In this article, I report on a Geography degree course at the University of Paris 8 entitled “Spaces and Powers”, which focuses on an analysis of the spaces of the bourgeoisie, taking the approach of examining relations of domination by placing the focus on dominant actors. This article looks back at the genesis of this choice and its pedagogical implications, in the context of a student body mainly drawn from dominated groups. By analyzing my teaching practices (active pedagogy formats and students' organization of field trips to Paris's “beaux quartiers”), I hope to contribute to a reflection on how to teach inside and outside the classroom, through an analysis of the power relations that structure our societies.
As part of prosopographic research on senior government officials (1990–2025), this paper seeks to explore the spatial dimension of the dominance of some administrative elites by questioning the introduction of sketching as a research method. Using semi-structured interviews and an analysis of a previously unpublished database of the career paths of 1,446 people who have held the position of head of central administration, sketching reveals some of the unspeakable aspects of the investigation and objectifies part of the investigative environment. Carried out after the interviews, the sketch appears to be a fertile source of reflection on research methods and materials. The renewed state of the art on sketching as a research method finally proves conducive to important reflexive work at the crossroads of several scientific disciplines.
On the outskirts of Lyon, the Monts d’Or is a small massif of golden stone villages offering panoramic views from the Saône valley to the Alps. Nestled in a lush green setting, the Monts d’Or are a haven for the region’s wealthy. Indeed, the bourgeoisie asserted its social distinction through the protection of the landscape, notably by the Syndicat Mixte Plaines Monts d’Or (SMPMO). Environmental amenities in this privileged area of western Lyon are as much a source of income for investors as they are a marker of territorial identity for residents. This article examines the way in which landscape enhancement acts as a screen for the strategies deployed by the bourgeoisie to maintain its dominant position. The Monts d’Or is not a social monolith; the distribution of social groups in the area reveals a layering of domination. What’s more, the power of the bourgeoisie has its limits in the Monts d’Or. An analysis of the commune of Saint-Germain shows that this power is partly being challenged by the new ecologist municipality, which is seeking to place the value of the landscape at the service of the common good.
Cette recherche examine les frictions entre patrimonialisation et production urbaine dans le contexte de l'inscription des villes historiques sud-est asiatiques sur la Liste du Patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO. En croisant les champs de la géographie urbaine et des études patrimoniales, elle interroge les effets réciproques de ces deux dynamiques territoriales : ce que le patrimoine fait à la ville et ce que la ville fait au patrimoine. Deux hypothèses structurent l'analyse : la labellisation UNESCO induit une dissociation entre des espaces patrimoniaux et non patrimoniaux, tout en favorisant paradoxalement de nouvelles formes d'interfaces entre l'univers de la ville et celui du patrimoine. Une approche comparative entre Luang Prabang (Laos), inscrite depuis 1995, et Chiang Mai (Thaïlande), sur la liste indicative depuis 2015, permet d'explorer les effets différenciés du label sur le temps long et dans une phase anticipative. La première partie de la thèse retrace la construction narrative et réglementaire des patrimoines urbains à travers les outils de l'UNESCO. La seconde partie analyse les mutations spatiales concrètes, à différentes échelles, induites ou accélérées par les processus de patrimonialisation. Cette recherche met en lumière les reconfigurations des territoires urbains à l'interface entre les logiques patrimoniales et les dynamiques urbaines, en identifiant les tensions, adaptations et hybridations qui en découlent.
This article seeks to contribute to the geographical study of racialised power relations by offering a reflexive examination of the methodological choices developed during doctoral fieldwork at the French-Italian border. Within Francophone scholarship, while geographical analyses of domination and power have expanded in recent years, racialised relations remain largely marginalised, contributing to their ongoing erasure. Efforts to identify racial relations on the field, however, generate a series of concrete methodological and ethical challenges. Fieldwork thus turns into a “minefield” (Jounin, 2019), structured by a central paradox: how can one avoid reproducing, through methodological practices, the very relations of domination that critical research seeks to expose? Confronted with these tensions, the author developed a set of methodological experiments, advancing through iterative adjustments rather than predefined protocols. The article argues for sustained critical reflexivity regarding the categories through which relations of domination are analysed, and proposes approaching doubt not as a methodological failure, but as a productive resource for continually re-orienting research practices to avoid reproducing violence through the research process.
