UN RENOUVEAU DE LA PARTICIPATION ASSOCIATIVE ? L'engagement et le militantisme au sein du comité Attac Isère

1.1.1.2 The interpretation of the social conflicts

The events of November, December and the multiplication of the social conflicts since 1995 left the door open to many interpretations^263(*). Some, first of all, underlined a correlation between the industrial disputes and the other types of social conflicts. Whereas one distinguished usually the conflicts located in the company from those which take place outside, of the trade unionists and the intellectuals started to trace a continuity between the two. Following 1995, a group of sociologists wrote : « The claim of the universal social rights [...] defense of the right to work is not separable. Complementary, the fights are answered and reinforced since one wants to apprehend them well like a continuum, while refusing to hoist the wage condition with the row of privilege, by thwarting apparent but false contradiction between mobilizations for the maintenance of employment and refusal of an increased precarisation »^264(*). Since, the industrial disputes are related to the drifts of liberalization and certain claims which were specific to the trade unions before extend thus to the sphere of activity of associations. That was the case for example dismissals in the Danone group for which Attac was mobilized. The result of this aggregation of the social conflict and industrial disputes other allowed a widening of the fights and the constitution of networks of mobilization^265(*).

One of the raised interrogations was to know if the strikes of 1995 and the events which followed could be regarded as the emergence of a social movement or if they were not summarized with an ordinary social conflict. The question of the definition of a social movement is in the center of the problem^266(*). During debates, Alain Touraine seemed one of the principal representatives of the refractory intellectuals to the idea again social movement. Alain Touraine is a French sociologist who developed an analysis of the company and his evolutions starting from the concept of social movement^267(*). He defines that Ci as being « the organized collective control of an actor fighting against his adversary for the social direction of historicity in a concrete community »^268(*), i.e. the fight for the determination of the main cultural trends of the company.

According to Touraine, each company can be characterized by only one social movement. The labor movement is for him the social movement of the industrial company as « company of production ». The passage of the industrial company at the post-industrial company, started since 1968, causes the emergence of New Social Movements (NMS) located out of the company (movement student, feminist, antiracist). A social movement is equipped with three characteristics : it is placed in the center of the social conflicts, it has vis-a-vis him a social adversary clearly given and defined, it is equipped with a project of social change. The social actors of December 1995 do not satisfy, according to Touraine, these three criteria and they cannot thus be compared to a social movement. There is, according to him, a too important cleavage between the middle class, to which it identifies the core of paid companies, and the underclass made up of the whole of excluded. Thus the watchword of the movement of 95, « All together ! », mask a plurality of interests which are too divergent to constitute a project of company^269(*). From where the second criticism : the claims carried into 1995 are connected more with one defensive mode of conservation of the assets than to a true project. The refusal to modify the operation of the rules of the public utility would testify to one « strategy of opposition to progress »^270(*). Among different the phases which characterize the passage of the industrial company at the post-industrial company or « programmed », the strikes of 1995 correspond so that Touraine names it « great refusal »^271(*), i.e. it « existing shift between a conflict passeist but not yet completed demonstration and advertisement of a new type of opposition still not very visible »^272(*). It is a question, according to him, of not taking this great refusal for the social movement itself.

Contrary to Touraine holding them of « social movement »^273(*) the unit of the strikes and the content of the project defended by the demonstrators highlight. The unit of the movement manifest, according to them, by the convergence of the various social and economic categories (teachers, railwaymen, paid the private one) but of is also excluded and minorities (precarious without-papers, workers, unemployeds). This unit is symbolized by the slogan of these demonstrations (« All together ! ») which allowed the regrouping of these various movements in the same action. What makes it possible to affirm the emergence of a social movement, it is the unit of the same project supported at the time of these events. This project first of all translates a will of D-appropriation of the public policies by « those of in bottom ». It is a question of an attempt of founding a debate and a reflection on topics which were delegated to the specialists before^274(*). This project would not be former to the social movement but it is on the one hand, the logical postulate^275(*), and it is, on the other hand the resultant of these mobilizations^276(*).

Which claims this project would it carry? It would be possible to distinguish in the movement from 1995 and the conflicts which followed it, three levels distinct from claims^277(*). There would be first of all the claims which are defended explicitly by the actors. There would be also a claim equipped more general which would be the public defense of the service. The support of private brought to paid sector public testifies thus to the will to defend the service public as tel.^278(*) the premises of a refusal of the néo-liberal policies and « marchandisation » of the public utility, which is one of the principal claims of Attac, would be present in the movement of 1995. Lastly, a broader request for a change of company would be also expressed through these conflicts. There too, the founders of Attac seem to be the heirs to 1995. Indeed, the watchword « Another world is possible ! » which is one of the slogans on which Attac was based, returns to this social dispute. The idea of D-appropriation of the world on which Attac was created would be also to seek in this return of the social dispute and this revival of the militancy. ^279(*)

* ²⁶³ Daniel Bensaïd notes that «  one speculated already much in the significance of this social explosion. A many journalists want to see there the last antiquated strike at one time which is completed. And why not the first great strike antilibérale of the century which comes  ?  ». Bensaïd (Daniel), op.cit, p. 110.

