Ce qu’écouter veut dire

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research about the activity of school nurses in Geneva, this article analyses the issue of social norms involved in the notion of « contemporary patient » and how varyingly effective the imposition of these norms turns out to be with children of different social origins. « Listening » is the privileged mode of intervention of school nurses, who use it as a way to place the child « at the center » of the interaction. While listening, nurses however face children’s unequal predispositions to self-narration and struggle in particular with children from working classes, with whom this mode of intervention appears ineffective. Idealized in speech, the sought-after pair of the « available nurse » and the « autonomous child », which this article aims to illustrate, only operates under certain social conditions.

Keywords

• nurses
• self-narrative disposition
• relationship to body
• social inequalities
• Switzerland