Contenu du sommaire : Mobilisations conservatrices

Conservative Mobilizations: How Dominant Groups Protest?
This article illustrates the importance to understand how the dominant groups in society protest. Having examined the reasons why the social movement theorists have been so few interested by conservative mobilizations, the authors suggest several ways to analyse dominant group's collective action, especially by using tools of social movement's theory but also by using conceptual frameworks of domination's theory, public policies analysis or elite's sociology.

The Right Between the Wars: Crowd Psychology, Organisational Science and Modern Advertising
Historians have often explained the absence of a broad right wing party in early twentieth century France as the result of its failure to confront the challenges of ‘modernity'. Similarly, they have interpreted the many attempts to re-organise it as failed attempts to modernise it. Rather than use an ahistorical concept of modernity, this article focuses on the multiple and contested meanings of modernity that the right-wing groups used in struggles among themselves and against the left. It shows that right-wing politicians belonging to different tendiencies drew upon similar ideas, notably crowd psychology, updated with the latest management and work science and the techniques of ‘modern advertising', but put them to very different uses. The article uses three case studies : the Centre de propagande des républicains nationaux, the Alliance démocratique, and the Croix de feu and Parti social français. It shows that the Alliance, usually dismissed as an anachronistic party of ‘notables', made the most effective use of the methods in question.

« “Our Lord first served”. An Ethnography of a Traditionalist Catholics Moral Crusade »Traditionalist activists of Civitas Institute are talked about but remain sociologically unknown. Where do they come from, why do they express their radical involvment in that organization? How are they attracted by a kind of commitment that may marginalize them from young adults' social groups? The participant observation survey introduced here describes the early enrolment of traditionalists in the blue thread of counter-revolutionary memory. Yet young activists' conformity to such a dictated role has a cost for Civitas. The traditionalist institute is strained under the wish to widen its audience beyond its historical breeding ground and its inability to compromise with the esoteric practices that specify and unify it.

Dorky, Hypocritical, and Frustrated? Activism in Catholic Families' Associations Confronted to CriticismIn this paper, I discuss the findings of a research project focusing on two Catholic families' associations, in both France and Portugal. I analyze the symbolic strategies developed by these organizations to challenge the common negative representations of conservative Catholics (reluctance to embrace modernity, hypocrisy, frustration, etc.). These negative representations can represent an obstacle for their claims to be heard, and can also hamper the recruitment of new members. The associations under study try to avoid these problems by developing a set of strategies, including the selection of their representatives, the way they formulate their demands or their chosen modes of operation. I argue that the analysis of these strategies is very helpful to understand forms of activism and the organisation of work within the associations.

An Indefensible Cause: the Mobilization of the French Appeal Court Attorneys against the Reform of their Monopoly on the Second Instance Juridictions. The mobilisation of French Appeal Court Attorneys followed the Attali and Darrois commissions in 2007, which were appointed to prepare the “modernisation” of the French legal institutions. This included proposals to cut their monopoly on the second instance jurisdictions, which would bring about the demise of their profession. In 2008, the Minister for Justice in the government of François Fillon announced a bill which endorsed this proposal, presenting it as “progressive” and in the interests of those subjected to legal proceedings. As for the previous laws targeting other ministerial officers, this bill did not excite a great deal of media and political attention. This is down to a certain political consensus between, on the one hand, left-wing parties which consider the access to this profession anti-democratic, due to its being very often inherited and conditioned by a system of limited numbers, and on the other hand, an entrepreneurial et economically liberal right-wing looking to open the market of legal cases to competition. The ministerial officers, however, have mobilised for almost two years in opposition to this bill. Their major claim is for the maintenance of their status of protectors separated from the more competitive spaces of the legal and judiciary services. Faced with a cause that seems to be ignored, this article aims to show the social and political conditions of the mobilisation initiated by the attorneys and to understand how the means of action used permitted, despite the ups and downs of the protest movement, to maintain the professional group and its mobilisation... at least until the Government's decision to phase out the profession.

Ordinary Political Attitudes of Extra-Ordinary People: Upper Class Vote in « Beaux quartiers » of Paris (2006-2008)This article aims to provide an understanding of the ordinary political relation of upper class citizens to politics in French democracy. This research is based on several surveys located in the 16th district of Paris, usually call the “beaux-quartiers”. This communication intends to analyses the level of political sophistication of the upper-class citizens and intends to study the social embedding of political attitudes of the French “bourgeoisie”.

The Vicissitudes of the “New” Chilean Right. The Building of a Partisan Institution (1967-2010)This paper analyzes the phases of the building of a partisan institution, taking the case-study of Chile's largest party in terms of both voters and seats: the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), active supporter of the military government. The study of this successful institution, through the socializations, trajectories and sociographic profile of its main leaders, reveals a double dynamic of institutionalization: the adjustment to a particular order of adapted and adaptable habitus, but also the emergence of mismatch/detachment processes occurring over time and resulting in generational and positional oppositions between different groups of actors : members of parliament, mayors, « new generations », or hard-core leaders who ardently supported Pinochet regime. We show that the party succeeded in converting itself into an institution thanks to its ability to maintain a subjective sense of belonging to a « We » (the initial partisan relationship assimilable to the Weberian « community »), concomitant to a logic of competition proper to « society ».

Be or Become a Victim? The Example of Irradiated People
The transition to collective action by people who are « victims » of accidental events seems, superficially, to be enigmatic. With regard to the collective mobilisation of irradiated people, the progression of the patients towards being recognised as being in the medical accident category has generally been a slow process. In contrast, recognising that those recently involved in accidents are « victims » has been considerably faster. The background of scandals affecting the health sector in recent years does not seem irrelevant to this. They seem to influence the behaviour of those who use the health system, as well as the lawyers who help them when conflict arises.

Struggle Temporalities. Event, Emergency and Rhythm Changes in the Case of a Local Mobilization for Palestine. Accelerations, break times, slowdowns... every mobilization goes through rhythm changes implying for people concerned new deployments and adjustments. Based on the case of a local protest movement against an Israelian army raid in Gaza, this article focus on these variations and their effects. The event sparks off indignation and feeling of an emergency to act, that make local activists immediately join themselves the struggle. The rapidity disrupts the « routine » time, activists habits and regular activities, weaken every kind of anticipation and affects the balance of power. A situation that allows new alliances or new ways of mobilization. Rhythmic break is also a symbolic break, provoking changes in perception. Consequently temporalities must be included in social movement analysis.