyond. Studies show that citizens involved in associations may try hard to avoid formal politics, even when politicisation does occur within the group. This paradox can be understood in terms of a distrust of politics associated with rhetoric and social hypocrisy, a fear of radicalism and protest (considered as conflictual), and a discussion in public terms that is paradoxically more present in private conversations than in debate involving institutions (Eliasoph, 1998; Walsh, 2012). These findings highlight ‘a disavowal of politics’ that many of the ongoing quantitative discussions on trust and social capital can only partially explain, since the ways that people interpret the world and politics are not necessarily their principal objects2 (Bennett, Cordner, Klein, Savell, & Baiocchi, 2013; Edmondson, 2003).
However, the notion of group style suffers from some shortcomings. First, studies using this framework remain, for the most part, limited to the US and the various expressions of liberal individualism (but see Luhtakallio, 2012, on France and Finland). Second, these analyses presuppose a certain homogeneity among group styles in any given country, leaving the link between group styles and political systems underexplored (cf. Eliasoph & Lichterman, 2003). When such systems are addressed, studies tend to focus on comparing groups in which progressive engagement and political commitment are explicit (see Luhtakallio, 2012). This aspect is even more prevalent in research on France, which often addresses the antagonistic dimension of French groups (Luhtakallio, 2012; Sawicki & Siméant, 2009).
Our aim here is to fill a gap in the literature by exploring more deeply the links between group styles and political systems, and to broaden the analysis to include conservatism and clientelism (cf. Laville, Lévesque, & Mendell, 2007, on Canada, and Eliasoph, 2011, on the US). In both our case studies, we seek to define the boundaries of politicisation processes and to link these processes to relations between the State and civil society. Civic participation is not only the fruit of citizens’ demands; it is also the patterned outcome of the participation repertoire offered by the political system and the political culture in this system (Warren, 1999). Consequently, a situation is never only in the here-and-now of co-presence, but also condenses chains of causes and meanings (Céfaï, 2011).
The originality of our contribution lies in our favouring a bottom-up perspective by tracing the path from interactions in particular settings to the action repertoires characteristic of the prevailing political culture. The challenge is twofold: underscoring that social actors act within social structures and historical processes, but doing so without explaining political culture by political culture (Luhtakallio, 2012, p. 42). To avoid this, we need to illustrate how group members, in their practices and interactions, interpret in situ elements that draw from institutional history and symbolic representations of how people should live together. The central issue is to grasp the different dynamics of politicisation between different political levels by starting from the everyday exercise of citizenship. Our objective is thus to reveal how, in both cases studies, great and abstract notions of the common good and social change are put into practice by citizens working within their local communities, themselves embedded in their respective political systems. This approach understands citizenship as both an interactionist and a sedimentation process: social structures are the result of a set of continually moving processes that nonetheless appear to people as stable and relatively constant (Luhtakallio, 2012, p. 7).
To summarise, if citizens wear different hats depending on the context, the next question is how people decide which ones to wear on which occasions (Eliasoph, 1998, p. 231). We add yet another question: what is the link between the hats and the cupboard where they are kept? To answer this question, we explore three dimensions of group style: group boundaries, group bonds, and speech norms.
Theoretical framework: How to operationalise group style and politicisation
In operationalising group styles, Eliasoph and Lichterman (2003, pp. 784–786) introduce three dimensions, which echo the notion’s twin roots, interactionism and institutionalism: group boundaries, group bonds, and speech norms. Each dimension corresponds to observable elements that illuminate the group’s implicit understandings of participation in the public sphere. Group boundaries show how the group interprets and constructs its relations with the wider world. We can thus gauge how group members refer to public institutions and other organisations, and to what extent and in what sense they are concerned with the wider world (Farr & Moscovici, 1984; Lamont & Fournier, 1992; Lamont & Thévenot, 2000). Group bonds relate to how members conceptualise the responsibilities they have to each other and apply them within the group: for example, how is a ‘good member’ defined? How do members define the community they belong to (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Schmidt, 2010, pp. 1–25)? Speech norms are the codes guiding the tone and content of what group members say; they indicate the narrative the group deems appropriate and tolerates within itself. For example, how is dialogue conducted within the group? Is it emotional or fact-oriented? What are the correct ways of speaking within the group? Is the group tolerant of internal conflicts or does it reject any confrontation (Bergmann, 1998; Gumperz, 1989)?
Once the notion of group style is operationalised, we need to gauge how these group styles are conducive to politics. In other words, what do each of these dimensions reveal about politicisation? To answer this question, we need to address politicisation in the light of each of the group style dimensions. This is a double challenge: the definition of politics cannot be limited to institutions, but neither can politics be defined exclusively by what citizens consider to be political. In both cases, it would be impossible to analyse the way that citizens construct their own categories of the political and understand the transition between the citizens’ everyday experiences and the overarching polity. We believe, therefore, that politics can be concealed in any subject, but not every subject can be approached in political terms (Eliasoph, 1998; Fraser, 1985; Hamidi, 2006; Young, 1987). We assume that political relations exist between citizens and society even when they are not recognised as such. Citizens themselves may or may not perceive public implications of the subjects of their discussion and feel that what they say matters to other people.
