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

1.2.2 Forms of the associative participation

1.2.2.1 The integration of the individual to the vertical networks

The associative participation is bound, like showed it Louis Dumont^302(*), with the emergence of individualism. This is why, association appeared in Occident at the end of the 18th century in simultaneity with the establishment of the democratic companies. The end of the companies of Ancien Régime represented the destruction of the hierarchies of body and the advent of the individual as a political subject. « Individualism, notes Jacques Ion, it is [...] the possibility of thinking the company as a sum of individuals whose autonomous existence is preliminary to their insertion in groups of membership and networks of dependence. The organization of the company is not there any more one initial data but an unceasingly started again social construction »^303(*). Weber conceived the associative bond like a contractual social relation by which the individual émancipe of the primary memberships (family, village, profession) which concern the community. It would constitute, according to Alain Caillé, the bond between the public sphere and the sphere private which makes it possible to control the social one^304(*). However, associations had, in particular in France, an ambiguous report/ratio in the State : sometimes complementary, sometimes concurrent; associations were perceived like intermediate bodies whose recognition was problematic. To solve this difficulty, the French associative model, being worth here in its generic and nonlegal meaning, is characterized by the juxtaposition of two poles which in fact a model mixes^305(*). A Community pole holist in whom the existence of the individuals who make the grouping is thought like secondary. A pole member where the individuals are regarded as subjects indicating of the representatives in a contractual way.

It is within the framework of this mixed model that the figure of the militant developed. The grouping is a combination of the primary memberships and groupings secondary. The vertical network or « constellation » is the mode of organization which developed since the 19th century. It is networks in which associations are gathered « either on the basis of similarity of objectives but on that of an ideological proximity »^306(*). This configuration makes it possible to ensure the integration of the individuals bus « it is more the grouping which qualifies the individual that the individual who makes act of association »^307(*). The most obvious example of this structuring is that of the PCF which formed with its groupings « satellites » one « conglomerate »^308(*). Starting from an ideological proximity with the party, followed one another a whole of affiliations other functionally specialized groupings: CGT, the popular Help, Union of the French women, Tourism and work, the FSGT (sporting and gymnic Federation of work), etc

During the Sixties, two major modifications disturbed in an increasing way the old vertical networks. First of all, it y have a progressive specialization of the groupings which caused a slow exit of the networks^309(*). Indeed, this movement of functional autonomisation allowed a less influence of the ideological networks on the local groupings^310(*). In addition, the change cultural and axiologic^311(*) which took place modified the methods of the associative participation. « The individuals do not mobilize themselves any more according to their place in the report/ratio of production and the interests cease being catégoriels to be symbolic systems and identity and are based on the ways of life than of the material concern "^312(*). Three consequences rose from these changes: an autonomy and a valorization of the room, a deterritorialisation of engagements, i.e. a geographical reduction in the memberships in the formation of the groupings, and finally the inscription of associations in one « total dispute of sociétale type ». Dialectical between the room and total A place at the end which it is at the level more decentralized that tend to refer the militant investments while at the same time « the horizon of reference is not strictly any more national but [...] supranational »^313(*).

* ³⁰²Cf, Dumont (Louis), Tests on individualism, Paris, the Threshold, 1983.

* ³⁰³Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 20.

* ³⁰⁴«  The associative fact is spread with the interface of primariness [register dominating of the family and the sociability of the traditional type] and of the secondarity [clean field of the economy and the politico-administrative sphere], of the organic community and the contractual company or, better, than it operates a mixing and a transformation of opposed logics, making it possible to achieve functional tasks [concerning principle member] in the form of personalization [concerning the Community principle]  » Curdled (Alain), «  Gift, association and solidarity  » in Producing solidarity  : the share of associations. Paris, Test card, 1998, p. 31. quoted in Bathélémy (Martine), op.cit.

* ³⁰⁵ Cf, Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 26.

* ³⁰⁶ Ibid, p. 36.

* ³⁰⁷ Ibid, p. 37.

* ³⁰⁸ Ibid, p. 37.

* ³⁰⁹ The observatory of the social and cultural change observed, starting from the beginning of the Sixties, the development of very intense community life. This phase was characterized by the emergence and the revival of family associations (Popular Association of the Families, Trade-union Confédération of the framework of Life, etc), of cultural promotion or of popular education (Frenchwomen Federation of the Houses of Young people and the Culture, Léo Lagrange).

* ³¹⁰ Ibid, p. 43.

* ³¹¹ «  The evolution of the statute of the actors of the collective action is to be brought closer the advent of a new phase  «  post-modern  » of the general process of individualization to work since about thirty D  `years in the industrial and democratic companies  ». Barthelemy (Martine), op.cit, p.143.

* ³¹² Ibid, p. 77.

* ³¹³ Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 45.