Sous les catégorisations, de l’allure du nouveau venu à la « culture » de l’étranger

Abstract

In order to better describe the perceptual acuity at work in hospitality, this paper introduces the concept of « allure », which aims at capturing the modes of appearance of the newcomer within an equipped environment and among a community of users with which he is unfamiliar. The site of investigation is provided by a student housing cooperative in Geneva, close to the squat movement that was very active in that city. By describing the sensory-motor embarrassments that riddle the movements of the stranger who comes to the community, the present text invites to go underneath the categorizations of his origin in order to better understand on which occasions they are mobilized.

Keywords

• phenomenology
• pragmatic sociology
• hospitality
• stranger
• categorizations