The focus is thus on the processes that allow for a broadening of the citizens’ circle of concerns. We concentrate on two elements. The first is associated with public-spirited conversation, in Pitkin’s sense (1981): that is, when citizens speak in terms of justice. Such conversation involves the transition from ‘I want’ to ‘I have the right’, a demand that becomes negotiable by referring to public norms. In this way, citizens learn to think about norms themselves and about their interest in the norms’ existence. They question the foundations of their community and the arguments and interests of their ‘opponents and enemies in the community; so that afterwards [they] are changed’ (Pitkin, 1981, p. 347). A second element concerns the possibility of turning issues into conflicts, that is, the creation or accentuation of social cleavages (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991; Duchesne & Haegel, 2002; Gamson, 1992). These divisions are related to the definition of oneself within a group opposed to other groups and to the demand for resources—processes that are at the heart of the political regulation of society.
This definition of politics leads us to identify frontstage and backstage processes of politicisation and avoidance. ‘Frontstage’ refers to what happens ‘in public’, when groups members act officially or think they are observed. ‘Backstage’ points out what happens unofficially, behind closed doors. While some studies explain that groups can develop different group styles depending on whether they operate frontstage or backstage (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014), we consider that front- and backstage are both constitutive aspects of a group style.
Methods
Our analysis is based on a comparison of the neighborhood citizen committees in St. André, Marseilles, France (Comité d’intérêt de quartier, CIQ) and St. Sauveur, Quebec City, Canada (Comité de citoyens et citoyennes du quartier Saint-Sauveur, CCQSS). Our goal is not a macro-systemic comparison of these two countries but a comprehensive study of politicisation within two associations in the context of specific political systems.
The French state is inspired by a republican ideology and a Jacobin tradition that defines citizenship as promoted by associations and their relationship to the State (Barthélemy, 2000). Freedom of association is one of the foundations of French citizenship (Law, 1901). However, the weight of public interest in French priorities has long led to distrust of groups allegedly defending vested interests (Barthélemy, 2000). Governance in Marseilles is also specific, marked by clientelistic patterns in which citizen committees have long been a stepping-stone for the distribution of jobs, low-rent housing or association funding. The CIQ does not receive funds from the municipality. However, it can hope for support for various projects in exchange for the visibility afforded an elected official. Most CIQ members have lived in the neighbourhood for a long time and they reflect its composition: essentially a native-born population, together with immigrants from Spain and Italy. The average member’s age was around 50. Most members had been financially unable to study beyond the elementary school.3
The definition of citizenship in Quebec is different from Canadian multiculturalism—without adhering to French republicanism (Gagnon, 2010). A ‘third sector’, composed of autonomous community groups (asserting their independence from the political authority and practising advocacy), is recognised by the state (White, 2006). These links between the State and community groups have also favoured the emergence of a paid leadership within these groups, particularly after the 1970s. This professionalisation has sparked change in the type of leadership involved. In several groups, people with social-work degrees have replaced Marxist or leftist leaders (Shragge, 2003). The CCQSS belongs to this category, and its empowerment group style reflects a preference for the bottom-up approach and community activism (Browne, 2000; Eliasoph, 2016). Its repertoire of action has been marked both by cooperation with and distrust of political authority, the group fearing political coopting. Created in the 1970s, the committee participated in the struggle against urban policies that, it claimed, excluded the ‘poor’ from the city centre. Their opposition led the group to support the creation of a progressive municipal political party, the Rassemblement populaire de Québec. In contrast to the Marseilles group, few amongst the members had close family ties, most had moved to the neighbourhood after some disruption in their lives (such as job loss or divorce). Their age ranged between 30 and 50 years.
In both groups, the weekly regular meetings counted between ten and fifteen people. In addition, general assemblies and public events dedicated to a special topic could attract up to fifty people. Both groups are located in old, previously working-class suburbs in their respective cities, where the unemployed have replaced workers (Donzel, 2001). These are highly stigmatised neighbourhoods, where geographical and social identities are connected: they are the ‘Lower Town’ in St. Sauveur, and ‘Northern “hoods”’ in St. André. The mere mention of these names is sufficient to evoke the presence of immigrants and economic problems.
In both committees, people discuss their daily concerns, but these organisations become breeding-grounds for larger projects. Both define themselves as civic-minded and claim to help citizens improve their daily life in the neighbourhood and participate in the public sphere.4 Their members have come from popular social classes and live in peripheral and stigmatised neighbourhoods. However, they are different types of organisations, each reflecting a distinct model of State-society relationships. This suggests that, in some contexts, people create their group styles, but they also borrow from the institutional features of the political system (Sartori, 1991, pp. 243–257).
Our qualitative approach is based on long-term participant observation, from 1996 to 2000. We also returned to both fields between 2005 and 2012, as a longer period fosters a better understanding of groups’ styles and their perennial features, beyond group members’ particular personalities. Beyond numerous interviews, we consulted documents produced by each group (the committee logbook, flyers, posters and web sites), as well as local newspapers, where committees would sometimes publish articles.
