Contenu du sommaire : Travail social, partenariats et transactions sociales

Partnership-based transactions in social work: Unclear institutions
A research done in the beginning of the 2000's in France on two partnerships within social and professional insertion shows that tensions between the actors' logics create a local environment made of various uncertainties and build a semi-structured situation specific to social transactions. In both cases, a sort of institution of action marked by precariousness and uncertainty has emerged. Actors, visibly or officially or even in a more clandestinely way, have undertook balancing decisions to build a local “organization” that has brought them together. The social transactions that have emerged from it, lacked long-term ensuring and domination of the legitimate power that make the strength of the institution. But they have developed themselves because they have allowed some leeway to the actors to compromise.

Cooperations, new transactions in social work?
Partnership, the main reference in the social field between the 1980's and the 2000's, is since in competition with another way of working together: cooperation. The latter, has first developed itself in public policies and becomes more and more accepted in organizations and professional practices. The development of the cooperation is structured in three distinct levels and needs the elaboration of transactions which allows to combine competition and confidence, while avoiding conflict.

Social engineers in transactions in changing contexts: narratives of events and narratives of quests
Social engineers, most often, are located in the functions of “Developer” executive and “project manager” for local authorities or social institutions. The study relates to forms of professionalization of social engineering involved in logic coaching and management of the teams of social workers. Analysis of a narrative of events, collected from an in charge of special duties, shows a transactional imposition and ownership, as part of a reorganization of departmental social services (France), mobilizing partnerships and collaborations. Fragments of speech, analyzed according to a structural method, show apparent elements of the social transaction, testifying from the complexity of the issues to both policies and managerial which confronts an agent placed in intermediation functions. The successive adjustments between actors open possible agreements on shared solutions and “transactional products” to stabilize the disagreements. The “narrative of quest” of the social engineer expresses here the purpose of the debate increasing awareness in a participatory framework, to overcome the conflict.

Social work, partnership and social transactions: Main actors and levers of social development and means of training linked to social workersAfter recalling the founding precepts (national solidarity, acting-citizen, mobilizing environment, solidarity integrated to public policies, approach adapted to region), and the key-actors of social development (user, his environment, local partners, elected representatives, social workers), the author points out the needs of new training for social workers then shows the corresponding evolutions that he recommends for the training courses.

The development of a double Diploma combining the State “Diploma in Social Intervention” and the Master's Degree “The Construction and Management of Projects within the Social Economy”A fruitful partnership is currently being developed between the University of Haute- Alsace (Mulhouse, France) and the social work training centres of Strasbourg and Mulhouse. The aim is to prepare a double diploma combining a university Master's Degree in “The construction and management of projects within the social economy” with a professional State Diploma in “Social intervention” as delivered by the State. This partnership is taking shape within the context of an identity crisis of social workers with reference to major uncertainties regarding their role in new policies particularly concerning social and urban development in recent policies such as Social and Urban Development. Through a reflexive process of participation and observation, the authors provide evidence both of the tensions produced by this partnership among students, between academic and social work trainers, also with their local partners. The resolution of these tensions goes through a transactional process culminating in acceptable compromises and synergies. The conclusion suggests an enlarged field for this double diploma, aiming at new territories (rural areas) and at a wider international scope and relevance.

The social workers' capacity to act
Empowerment is often approached from the perspective of beneficiaries, conversely this article addresses that question through the lenses of social workers. Examining different cases drawn from investigations on employment integration practices (Zwick Monney, 2015) and assistance to the homeless (Grimard, 2011, 2016), the aim is to highlight how professionals, when facing situations that seem without solutions, develop capacities and strategies based on various forms of social transactions. Professionals are indeed facing an ongoing process of arrangements, adjustments, research compromises, which reveal themselves through the form of life stories, as well as through mobilization of personal resources. These different capacities to act are now decisive in social intervention, the question of their development is hence addressed.

The exploratory walks of Women. When a system with participative aim reinforces the power to act of professionals of social actionWhen the French government starts in 2013, the experiment of exploratory walks of women in 12 towns, the objective is double: promote the citizen participation of women in priority areas and help them to reinvest the public space. This article questions the impact of this system with the public which it is addressed to and to the professionals of social action who have work on it in the areas. If participation is the main objective, a triple injunction occurs on the women: participation, autonomy and emancipation. Moreover, this system reinforces the power to act of professionals who have been trained to this methodology of exploratory walks, increasing their legitimacy and their base on the territory.

The Medical Social Worker, between the Institution and Parents
This article examines the results of a socio-anthropological investigation of the job of medical social worker in a prenatal consultation centre. Considering the concept of parenthood, the interviews and observations were meant to study interactions within the Belgian Office de la Naissance et de l'Enfance [Birth and Childhood Service] (ONE). The analysis resorts to the concepts of biopolitics, social control and social transaction to enlighten the objectives of the ONE institution, and to get a better understanding of the different ways in which medical social workers manage to deal with social parenthood norms in their clinical work.

Tutoring as tool for adapting oneself in a changing context: a relevant field of observation in the transactionIf the concept of social transaction is relevant to various fields of sociology, we highlight its heuristic value in action research on “mentoring” in different sectors, including the youth sector, disability and housing for adults in social trouble. We questioned our field research taking this concept as an analyzer of the social reality that puts forward tension relating to the transmission of knowledge in changing professional contexts.

The Energy transitions and relationship with nature. Are the Alsatian citizen cooperatives an alternative to the market?The paper analyses the energy transition in Alsace (France) and, more precisely, the possibilities of the re-appropriation of energy issues by a large number of actors and ordinary people. We present a field survey conducted to cover the introduction of energy transition in two contrasting ways of governance. In terms of results, we note that the users have few possibilities to appropriate the energetic technologies due to the professionalization of participatory processes.

Can victims speak? Two paradoxes at the citizen-victim era
Through the analysis of an empirical research in contemporary Spain on the victim figure, this article seeks to interrogate the effects of its expansion and of its growing competition with the figure that remains central: the citizen. Citizen and victim are antithetical figures, but, in our hypothesis, today they work closely bounded, even merged in a new figure of complex treatment – the citizen-victim –, active and passive, claimer and silent... The citizen-victim is not the one, neither the other, but in our current era, the citizen-victim is the one – citizen – because it is the other – victim. Several paradoxes emerge with the citizen-victim, particularly two that we will analyze in this text: word and action. Without pretending to untie those paradoxes, our aim is nevertheless to interrogate the theoretical and practical difficulties that social sciences find when examining the forms, in some aspect strange, of word and action developed by the citizen-victim.