Sociologies (Oct 2008)
Souci du social et action publique sur mesure
Abstract
Commitment in the struggle against social problems has changed. Along with the individualisation and territorial decentralisation of the public treatment of social problems, the question of very local and intersubjective public action has come more and more into focus. But rather than immediately relegating the reasons for this tailor-made version of social action to a critique of the increasing influence of psychological methods in social relations, or on the other hand, seeing them simply in terms of the decline in institutions, this article analyses individualised social action as a public experience with its share of action and affective elements, of conviction and doubt, of resourcefulness and worry. And the notion which can contain and articulate this double movement inside commitment, from action to subjection, from difficult experiences which drive us to action to expectations which enable us to carry on, is that of care or concern. Starting from several examples of how social problems are formed, the article describes the double direction taken by the agent’s concern. On the one hand, concern for oneself is analysed as a public commitment in the sense that it is a job of self-orientation in an uncertain world, carried out by the agent re-assessing his own history of negative social experiences. On the other hand, concern held in common is seen as a “community of debt”, in other words as a collective movement of social action based not on property or standing held in common but by a shared affective stance.
