L’écologie ordinaire en quartiers populaires : une mise en regard des initiatives écologistes citoyennes dans trois quartiers classés en géographie prioritaire en France

Based on an ethnographic survey of three ecological initiatives in French poor neighborhoods, this thesis examines the social and territorial conditions of the anchoring of ecology in an impoverished urban context. It is in line with the critical work of post-materialist theory, which reduces ecology to a concern of the wealthy classes. It highlights the mobilizing potential of an ordinary ecology that involves the concrete and collective transformation of ways of living and inhabiting, and that moves away from both protest struggles and small individual actions. This ecology allows a re-articulation between ecology and social question through a re-appropriation of the daily life. Ordinary ecology is not a popular ecology: it does not only concern poor neighborhoods and does not mobilize exclusively popular classes. However ordinary ecology is subject to a specific framing in poor neighborhoods: the initiatives observed are shaped by public and militant action which in turn are framed by the category of poor neighborhood. The performative dimension of this category can be particularly grasped in the neighborhoods of large housing estates identified as priority neighborhood bu the French State. The multiple displacements operated by the initiatives to accommodate the frame or to shake it up allow us to reread the category of poor neighborhoods in the light of ecology and to contribute to redefining ecology from poor neighborhoods.