Se mobiliser dans et contre la métropole : les activités critiques de l’action publique territorialisée à Nantes, entre scènes et coulisses. Le cas du Bois Hardy

Abstract

This article documents the deployment of a new metropolitan critique through the ethnography of contestation in action in a neighbourhood in Nantes, France - Le Bois Hardy, in Bas Chantenay. It analyzes the make-up of a collective, without neglecting its internal differences, and its non-univocal relations with public actors. Using a typology of urban environmentalisms, we show the dynamics of a non-homogeneous group, the supports and activities that allow a credible and tangible critique of urban planning. Although there remains an artistic critique of the densification operations at work in the city centre, we rather examine a procedural critical activity that questions, on the side of the collective, the ways of apprehending the general interest. Starting from a singular mobilization, this article goes into the details of an emerging metropolitan critique in the making.

Keywords

• ethnography
• collective action
• metropolis
• critique
• Nantes