We attended all group activities (annual festivals, door to door canvassing, and so forth), as well as public meetings with the authorities. The observation was complemented by two semi-structured questionnaires during the two periods of the survey. We conducted in-depth, open-ended interviews (25 in Quebec City, 30 in Marseilles) with regular group members, elected officials and administration officials. We recorded the vast majority of interviews, but most conversations during the meetings were not recorded, because many of our interlocutors, especially elected officials, would have been uncomfortable with this. In this article, we have changed names, while keeping individuals’ genders the same.
Empirical analysis
Our presentation of empirical data for each committee is explicitly based on the three dimensions of group styles, which implicitly display the ways of ‘doing politics’ characteristic of members, frontstage, and backstage.
The CCQSS in Quebec City
Group boundaries: How the empowerment group style allows for a more confrontational relationship with political institutions
For the CCQSS, a first group boundary is the division between the city’s Upper and Lower Towns, which is also a social class boundary. It reflects a negative perception of an impoverished community that built its identity in opposition to the wealthier Upper Town. As reflected in their discourse, group members were ‘Lower Town citizens’, the ‘us’ in contrast to the ‘them’, the latter being the ‘haves’ and ‘bourgeois’ of the Upper Town. This territorial, social and symbolic boundary is based on a deep sense of deprivation and exclusion, and even, for some, of disillusionment and sorrow.
We have to create an atmosphere of pride … They [people] have the feeling of being considered second-class citizens, poor people for whom a development based on beauty and good is not allowed. Some people call Saint-Sauveur ‘Plywood Town’ to emphasise their disgust with a neighbourhood that is left to go to seed … All these things hurt people’s morale and destroy their feeling of belonging to the neighbourhood with all these bad consequences. Here, we speak about lack of interest and disengagement and then the abyss of fatalism emerges5 (Petit Potin, November 1998).
It was thus deemed necessary to connect members’ experiences to the wider world and to take their demands frontstage. The committee denounced injustices by means of pedagogical lessons that ranged from personal expressions of a sense of injustice to the assertion of political and collective demands. During ‘the Grand Rendez-Vous’, a show intended to ‘depict local residents’ real lives’ (Grand Rendez-Vous flyer), participants conjured up their living conditions and situation as working poor or unemployed people. They ended by questioning the relevance of the vocabulary used by the authorities. ‘Actually, as we speak, we realise that, even though we don’t have a job, we’re not idle; we do things,’ said Henri (a member). During these conversations, terms like ‘unemployed’ and ‘welfare-recipients’ were questioned. Members condemned the foundations of a view of social justice centred on individual responsibility by blaming social structures for the poverty they endured. By the end of the show, the members had reversed the stigmas and constructed an emotional and political ‘we’ (Becker, 1963/1973; Mellucci, 1996).
Sketch: The young unemployed without a degree
‘Those who work and who have got money, they think that they are the best citizens. Sorry, guys, but in my opinion, a better citizen is the one who respects environmental values and the values of humankind’.
At the end of the show, all the participants came on stage to sing ‘The Wall of Harsh Times’, the show’s anthem.
The idea of struggling for rights was again present in the group’s environmental and security demands. For the members of the CCQSS, security was not a bourgeois or conservative notion; it was presented as a right from which the poor should not be excluded. During the activity to ‘come and think of your future neighbourhood’, Henri drew a picture of his ideal neighbourhood with the heading, ‘A neighbourhood with flowers and quiet places.’ In the discussion, members stressed that this was a right, not a privilege reserved for the Upper Town —thus echoing the previously mentioned division between the Upper and Lower Towns.
The members’ use of the terms ‘activist’ and ‘citizens’ also reflected this vision of struggling for rights. Paradoxically, the committee refused to take part in the anti-globalisation movement’s demonstrations against the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. The committee was eager to distance itself from the latter groups because they were associated with the anarchist movement, which was judged not to be compatible with the group’s frontstage image. The CCQSS instead ‘identified with the residents’ (Lise). They also feared being judged by other citizens who deemed the anti-globalisation movement irresponsible and radical (Lise).
We have to look like responsible and credible citizens … We are not radicals here (Lise’s remarks in the meeting to prepare for mobilisation against the Summit of the Americas).
The CCQSS’s relationship with public institutions reflected considerable ambivalence. Committee members saw institutions as a vector for social change but they were also afraid of possible infringements on their autonomy, hence their choice to challenge the establishment. Collaboration was the exception rather than the rule. The committee submitted briefs at public meetings, but would not establish close ties with politicians. This distrust extended to the Rassemblement populaire de Québec, a municipal party the committee had helped to establish. ‘We are not a political party. We have another role: we intend to be a powerful mobilising force and we stand for the poorest of citizens’ (Denise, an employee). The committee remained protective of its independence even when new experiences of participatory democracy were involved. For example, the members were reluctant to include citizen councils (a new participatory democracy body) in the Flower Festival that the committee organised every year. This distrust derived from past struggles in the 1970s, when the municipality decided to end negotiations with citizen groups and to ‘renovate’ the neighbourhood with bulldozers (Ezop-Québec, 1981). And this past was revived through the memories recounted during the meetings, particularly those dedicated to the history of the group (Patsias, 2016, pp. 129–130). Together with the emphasis on empowerment, itself a result of the CCQSS’s ambivalence towards political institutions, the rejection of radicalism clearly delineates the boundaries of the group’s politicisation.
