Le pouvoir d’agir dans les centres sociaux : un nouveau rapport au politique ? Etude à partir de l’expérimentation des « tables de quartier »

A century-old network bringing together more than 1,200 structures across France, the Fédération des Centres Sociaux et Socioculturels de France has been implementing a federal project since 2014, with the development of residents’ power to act as its leitmotif. This thesis explores how this reference to the power to act modifies the social centers’ relationship to politics. We will draw on work on the concept of politicization to develop a pragmatic approach to politics, combining the sociology of socio-cultural activities with the ethnography of interactions. The survey covers the history of the FCSF, the implementation of this federal project and the experimentation of a dynamic dedicated to the development of the power to act: neighborhood tables. It highlights the network’s structural tension between social policy operators and local initiative centers. By proposing to draw on the resources, desires and anger of residents of working-class neighborhoods, the reference to the power to act shatters the classic reference points of the animation sector. It questions and transforms certain professional postures of the FCSF, its relationship to commitment and citizenship, and its relations with public institutions. These processes lead to contradictory practices at the political level, which can refer as much to radical models as to neoliberal models of empowerment.