Academic spaces and citizen researchers
Despite the fact that academics like to research all kinds of social spaces, there are hardly any studies of the social spaces where research is done. But every now and then we get glimpses, like this story about Parisian academics being “banished to the banlieues”:
The three institutions that are being turned out of their ancestral homes in the “Latin quarter” are the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (MSH) … It was less the anticipated space deficit than the choice of location which raised the heckles of those affected. Aubervilliers, which backs onto the railway line connecting Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport was centre stage of the riots. Here, the oppositional camp protest, there’s not a tree in sight let alone a library and everything that made research in the Quartier Latin so pleasant is completely absent from the infrastructure, Brasserie Lipp and cafe Deux Magots for example. Naturally restaurants and cafes do not feature publicly in the arguments of the critics. Instead they point to the unique tradition of their institutions, where educational functions were open to everyone to attend, pensioners, school kids, housewives, and particularly clochards in the winter. None of these people would dream of boarding the train to Aubervilliers because it was getting chilly on the Boulevard Saint-Michel or a new Heidegger interpretation was shaking the Ecole Pratique. The kerfuffle over location has long since morphed into a dispute about the very nature of the social sciences. Had not life in the modish VI and VII arrondissements long since alienated them from social reality. Would it not do the sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists and historians a power of good to work in the problem zones of suburban Paris, where cars still burn at night. In Le Monde over a dozen professors protested against their uprooting. The vice mayors of Aubervilliers replied in an open letter officially welcoming the “citizen researchers,” with a sophisticated appeal to their social consciences. In Aubervilliers the social and human sciences would not be neighbouring with boutiques and cafes but with the “Place du front populaire”. The resistance to the move won’t hear any of it. Their protest article in Le Monde was titled “The human sciences are under threat”. And it voices the suspicion the “public powers” would shed few tears if scientific disciplines with more opponents than advocates of government policy among their ranks were shunted out of the centre of the city and off to the margins … But one thought springs to mind when considering the suggestion that the social scientists should hurry up and become “banlieusards” if they are to understand what they are talking about. For they would be carrying out their research in the centre of social tension which Sarkozy as the former minister of the interior once wanted cleansed with a kärcher. Now the social sciences are expected to effect a similar cleaning act. It’s a long time since so much was asked of them – or so much faith invested in them.
Shame Le Monde charges for access to their archives! (via)
- Anne