Sociologies (May 2020)
La société d’acrobates : responsabilité, care et participation citoyenne des jeunes
Abstract
Early adulthood represents a privileged object of observation for analyzing the two frameworks of responsibility: responsibility as a moral object and responsibility as an ethical experience. The allegory of the acrobat is used in this text to explain how young people are called upon to stand out and put themselves on stage. This staging, however, presents a paradox: it depends on collective supports while making them invisible. This concealment of collective support imposes a normative framework of moral responsibility, moreover accountability. At the same time, the process of singularization engages young people in an ethical experience of responsibility. The creativity imposed by ethical reflection leads them to renegotiate the norms framing their commitments in private life, but also those in public life since they are creative in the arenas of participatory democracy.