Speech norms and group bonds: How the empowerment group style restricts the expression of conflict and members’ autonomy
When asked about a ‘good member’s’ qualities, CCQSS activists emphasised ‘openness to others’ opinions’, ‘respect for others’ and ‘a measure of humility’; they said that ‘We have no time for high-falutin’, lecturing theorists.’ These speech norms embodied the values of citizen recognition and equal dignity, dear to this group.
The way meetings were conducted attested to a constant concern with promoting each member’s ‘self’. Everyone should be able to ‘express themselves and find their place’. Each person’s participation had to be ‘equal’, and Lise ensured a strict application of the procedural code. Lise’s desire to grant everyone the same amount of time, however, failed to consider the fluid nature of conversations and gave the impression that she was acting as a referee. In this type of speech, words, phrases, and symbols imply that each individual has unique feelings and intuitions; the personal self is the ultimate reality, and expressing this is beneficial. This narrative encourages the endless verbalisation of personal emotions, but is not necessarily conducive to a collective understanding of issues and does not favour a high level of abstraction (Boltanski, 1993).
Within the CCQSS, ‘expressive individualism’—directly linked to the group’s empowerment style—moulded speech norms and group bonds, making them incompatible with the expression of conflict or dissent. The CCQSS actively advocated social change and was, in principle, open to all citizens, but one particular, hegemonic ideology in fact prevailed, dominating all backstage discussion. The psychologising dimension (power comes from self-confidence) of the ‘empowerment’ group style risks derailing speech norms into discussing ultimately tangential issues and preventing the expression of differences, ‘for fear of hurting others’ feelings and denigrating them’ (Louise, a member). The result was a group style that politicised the group’s relations with the outer world, but made politicising internal discussions more difficult.
The CIQ in Marseilles
Group boundaries: How the civic group style encourages the establishment of relations with institutions without internally promoting the discussion of public affairs
The CIQ shares the same sense of disenfranchisement and territorial injustice as its Quebec City counterpart. Members define themselves as ‘second-class citizens’, left to their own devices by the government. The chairman of one of the district committees wrote: ‘The upper part of our neighbourhood is nicknamed “the Disenfranchised”. We do not intend to request a name change because we fully deserve it.’6 However, while this identity was partly founded on a sense of deprivation, it was not expressed within a narrative of empowerment, but mostly in the form of a struggle against incivility.
CIQ members believe that improving life in the neighbourhood implies social order. They complain about the Roma camp adjoining their neighbourhood, about noisy streets at night and the smell of burnt tires. They object to the construction of a major new social housing project in the district. Incivility is an attack not only on social order but also on certain values of respect and mutual responsibility for living together harmoniously:
All these papers, these spilt bins. I don’t understand, and these young people with their pit-bulls, never muzzled (Mr Secco7).
We have to respect others, talk to them, find a compromise; otherwise, how could we live together? There are some minimal rules (Ms Pellegrini, CIQ president).
For the members, the social bond is fragile and civic action is the means to restore it. The term is recurrent in the committee’s flyers. For example, the pamphlet for the ecological garbage collection campaign read: ‘Be civic, respect ecological garbage,’ and this motto was largely repeated during the meeting dedicated to this topic. The CIQ is a conservative group, the guardian of a sort of order over its territory (Douglas, 1986; Lamont, 2003). Its demands convey an image of social harmony and an ideal of good citizenship that is not constructed against republicanism but embedded in it (Patsias, 2016, p. 91).
Many CIQ members reminisce about their impoverished childhoods and the role played by the ‘school of the Republic’, which enabled them to integrate into French society.
On our class photo, I found 54 Spanish surnames. Most of them lived in the poorest streets: la rue des Soeurs, le boulevard Henrion, or the shacks at Roux and Olive. We were the most disadvantaged … ; there was little or no help in our modest studies from parents who came late into our country, … There were also 112 names of Italian origin! They shared a rough, approximate French … This chronology established, I would like to draw a parallel relating to certain contemporary problems … As for the conditions of education, life and knowledge, with few exceptions, almost all of these students at the time were able to attend school for a very short time only; it was nipped in the bud or most often ended at CEP level [vocational diploma], whether they passed or failed. How many of them were there, however, those who, all origins combined, would have been eligible for further study, as is so common today? …
Today, without denying the difficulties contemporary schoolchildren and students have, especially those that are given the label of disadvantaged (from large or foreign families and housed in those big ‘cités’) … , how many of them know that in those years from 1920 to 1930, Spanish or Italian families in particular did not receive any kind of allowance: social security did not exist … I know that these difficulties from another time don’t excuse those that the present generation can experience nowadays … However, I just want to emphasise that—in those long-gone days—if someone had enough determination, neither origins, nationalities, social status nor even the number of children in a family could get in the way of improving oneself.8
This moral group boundary partly accounts for the frontstage conservative image associated with the Marseilles citizen committees in general. However, access to housing, security and even neighbourhood cleanliness were deemed to reflect blatant inequalities, the result of the social injustice suffered by people with fewer opportunities to exercise their rights. According to the CIQ members, the municipal policies testify to a difference in treatment between the wealthier south of the city and the poorer north. Their main criticism concerned the establishment of a landfill in the neighbourhood: ‘This means we add misery to misery’ (Ms. Pelligrini). On the whole, citizens thought consultation had little impact and perceived this to be the sign of a corrupt democracy. ‘Why do they want a landfill, do you think? Because it earns a lot of money. They prefer money to ecology; and who will benefit from this money?’ (Mr Secco, a member).