Cette thèse de géographie étudie la promotion des langues régionales dans les Hauts-de-France, le picard et le flamand occidental, à travers les actions des militant·es et des pouvoirs publics. La Région Hauts-de-France est issue d’un regroupement en 2016 entre les deux anciennes Régions Picardie et Nord-Pas-de-Calais. La langue flamande n’était pas soutenue par la Région Nord-Pas-de-Calais, quand la langue picarde disposait d’un accompagnement de la Région Picardie depuis les années 1990. La création de la Région Hauts-de-France s’est traduite par une continuité de la politique de promotion de la langue picarde et un nouveau soutien au développement de la langue flamande. À la suite du vote de la loi Molac, une circulaire de l’Éducation nationale permet depuis 2021 l’enseignement de ces deux langues à l’école, faisant ainsi évoluer les enjeux de la promotion de ces langues.La thèse propose d’interroger ces dynamiques actuelles de promotion en les analysant sous l’angle de la construction des problèmes publics à partir d’entretiens semi-directifs réalisés auprès de militant·es et de représentant·es des pouvoirs publics et d’observations d’événements de promotion de la langue. Les militant·es en faveur des langues régionales sont en effet des « entrepreneur·es de cause » qui ont pour objectif de transformer le risque de disparition des langues régionales en un enjeu collectif que doivent prendre en charge les pouvoirs publics. Aujourd’hui, la compétence de promotion des langues régionales est partagée entre différentes collectivités territoriales. Les entrepreneur·es de cause doivent donc interagir à plusieurs échelles différentes et cherchent à les articuler pour atteindre leurs objectifs. Les municipalités sont ainsi mobilisées en priorité pour organiser une visibilisation de la langue dans l’espace public, à travers la mise en place de signalétique bilingue. La Région, quant à elle, sert principalement de soutien financier aux deux principales associations de défense des langues régionales, l’Agence régionale pour la langue picarde et l’Akademie voor Nuuze Vlaemsche Taele – Institut de la langue régionale flamande et s’investie aujourd’hui dans la conception d’un Office public de la langue flamande. Depuis que l’État autorise l’enseignement du picard et du flamand, les entrepreneur·es de cause représentent une aide essentielle pour l’Éducation nationale, car ils et elles sont les seul·es à disposer de connaissances suffisantes de ces langues pour organiser leurs apprentissages. De ce fait, les entrepreneur·es de cause deviennent ainsi des « entrepreneur·es de politique publique ».La thèse expose le rôle structurant des discontinuités dans la promotion des langues régionales en Hauts-de-France, aussi bien des limites politiques que des distinctions linguistiques. En effet, l’ancienne délimitation entre Picardie et Nord-Pas-de-Calais inscrit pour la langue picarde une distinction dans les représentations linguistiques entre la « langue picarde » et le « ch’ti », plutôt envisagé comme un accent. La frontière franco-belge représente quant à elle à la fois un obstacle et une ressource pour les entrepreneur·es de cause en faveur du flamand occidental, qui refusent la catégorisation de leur langue comme d’un dialecte du néerlandais. La thèse permet donc d’interroger et d’analyser comment les délimitations administratives s’articulent avec des distinctions linguistiques.
