Contenu du sommaire : Politiques de la nuit

We publish the translation of Murray Melbin's article, social science professor at Boston University. This article was published in 1978 in the American Sociological Review . Here is the original summary. While the settlement of some of the world's land areas was coming to an end, there began an increase in wakeful activity over more of the 24-hour day. This trend of expansion in time is continuing, especially in urban areas. The hypothesis that night has become the new frontier is supported by the premise that time, like space, can be occupied and is treated so by humans. A set of evidence, including results of several field experiments, show that nighttime social life in urban areas resembles social life on former land frontiers. The research data refers mainly to contemporary Boston and to the U.S. West a century ago.

Based on the case of luxury hotel concierges, this paper addresses the question of how to make night work an object for the sociology of professional groups without producing an essentialist or relativist categorization of what “night time” is. To make this argument, I assemble different temporalities observed at different scales of analysis. Firstly, the micro-sociological scale of day-to-day tasks is analyzed with the tools of the sociology of work. Secondly, the scale of career paths is seen from the perspective of the sociology of employment. Finally, the broader scale of the professional group is looked at from the viewpoint of the sociology of collective mobilizations. These three scales of observation all show that the marginality of night concierges actually outlines the hidden face of the entire group. Their inclusion in the analysis, which obliges the sociologist to widen his scope of inquiry and to acquire somewhat of a night vision, is therefore vital.

Drawing on a long ethnographic study in Dakar among young women who regularly frequent bars and nightclubs, this article argues for the need to consider the urban night as a time-space that can give rise to a feeling that “anything is possible”. The city at night can then be seen primarily as a place for social reconfigurations and cultural experiments. On this empirical basis, a more theoretical issue is addressed: what could be the heuristic nature of the concept of “potential space” (D. W. Winnicott) for the study of urban night? To advance these hypotheses, the question of creativity is regarded as a key issue both in Winnicott's conceptualization of the “potential space” and concerning the way the young women I met engage with “Dakar by night”.

Venues for new music styles, some clubs and DJ bars in St.-Petersburg take form as places for gathering for certain milieus. To secure and retain the loyalty of regular patrons, and by extension to ensure the sustainability of the establishment, clubs tenders implement different mechanisms of social homogenization to keep out random or unwelcome visitors. Common techniques include face control, being in hidden locations, the limited diffusion of information, the specificity of music and ambiance, and carelessness for universal standards of service and welcoming. Though they don't fully constitute exclusive communities, these venues explicitly value an extended social grouping and a sense of secure domesticity which facilitates spontaneous and informal interactions between strangers. From a relative anonymity to a familiarity between “close relations,” a whole range of intermediary situations become possible, thus enabling the emergence of rather new forms of sociability in a post-soviet metropolis.

Since the first confrontation between “night owls” and police forces in 2004, recreational and nocturnal customs in Rennes' city-center came to be governed by both the prefecture and the city council through rules and disciplinary measures. Parallel to this disciplinary form of government, another one, based on security dispositifs, has also emerged. The latter was initiated by the city council but delegated to a variety of auxiliaries, ranging from medical and social workers to cultural agents and shopkeepers as well as young volunteers. Security dispositifs are based on the “sanitization” and cultural competitiveness of customs in designated recreational spaces. If the effectiveness of such dispositifs or devices is dependent on the willingness of night owls to abide voluntarily, in comparison to discipline and rules, they tend to be characterized by a much higher degree of social acceptability. The City is able to guarantee its position as a governmental authority through this second form of government.

This article aims to show the major transformation of a social space linked to the left hand of the state. If the repression of homelessness at the turn of the twenty-first century was analogous to a street cleaning, while enforcing bodily constraints and confinement in rudimentary emergency shelters, the 2000s can instead be characterized by the humanization of homeless policies. Ruling elites and associative leaders thought of and introduced humanitarian aid for the homeless as a very legitimate lever to initiate the accountability process of “the one who has been helped enough to be able to get by on his own.” By obscuring processes of precariousness and marginalization, nighttime social worker teams participate in a global process of the subjectivation of reintegration. Going to people at night is the greatest expression of this public love which signifies above all the redefinition of emergency action with the supernumerary. The initiation of such a relationship leads to the individualization of a life path which is in fact a testimony of long-term hardship. In the long run, homeless people experience peripheral inclusion without any real way out.

This article seeks to grasp the evolution of French border management policies over a half century (1953-2004) from the vantage point of one specific activity performed by border police (PAF): the collection and use of information from border checks. This form of knowledge production represents a privileged object of analysis by which to observe the professional developments of this police department. The PAF was first an intelligence police department and then a police service dedicated to immigration control in the 1970s, before finally becoming a department in charge of the fight against migration-related crime from the 1990s. Since the 2000s, the PAF now cooperates with the European agency Frontex. In turn, the definition of administrative categories and analytical tools used by the PAF have equally followed such institutional transformations towards the criminalization of immigration and the Europeanisation of border control.

This issue's “Perspectives on the In-Between” is dedicated to the Chilean artist and writer Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015), notably known for his performances and his columns. It includes an interview with Chilean sociologist Fernanda Carvajal, who has consecrated much of her academic career to the study of Lemebel's work, and excerpts from Lemebel's oeuvres translated into French.

This issue's “Perspectives on the In-Between” is dedicated to the Chilean artist and writer Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015), notably known for his performances and his columns. It includes an interview with Chilean sociologist Fernanda Carvajal, who has consecrated much of her academic career to the study of Lemebel's work, and excerpts from Lemebel's oeuvres translated into French.