Enquêter et expérimenter aux bords du social

This HDR thesis presents itself as a commitment to follow experiences and experiments on the edges of the social. The term commitment first refers to the political scope of sociological practice. It is a question of claiming the inclusion in a policy of knowledge which, first, is built by being taken and resuming the questions and investigations carried out by «ordinary» actors. Second, consider that the production of knowledge is at the same time an action in the world and that it can have effects. Thirdly, research practice is itself an ordinary practice, taken in a daily life and contingencies that must be restored.Following is part of the logic of the ignorant master (Rancière): it is not a question of leading from a point that would be the "knowledge" and guiding the ignorant (student or layman) towards this point, but rather supposes to take together the same path towards knowledge by mobilizing the knowledge of each. Experiences and experiments refer to how Dewey defines them in close articulation to each other. Experience in this context refers not simply to having an experience, to living something in the ordinary continuity of life, but to «making an experience» that is, to grasp experience as the starting point of an investigation to extract meanings for the future. In this sense, it is about emphasizing the active and transformative dimension of experience. Thus experience is profoundly experimental in that it allows us to reshape our way of experiencing and understanding the world. Experimentation then becomes the means to jointly train and transform individuals and the world. The pedagogical and democratic conception of experimentation and investigation advocated by Dewey and his contemporary proofreaders corresponds to the approaches I have developed. I wanted in this work not to dissociate the research activities and the associated environments: the fields and questions that I have invested in my research have led me to develop projects and pedagogical approaches that have allowed me in turn to open new fields and problems with various partners to whom I have associated students and alumni students. Four network diagrams reflect my attachments. As for the edges of the social: The edge of politics is for Rancière the place where emerges what is not counted by politics. It is the rest, where improper identities are manifested and processes of political subjectivation take place. The policy whose edges I explore is that of the social question: inequalities and the fight against them. I enter through actors who are not always social workers in title and by issues that are at the borders and where the meaning of social intervention is redefined (Lechaux, 2022): Local development agents to integration, the fight against discrimination, community action; or spaces where social work is done in other forms (artistic practices, health, participation of inhabitants, social and solidarity economy). I try to understand how these practices try to make other voices heard and reconfigure the sharing of places.The first volume, entitled Cheminements, grands voies et chemins de traverses (Tracks, main tracks and sleeper roads), presents and revisits the research experiments and other associated activities conducted since the thesis. The sequence of the six chapters of Volume 1 is chronological, constituting a kind of reflexive activity report: are presented the circumstances that led me to work on each question, the forms of research developed, engaged collaborations and finally some of the essential analyses produced, detailing rather what has not or little been published. The modalities of writing engaged in the various researches are the subject of a complementary analysis presented in three stages «Investigate and Write together».The first part, «initiate plural forms of cooperation and intervention» is interested in the accompaniment of a device of local development agent to the integration and shows how it allowed to develop forms of recognition (Honneth). It reports on the reflections initiated with European colleagues on the «enforceable» nature of research. The more educational projects developed around community action are presented by identifying inter-cultural and empowerment issues that arise. The second part «Knowledge policy: engagement in collaborative research-actions» details two collaborative research-actions (on the participation of beneficiaries in the RSA system and on the patrimonialization of intercultural practices) by examining in particular the tests of mutuality and truthfulness encountered in these collaborations (Callon, Audoux, Gillet). Finally, it presents the comparative research conducted on local social policies, and in particular the survey I conducted with professionals working in child protection. It thus explores the translation of the demand and the recourse to the law in this field and questions the way in which the sociologist’s survey is reacquired of the data already produced for the action.The different forms of investigation that I have conducted lie between anthropological approaches in which the experience of the encounter with the Other is central and produces effects (of knowledge and interconnaissance) and social investigations that have a more operational purpose. Zask identifies how the social survey constitutes for Dewey an inter-objectivation, referring precisely to the way it operates in anthropology: “A survey does not record in a neutral and detached way the real, nor does it unfold in the nostalgia of not being able to do so; it creates reality, social reality, new situations, social relations are replayed, at least in part” (2004, p. 10). The review of the work carried out since my thesis is thus a perspective of the investigation as an activity experimented with others according to a principle of reciprocity. I am involved in particularly rich problematization sites where actors experiment with new ways of intervening in the social. Research plays an interlocutory role to explain what is at work and jointly contribute to making it happen. Experimental research (Pascal Nicolas-Le-Strat) works at the crossroads of knowledge and experience involved in the situation. Joint experimentation thus establishes a democratic space for expression and elaboration of common questions.The democratic scope of these forms of investigation and experimentation is not, of course, due only to their methods of implementation but also to what they intend to take in common (the recognition of minorities, access to rights, the power to act and create). According to Esposito, the community is a burden shared by those affected. In contrast to a sociology that should be wary of «common sense», it is therefore a question of making a sociology that takes its part in the development of a policy of the common in a context of crises that calls to contribute to a better bifurcation of the trajectory of humanity (Dardot, Laval).The rereading of my work in the first volume, entitled Tracks, main tracks and sleeper roads, shows how I am gradually moving towards a form of sociology that claims, through research, to experiment at the edges of the social. The second volume, Passerelles, cordes et ancrages (Walkways, ropes and anchors), continues this reflection on a more epistemological level: methodological, theoretical and also political. This second volume is thus envisaged as a gateway, that is to say a means of going from the experiences I have made to those I propose to continue to develop for myself and with and for others; from the experiences already conducted, (Research and evaluation of the Experimentation Territory Zero unemployed of Long Term). In a first part, two «shared survey approaches» with students and professionals are examined: Exploring networks and Thinking by case. In the second part, «Experimentations, social innovation and participation», perspectives of comparative analysis are proposed around the forms and stakes of participation. The final chapter examines how to develop gaps between research and training, intervention and social inquiry, the academic universe and other worlds.Network analysis and case studies are examined both as approaches developed by the sociologist and as approaches found in social intervention. These two approaches are also ways of reporting: through storytelling and mapping. The case and the network are also related, in that the case study leads to explore the networks. I thus show how there is in the passage and articulation of the case to the network something of the order of the «rise in generality» but this one does not operate as much vertically as horizontally. The relationship between local site and global environment is not postulated as a determination of the second on the first, it is explained in the survey (Costey, Gardella). I propose to speak instead of an extension in intelligibility.The reflection on the operations of thinking by case is conducted from the comparison of two cases: one from my thesis on Turkish migration, the other from the survey carried out in child protection. The case, and in particular the problematic case (Passeron, Revel) or outlier case (Ragin, Becker) makes it possible to think about situations that go beyond the available categories and resist pre-existing solutions and frameworks for action and analysis. What the case is a case is first of all an enigma and this one imposes to enter into a narrative of the case. The cases therefore appear as deadlines that necessarily open to ethical and political questions (Boarini, Hennion, Vidal-Naquet). The exploration of networks (Hannerz), but also of the way they are built and represented by the actors themselves, is made from the field realized at Teil in Ardèche as part of the experimentation Territory Zero Long-term Unemployed. It is a question of paying attention to the part that each one takes in the action, to the possibilities of recompositions of

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