Discussing all this is considered ‘political’. When questioned, the president, Ms Pelligrini, did not flinch: ‘Of course it’s political: our neighbourhood has been repeatedly selected to house the most vulnerable populations, though we are already burdened with all possible handicaps: old social housing, the gypsy9 camp, the landfill project and no access to the sea. . . . They cancel “the police of proximity” (the local police) and they call in the BAC:10 is that fair?’ For the members of the CIQ, ‘civil’ is both moral and political; it refers both to the boundaries of belonging and to rights.
Paradoxically, the group affirms that it is not political, as the preamble of the committee’s charter stipulates, thus drawing a sharp distinction between its frontstage and backstage styles. During the meetings, Ms Pelligrini repeated: ‘Please, we do not do politics here.’ One day, in a discussion at which the president was present, we noted the potential contradiction between considering all the above concerns as political ones and describing the group as non-political. Ms Pelligrini replied: ‘We are not political because we do not support any political party; we want to represent all the citizens in the neighbourhood.’ However, in Marseilles, this rejection of political parties went beyond an avoidance of politicking. It was also a way to distance itself from the accusations of clientelism that tarnished the parties’, but also CIQ’s reputation (interview with Ms Pelligrini and the president of the federation of citizen committees).
The wish to affirm their autonomy from the political system also explains the CIQ’s refusal to be considered either radicals or activists. The president’s recommendation to members at the demonstration against the urban plan (‘Most importantly, let’s march in an orderly and peaceful manner’) attested to the same desire as in Quebec City to convey an image of ‘responsible and credible’ citizens to the municipal authorities. However, unlike the Quebec City committee, the CIQ avoided referring to itself as a social movement. The citizen committee members never uttered the term ‘activist’, and our use of the term triggered Ms Pelligrini’s immediate correction: ‘We are not activists here.’ ‘Activism’ involved a connection with dissent that did not correspond to the way that members perceive themselves and also echoed membership in a political party, which clashed with the apolitical stance that the group wishes to display.
Within the committee, the members addressed some difficult topics, such as the issue of different communities living together. The group’s answers could be normative, that is, focused on preserving a vision of an abstract republican community, but they illustrated a rise in the level of generality and a search for concrete solutions. For example, the issue of security and drugs in the neighbourhood was embedded in a larger set of problems regarding the redistribution of wealth and the reduction in public services. The group also wanted young people in the neighbourhood to be involved in the new development projects. However, these issues were never developed in public discussions or meetings, but only backstage, in private meetings among members or during a specific appointment with the local elected official. Ms Pelligrini feared that the presence of an extremist party (the National Front) in the political spectrum made these discussions challenging, especially for the image of citizen committees, already subject to the reproach of NIMBYism.
One major difference between the ways that the Marseilles and the Quebec City citizen committees establish boundaries with the ‘wider world’ has to do with their relations with institutions. Public institutions feature prominently in the Marseilles group style. Members expect the State to intervene and call for it to do so. However, observation soon revealed that maintaining institutional relationships did not always mean that the committee would broaden policy issues and increase the generality of its concerns. During a public meeting about the landfill, the members focused on a technical discourse in order to emphasise not so much the urban plan’s injustice as the inadequacy of the selected waste treatment method, because they feared that their narrative might only evoke their personal experience and would be judged as too particularistic and too far removed from the common interest (Duchesne & Haegel, 2002). Thus, they took on a civic group style so as to portray themselves as responsible citizens who were merely questioning the scientific merit of the project and trying to contribute to it.
Moreover, frontstage meetings with elected representatives do not favour politicisation. Citizens asked questions and the mayor answered them, but citizens were not given the opportunity to contest the elected officials’ views. While citizens’ complaints addressed the real coexistence difficulties of Marseilles’s various communities, they offered grounds for discussion in political terms, pointing out the need for social policies, and, most importantly, they laid out a concrete basis for discussing the city and the neighbourhood’s development. Yet these issues were not discussed in depth, as the municipal representative chose to pander to the people who were pitting two categories of the population against each other (the immigrants against the native-born). This debate might have been an opportunity for a rise in the level of generality or for exploration of the different visions and interests at stake. However, it was not used to politicise the issue but to capture votes following partisan strategies (Patsias, 2016).
Although the institutions were a visible and concrete world for committee members, the intercession and ‘proximity’ tradition was not conducive to challenging the powers-that-be. The committee did organise demonstrations, but always as a last resort in its collective action repertoire. The CIQ repeatedly tried to bargain first, constantly requesting appointments with elected officials. Such deference did not preclude criticism (Scott, 1985), but reinforced the division between the group’s internal and external foci. Internally, members denounced both politicians and the crony system, but, externally, they respected the soft social codes of discussion (avoiding conflict and a bad reputation) required by the system of bargaining.
