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

1.2.2.2 a new age of the participation ?

Since the beginning of the Nineties, another mode of association appeared following the stressing of this individualization. In this configuration, with the image of the pole member, it is the individual who takes precedence over the grouping to which it belongs. Adhesion develops the individual because these are the specificities which from now on are taken into account^314(*). The individual does not alienate himself any more in his adhesion^315(*), but it personalizes its participation. One of the signs of the importance of the individuals in the operation of the groupings is, according to Jacques Ion, the transitivity of adhesions^316(*). The associative pluri-membership makes it possible an individual to be extracted from his primary distributers. Better, it is from now on the individual, by his adhesions, which is at the origin of the constitution of networks. « The transitivity of the individuals between the various groupings thus accompanies the appearance of networks which do not hold, at least partially, their existence that only action of the individuals who constitute them. In short the networks are not any more of the preexistent data upon the engagement, they progressively take shape cross implications of individual engagements »^317(*). The anti-mondialiste network should not be perceived like a preexistent structure with the national and international mobilizations. It is during against-top that it was gradually set up by the aggregation of distinct actors starting from a community of objectives and affinities ideological. Thus the anti-mondialistes groups gather a great diversity of profiles and individual courses, being able to go from the militant « professional » with the unemployed not having never militated^318(*).

However one can bring two limits to what has just been known as previously. First of all, it would be too caricatural to oppose to the old organization networks, where the individual was determined by his membership of one « constellation », a structuring where the individual would be fully autonomous in his choices. The inscription in a network preserves a certain influence on associative engagement. It is for example, because an individual adheres to an association as Attac which it could be led to approach the LCR politically. The individual cannot thus be only perceived, as opposed to what written Jacques Ion, like the subject of these networks, it is also the object^319(*). The second limit relates to the diversity of the actors who are engaged in the networks ; this is observable within the anti-mondialiste network. On the whole of the network it is possible to find very strong disparities social, cultural or political. However, a certain homogeneity exists, in particular political. But especially, it is within the organizations, that it is possible to find individuals belonging to the same socio-professional configuration. The dynamics of the social conflicts, first of all exclusively national then international, made possible the constitution of a network anti-mondialiste. Attac with the characteristic to have been born from this network and to be an actor with whole share for it. Association could not have been born without a regrouping from these various organizations but paradoxically Attac claims to federate the anti-mondialistes movements.

* ³¹⁴ To describe this process, Hannertz speaks about a consideration of  «  anonymous atoms  » with the taking into account of  «  actors moving  ». Cf Hannertz (Ulf), To explore the city, transl. franc. Issac Joseph, ED of Midnight, Paris, 1983, 420 p. Cité in Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 50.

* ³¹⁵ François de Singly notes that «  the contemporary individual wishes the invention of a model of bond [social] which authorizes it to remain oneself (, better, to even contribute to even becoming him) within a group, of an association  ». De Singly (François), Individualism and social bond, p. 34. City in Barthelemy (Martine), op.cit, p. 145.

* ³¹⁶ «  One wants to indicate by there the possibility, yesterday extremely rare, that the same person can exceed the limits of her constellation of membership  ». Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 49.

* ³¹⁷ Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 50.

* ³¹⁸ «  At the sides of «  militants  » that their last engagements and their routes define a priori as «  policies  », of the individuals intervene in public space, initially starting from their personal experiment, that this oneself that of the unemployed or the user of transport, that of the HIV positive or the handicapped person, that of the homeless person or abroad  ». Barthelemy (Martine), op.cit, p.156.

* ³¹⁹ «  Insertion in the conglomerates replaces the possibility of pluri-memberships structurally independent from/to each other and only connected by the subject itself. The network is not thus any more one initial data, it is the result of the action  ». Ion (Jacques), op.cit, p. 80.