This article looks at the links between the issue of social acceptance of nature protection measures and the power struggles and power relationships surrounding nature reserves. The aim is to highlight the ways in which research into the political geography of the environment and nature protection is likely to encounter or provoke local tensions, particularly on the part of managers. The interest in social acceptance includes looking at the issues of domination, particularly on the part of the authorities and representatives of protected areas, which the study sets out to uncover. We will show that the managers of protected areas are at the interface of the dynamics of domination, which are sometimes difficult for them to realize, to discuss and deal with. It is also a question of illustrating how the qualitative survey has made it possible to highlight that stakeholders, while they represent the authority of the reserves, are also dependent on other actors to carry out their work. The article will focus on three nature reserves in particular: Les Contamines-Montjoie and Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval/Passy in Haute-Savoie and Saint-Nicolas des Glénan in the Glénan archipelago in Finistère.
This article seeks to draw out the situation of the researcher confronted with a military field that constitutes both his object of research and his institution of commitment as a reservist. While this position is not unprecedented, it does raise several methodological questions revolving around the relationships of domination that can develop between the researcher and the military hierarchy, whether spatialized or not. The aim here is to conduct a reflexive analysis of three aspects of this particular relationship: the biases that the concurrent status of researcher and reservist can represent in the apprehension and analysis of a situation of power; the relationship with the military terrain as an expression of the spatialization of domination; and the aspects that the dominant/dominated relationship between the doctoral student-reservist and the military authorities can take on around the issue of speech within the armed forces.
This article analyzes the role of local space in processes of socialization for international careers among students aiming to work in international professional fields. Based on a year-long ethnography and interviews with College of Europe students in Bruges (Belgium), an international institution training future professionals for the European Union, the article shows that students’ appropriation and practices of the city of Bruges constitute a socially situated learning of an exclusive lifestyle marked by social closure. The paradox lies in how students’ spatial practices, which are strictly confined to the city’s tourist center, are linked to a sense of belonging to the local space. Analysis of their practices and discourses about their use of the city reveals a distancing from inhabitants and tourists, characterizing a distinctive spatial learning process. More than just a living environment, the city of Bruges serves as a tool shaping this privileged social group, preparing them to enter other exclusive international milieus, particularly the European Quarter in Brussels.
This article begins from the observation that critical geography has occupied only a marginal place in the study of military phenomena in France. It argues that this gap cannot be explained solely by a limited empirical interest in the armed forces, but must also be understood in light of the discipline’s history, long intertwined with military institutions, as well as the predominance of a conventional military geography. In this context, the central objective is to propose an analysis of the military social field through the analytical frameworks of social geography, in order to elucidate its contemporary dynamics. The article also foregrounds the methodological implications of such an undertaking. Drawing on his own shift from activist to military fieldwork, the author shows that the research process is structured by constraints of access, positional effects, and forms of institutional framing that bear upon the production of knowledge. The contribution of a critical approach, therefore, lies in denaturalizing these modes of construction of the social world through several lines of inquiry: the study of the sites in which defense policies are formulated, the analysis of the spatial structuring of military capital, and the examination of the localized effects of militarization. In this way, the article advances a socio-geography of military phenomena attentive to the ways in which remilitarization reconfigures institutions, territories, and social actors alike.
This paper provides feedback on the development and implementation of a field workshop aimed at mapping the private spaces of Nantes' upper classes with a group of undergraduate students. By showing how this workshop is designed to be halfway between teaching and research, it aims to document the teacher's strategies and the students' feelings in order to make it transferable to other contexts.
In a context of intensifying metropolisation and urban densification, access to new high-rise housing is fuelling the thesis of vertical domination. Through ethnographic work carried out in 15 high-rise buildings in the Lyon conurbation (2018-2022), combining social housing towers built in the mid-twentieth century and luxury condominiums built since 2015, as well as a corpus of 70 qualitative interviews with their residents, I show that this thesis is biased by the importance of the visible in assessing the qualities of high-rise living. The mesological approach makes it possible to extend Bourdieusian thinking on the economic and cultural conditions of domination by considering the positioning of subjects at the intersection of social space and the bio-physical-chemical environment. Open to the olfactory, sonic and tactile qualities of living, it also makes it possible to re-examine the conditions under which domination is possible in metropolises: beyond the paradigm that favours modelling it in a physical space.
