Le vélo : un objet qui révèle, renforce et perturbe l’ordre du genre

Abstract

The bicycle is an invention with gendered ramifications, inserting itself into a landscape that is primarily conceived and occupied by men, and its use requires mechanical main­tenance, a practice that is also primarily the province of men. This article takes up the question of body vs. body between gender and technique. Basing ourselves on studies focusing on the social relationships of the sexes as well as research focusing on material culture and the gender of objects, we ask how social practices and their components are deployed as functions of gendered corporeal processes, and in so doing we contribute to the construction of gendered realities and identities of persons. This article is based on four corpuses produced by inquiries that were carried out in the cities of Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Montpellier and Strasbourg: corpuses involving observations, images and interviews based on cyclists’ records that were commented on, the relation to bicycles on the part of male and female adults and male and female adolescents, practices concerning repairs, and certain feminist initiatives connected with cycling. We show that the bicycle-object sends us back to ambiguous usage, examples of which reveal and reinforce the gendered order, but in certain contexts may also call that order into question.

Keywords

• gender
• body
• bicycle
• material culture
• social relationships of the sexes