* ²⁶⁴ Cf Béroud (Sophie), Mouriaux (Rene), Vakaloulis (Michel), op.cit, p. 222.

* ²⁶⁵ «  These conflicts cannot be held for fights of fold on the company  : they crystallize broad social alliances on the topic «  we do not want to die  » and rather widen the space of fight for employment  ». Perret (Jean Marrie), «  Two years of social fights in the private one  », in Test of location 96-97, Books of Ressy, N°1, March 1998, p. 6. City in Béroud (Sophie), Mouriaux (Rene), Vakaloulis (Michel), op.cit, p. 167.

* ²⁶⁶ We will accept the definition that Sidney Tarrow gives some who has the advantage of stressing the form of a social movement and on affinities of his participants as on the relations that they maintain with the actors external with this one. It defines a social movement as «a collective dispute with common objectives and a feeling of solidarity in an interaction prolonged with elites, opponents and authorities». Sidney Tarrow, Power in movement, social movements, collective action and politics, Cambridge University Near, 1994, p. 3.

* ²⁶⁷ Ansart (Pierre), contemporary sociologies, Paris, ED of the Threshold, collect «  Points  », 1990, p. 342.

* ²⁶⁸ Cf, Touraine (Alain), «  The voice and the glance  », in Sociology of the social movements, ED of the Threshold, Paris, 1978, p. 48.

* ²⁶⁹ One can note that this criticism is also that which Wievorka carries to the strikes of December 1995. Cf, Aguiton (Christophe), Bensaïd (Daniel), the return of the social question, op.cit, p. 64.

* ²⁷⁰ Wievorka (Michel), «  Necessary a aggiornamento  », op.cit.

* ²⁷¹ Cf Touraine (Alain), the great refusal, Reflections on the strike of December 1995, Paris, Beech, 1996, p. 320.

* ²⁷² Béroud (Sophie), Mouriaux (Rene), Vakaloulis (Michel), op.cit, p. 46.

* ²⁷³ One can quote Christophe Aguiton, Daniel Bensaïd, Sophie Béroud, Rene Mouriaux and Michel Vakaloulis.

* ²⁷⁴ «  During its development the mobilized actors make the experiment of their own force, realize that it is possible to make «  another thing  », discuss on famous problems «  complicated  » such as social protection, usually reserved to the only specialists  ». Béroud (Sophie), Mouriaux (Rene), Vakaloulis (Michel), op.cit, p. 120.

* ²⁷⁵ «  «  project  » by the social movement does not precede the cognitive mobilization by the actors in fight, it presupposes it  ». Ibid, p. 125.

* ²⁷⁶ «  Some will undoubtedly object with good direction, that to require as many criteria, as much conscience, to require of him on such a level, to claim from the start to him a project «  sociétal  » alternate, it «  social movement  » risk extremely well to become an object «  sociologiquement untraceable  ». It is rare indeed that the conscience precedes the action, that a movement is born from a model or an idea, and not by a fight, of a conflict of interest. The conscience comes while going  ». Aguiton (Christophe), Bensaïd (Daniel), op.cit, p. 9.

* ²⁷⁷ Béroud (Sophie), Mouriaux (Rene), Vakaloulis (Michel), op.cit, p. 110.

* ²⁷⁸ «  The widening of the strike to others paid of the sector public [...] politically reinforce the mobilization of the first sector and emphasizes the power of the social movement in its multisector dimension. This extension is the objective base which makes it possible to register strategically and ideologically the fight against the Juppe plan in the logic of defense not only of social protection but of the service public as tel. the central objective remains the withdrawal of the governmental reform. But it catalyzes from now on a capital political dispute, that of the modernization of  «  Social State  »  ». Idid, p. 114.

* ²⁷⁹Christophe Aguiton notes that «  if there must remain a strong idea of this revival militant, it is the conviction that it is possible to act, to change the things. Against any fatalism which before deferred the decision to «  those of in top  », the movements of these last years expressed a formidable aspiration to take in hands the businesses of the city and to build its own future consciously  !  ». Aguiton (Christophe), «  To militate  », The world of education, June 1997. In Aguiton Christophe), Bensïd (Daniel), the return of the social question, p. 205.