Speech norms and group bonds: How the civic group style encourages public discussion and equality within the group
Backstage, in internal discussions, CIQ members raised their voices and were not reluctant to contradict each other. While the Quebec City group emphasises the ‘positive’ nature of their discussions, the Marseilles group excels in the art of complaining and criticising even those politicians who support them through patronage practices (at least in their absence). The CIQ’s speech norms made that possible. Participants do not expect everyone to have the same opinion. However, the tone remained good-natured. At the CIQ, people did not identify too closely with their positions, so that they never felt threatened by disagreement or ridicule.
Moreover, members addressed each other through the formal ‘vous’, rather than the informal ‘tu’ preferred by the CCQSS. This rule allows for a depersonalisation of the debate, as members distinguish between their personal opinions and the turn the debate takes. It is thus a critical element in politicising debate within the CIQ: conflict and sharp debates were not considered personal attacks. This tolerance of conflict is also sustained by members’ friendship bonds and their long experience with each other (Polletta, 2003). In addition, whatever their political leanings, members share republican values as the basis of getting along together, especially in regard to public institutions. Consequently, in Marseilles, the formal treatment (vous) is an expression of respect and enabled far more fluid and egalitarian conversations than in Quebec City, where the informal tu could not bridge the social gap between lay members and professionals and leads to the evaporation of politics in internal discussions.11
The following table summarises the results of our two case studies (Table 1).
. | . | CCQSS – Empowerment group style . | CIQ – Civic group style . |
---|---|---|---|
Group boundaries | Frontstage | Confrontational relationships with political institutions Citizenship as activism but not radicalism | Bargaining and avoidance of politics Citizenship as civility, and rejection of radicalism and activism |
Backstage | Discussions in terms of the public good | Critics and political discussions Distrust of representatives | |
Group bonds | Frontstage | Community of residents and of the poor: members are activists Committed to empowerment: tolerant and open to others’ self-expression | The neighbourhood residents’ community: members as ‘good civic citizens’, free to express their own opinions Tolerant of others |
Backstage | Low tolerance for conflict Inequalities between paid leaders and voluntary members | Acceptance and management of conflict Equality among members | |
Speech norms | Frontstage | Exploration of one’s self leads to both self-enhancement and empowerment | Emphasis on citizenship and civility No references to conflict and social change |
Backstage | Exploration of one’s self limits political discussion | Speaking out to find solutions No exploration of self |
. | . | CCQSS – Empowerment group style . | CIQ – Civic group style . |
---|---|---|---|
Group boundaries | Frontstage | Confrontational relationships with political institutions Citizenship as activism but not radicalism | Bargaining and avoidance of politics Citizenship as civility, and rejection of radicalism and activism |
Backstage | Discussions in terms of the public good | Critics and political discussions Distrust of representatives | |
Group bonds | Frontstage | Community of residents and of the poor: members are activists Committed to empowerment: tolerant and open to others’ self-expression | The neighbourhood residents’ community: members as ‘good civic citizens’, free to express their own opinions Tolerant of others |
Backstage | Low tolerance for conflict Inequalities between paid leaders and voluntary members | Acceptance and management of conflict Equality among members | |
Speech norms | Frontstage | Exploration of one’s self leads to both self-enhancement and empowerment | Emphasis on citizenship and civility No references to conflict and social change |
Backstage | Exploration of one’s self limits political discussion | Speaking out to find solutions No exploration of self |
Group styles: Between boundaries and repertoires
Why do citizens choose to ‘wear one hat instead of another’? In this section, we highlight how this choice is associated with more transcendent repertoires or styles. We argue that the above differences do not result merely from people’s own choices. Citizenship and empowerment are parts of broader political and cultural systems that delineate and circumscribe the alternatives citizens face. Our study allows us to identify two elements: first, the nature of State-society relations and the ideological foundations of the political systems we are exploring, and, secondly, how citizens perceive and react to these elements in their contexts. Group styles show a dialectical movement of influence and reinterpretation of particular historical collective representations in a given context, characterised by specific rapports de force. We begin by pointing out the specificities of boundaries on the level of groups, in order to go on to illustrate the links to national repertoires.
In defining themselves, the CIQ and the CCQSS delineate similar boundaries. The first of these is based on a symbolic narrative of unfair treatment in terms of resource distribution. A second boundary shows a desire to represent ‘ordinary’ citizens rather than activists or militants—dubbed ‘radicals’. Yet there is a difference in detail. In Quebec City, the group fashioned its image directly in reference—and in contrast—to the ‘radicals’, given the importance attributed to social change within the CCQSS and the uneasy transition in group leadership from Marxist and unionist activists to professional social workers in the 1970s and 1980s. In Marseilles, radicals were a distant, philosophical reference.
The differences between both groups lie in their relationships to the surrounding society and in their ways of handling differences and conflicts within the group. The CCQSS group style combines a grassroots vision of democracy with Tocquevillian accents (Hartz, 1955; Tocqueville, 1831/1969) and an interpretation of empowerment influenced by the Alinsky12 awareness method—which values, and perhaps idealises, consensus and the bottom-up process—as revisited by the local social workers (Shragge, 2003). This definition specifies not only that all voices are to be heard but also that everyone is invited to connect their inner selves to the wider world, creating a significant bond between private and public life. This bond is an asset in formulating a narrative of confrontation with the wider world and the forging of a close-knit, grassroots community for deprived and struggling people. However, despite the overwhelming focus on backstage dynamics, this community has remained weak. The psychological narrative that underlies such a vision of empowerment is less accepting of arguments and makes it difficult to express conflict, so the only way to deal with it is defection. It also enshrines the division between permanent, paid members with expertise versus other members. In Quebec City, consensus owes more to an avoidance of conflict than to the existence of a real community, thereby evaporating politics within the group.
Conversely, in the CIQ, the boundaries between private and public, backstage and frontstage, are less permeable. Echoing French republicanism, the Marseilles committee emphasises a more ethereal vision of community. The ‘us’ defined by the citizen committee relies on a battle against incivility, but the community addressed is still relatively abstract; it is rooted in the norm of the ‘good citizen’. The demand for more power for citizens is not entrenched in a discourse about grassroots democracy. In Marseilles, despite frontstage lip-service to republicanism, clientelism has built bonds of proximity between citizens and elected officials, but these bonds are instrumental. Clientelism creates chains of political allegiance without helping to construct a community. When CIQ members call for more democracy, they want to be heard, and are afraid of being abandoned by public institutions. They do not explicitly link the definition of a community with ‘taking their destiny in hand’, on the one hand, and on the other, daily and private life,—as the Quebec City group does. Citizens in Marseilles have become involved in the committee because they believe elected representatives are corrupt and they want to be alongside their neighbours. The Marseilles committee does not support the idea that ‘small is beautiful’ and the idealisation of local community. They are not against these ideas, but they are not included in their ideological register and appear foreign to them. However, bonds among members are stronger than in the Quebec group. While more ideologically divided, the Marseilles members share the republican idea of a pre-existing community that fosters tolerance of confrontational arguments, thus laying the ground for the politicisation of debates.
The civic and empowerment styles are embedded in very distinct political stories. As Bacqué and Biewener (2013) emphasise, the empowerment repertoire is not available in France because the partisan Left occupies all the available space; civic associations pertain to responsible citizenship in an environment where individual interests have long been regarded as an obstacle to the general interest (Huard, 2000). In Marseilles, this republican legacy is noticeable in three respects. First, the citizen committee is mistrusted and criticised as representing the NIMBY syndrome (Donzel, 2001). Second, the struggle against incivility leads to implementing a social norm for the territory, reflecting a vision of ‘good’ citizenship. Third, the members are quick to distance themselves from the immediate environment and generalise their political demands. However, republicanism does not exist independently of real life. This interpretation of civility and republicanism needs to be linked to membership in the group. Most members belong to the working class and to a generation influenced by their republican schooldays, whose model they do not reject. As in Quebec, memories of the past allow members to experience their historical heritage as present.
This vision of responsible citizenship is also rooted in the emergence of the Marseilles citizen committee, whose first objective is to ensure social cohesion and to be a go-between between elected representatives and citizens (Donzel, 2001). This objective echoes the type of governance in Marseilles, which is characterised by clientelism practices. These are not very compatible with collective action and pointed political discussion. From this point of view, clientelism and the struggle against incivility reinforce one another, and curb politicisation by limiting confrontation and undermining collective action. On the level of the group, the presence in the French political arena of an extremist party, the National Front, leads to constrained speech norms in interaction with institutions. The embedding of republicanism in a clientelist system thus explains rejection of traditional French collective action.
In the CCQSS, the ‘mantra’ of empowerment, common to all the autonomous groups in Quebec, is imbued by the Quebec reinterpretation of Canadian liberal and libertarian values, by the rejection of the Catholic heritage and by the history of the left in Quebec and in Quebec City more particularly. Therefore, although empowerment in Quebec shares some points with liberal empowerment in the US (civic sentiment, localism, transparency and self-reliance, for example, [see Eliasoph, 2016, p. 249]), it is also infused by the rejection of charity, a strong vision of social justice, and ambiguous relationships to the State in all its elements, which distinguishes it from liberal Canadian groups. In the CCQSS, an exacerbated distrust of the State highlights why the group avoids collaborating with it. This distrust is embedded in the group’s history, marked by the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s against urban renewal as decided upon by the municipality (Ezop-Québec, 1981). Collaboration in the creation of a municipal party was more an exception than the rule. Memories built around contention and collective action were revived by special activities such as the 30th anniversary of the CCQSS, when several former members were asked to talk about the history of the movement and their personal experience. The group’s definition of itself in opposition to ‘radicals’ is also the result of the type of leadership in the group. Unlike other Quebec City groups, in the CCQSS the social workers won the leadership battle against the Marxists and unionists. In the province as a whole, the rise of social workers in the management of groups is also the consequence of the delegation of services from the State to civil organisations. In the beginning, resorting to social workers was a strategy intended to protect group autonomy without having to renounce State funding. This choice was incompatible with radicalism. The psychologising dimension of empowerment is the result of social-worker leadership and their university training (Ezop-Québec, 1981). During our observation, leadership in the CCQSS remained contested and, of course, these struggles impacted on the drawing of boundaries. For example, the discussion about the group’s participation in anti-globalisation movements pitted the new intern (also an anti-globalisation activist) and the former unionist leader employee against the professional social workers.
Conclusion
What does our study of two citizen committees, in Quebec City and Marseilles, add to the notion of group styles? Empirically, our comparison expands the concept of group style outside the language of individualism in the United States, and the majority of French studies concerning groups challenging republican citizenship. Despite their differences, both groups present similarities that distinguish them from US and French protest associations (Eliasoph, 1998; 2011; Hamidi, 2006; Luhtakallio, 2012). Although they distrust politics, they are acutely aware that institutions frame their world and stand up for more public institutions. The citizens in these groups build a link between the state and the individuals. They also believe in their associations’ ability to rein in governments, even if they do not seem to trust the institutions of participatory democracy, even seeing them as instruments threatening their power or their independence. Finally, both groups define politicisation in contrast to some form of radicalism they judge as too abstract and and as forgetting that people, hic et nunc, are the subject of politics.
More theoretically, this research retraces the links between interaction and structures, thereby highlighting how the local level, where actual political engagement occurs for most citizens, interacts with the higher levels of the political system. It is not a coincidence that empowerment was chosen in Quebec and not in France. The register of empowerment does not exist in French social organisations, as the hegemonic republican ideology permits little space for it. Empowerment is the result of a different, North American history, based on the ideal that individuals construct and shape their own communities in a bottom-up process (Hartz, 1955; Lipset, 1986). However, in France as in Quebec, citizens reinterpret these repertoires in their actual practice. Empowerment has nurtured different perspectives, from the civil rights movements and the Alinsky vision to a more recent and more rights-based conception (Bacqué & Biewener, 2013; Shragge, 2003). The particular psychological dimension of empowerment in the CCQSS is the result of the supplanting of leftist activists by social workers, a change that itself mirrors a new social contract between the State and social organisations. Likewise, republicanism does not exert the same influence over every civic group in France. Our study shows that republicanism not only shapes antagonistic group styles (cf. Luhtakallio, 2012), but also allows for civic attitudes and negotiation with other political actors. In Marseilles, republicanism, carried by older people educated in the republican tradition, encourages the backstage expression of disagreements, conflict, and discussion. Frontstage, this expression is limited by clientelism, thereby reflecting local power relations. Yet, in contrast to Putnam’s views, our study confirms the necessity of theoretically rethinking both internal group dynamics and their relationship with the broader polity when assessing social groups’ contribution to democracy.
Our study’s insights raise some questions for future research. First, it invites us to link politicisation and the avoidance of politics more closely. Beyond the differences between both group styles, we assess how associational politicisation evaporates vis-à-vis institutions. However, as with politicisation, the evaporation of politics is framed by a particular political system. According to this view, politicisation and the avoidance of politics could be considered as two sides of the same coin and some forms of politicisation would involve some forms of avoidance of politics and vice versa. This point could be investigated more extensively in future analyses. Secondly, our reflection ignores individual trajectories to concentrate on interactions. However, in Quebec, in the long term, community organisations’ group styles are altered by the evolution of leaders’ profiles (from Marxists or unionists to social workers). A new project could attempt to consider the role of individual trajectories in defining the group style of particular organisations and in conceptualising change in group styles and cultural sociology (Swidler, 2001).
Notes
As Silber (2003, p. 431) notes, the notion of cultural repertoires, at least in its first iteration (Swidler, 1986), does not address the transition between macro and micro levels. More particularly, it ignores the question of access to specific cultural repertoires and of how people make choices within their cultural repertoires.
As Ricca Edmondson (2003, pp. 61, 62) has underlined, many survey-based approaches in effect treat cultural causes and effects as conceptually and empirically distinct and identify specific areas of social interaction as cultural while seeing others as distinct from culture. Like her, we assume culture can be generative without being deterministic: culture attaches shared meanings to things or events without compelling people to endorse these interpretations or to adhere to the values or ideas supported by these things or events.
In other words, pupils stopped attending school before the end of junior-high school, i.e. between 11 and 13 years of age.
This sentence was identical in the prospectus of each citizens’committee presentation.
All the direct quotations in this text are our own translations of French documents or conversations.
Journal de la Fédération du 16ème arrondissement, May 1995, p. 7.
The reference to names follows local practices. While CCQSS members were on a first-name basis, CIQ were not. Refer to our discussion of this phenomenon below.
Journal de la Fédération du 16ème arrondissement, May 1995, pp. 4, 5.
The term could be considered stigmatising. However, it corresponds to the denomination of the group by the members themselves and by people outside. In Marseilles, ‘Roma’ could be also used but it designates people who have recently arrived from the Balkans. To understand more about the Gypsy ethnic identity, see: Thede (1998).
Police groups in charge of public security interventions.
Contrary to our findings here, some studies show the parallel rise of the distinction between ‘vous’ (formal) and ‘tu’ (informal) in different European languages and claims for egalitarian visions of citizenship (Brown & Levinson, 1987). This contradiction points out the fact the use of ‘vous’ or ‘tu’ in the language is never neutral and engages both a situation and a history.
Alinsky is considered to be the founder of community organizing. His vision of community development was a political one, in which mobilization and political activism was crucial (Shragge, 2003).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).