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“On the edge of industrial work, free parties.

Socio-filmic reflection on a temporary deviance. "

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This thesis, composed of a text and a film, was translated and presented in English and French in front of a Franco-American jury at the University of Evry Val d'Essonne. This work unanimously obtained the congratulations of the jury on June 3, 2014.

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Composition of the jury:

Douglas Harper, Professor at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (USA)

Bruno Péquignot, Professor at Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 University, rapporteur

Florent Gaudez, Professor at the University of Grenoble II UPMF, rapporteur

Stéphanie Genty, Lecturer at the University of Evry Val d'Essonne

Stéphane Bouquin, professor at the University of Val d'Essonne, president of the jury

Joyce Durand-Sebag, professor emeritus at the University of Évry val d'Essonne, thesis director.

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summary

 

When they appeared in the 1990s in areas abandoned by production, free parties, a new form of industrial counter-culture, brought together young people from all backgrounds and crossed borders, from England to France and then further afield. in Europe.

In the city of Le Havre, in which I was specifically interested, there are particular resonances, both in form and in substance, between the working-class and industrial world and these clandestine festivals, organized in total autonomy. It is in front of the walls of one of these festivals that I will meet Miloo, who will become the central figure of this socio-filmic thesis: that of young people, sons and daughters of workers, living in rural areas or peri-urban, which for a time found their place in this marginal universe, sometimes filling a gap in an existence marked by forms of zonard wandering.

But if this unifying youthful phenomenon reflects a certain social mix, this temporary experience does not supplant, during the passage to adulthood, the classic socio-professional divisions of inequality. Then emerges a problematic tension in the face of the question of work, where the desire to fulfill itself comes up against multiple social obstacles. Faced with this tension, in the film Cadences produced for this thesis, Miloo's trajectory raises the question of the shift between marginality and delinquency.

  

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Research that tends to explore the porosity of disciplinary boundaries

 

 

This research work is part of a reflexive process that puts in tension film production and the elaboration of a text from the same field survey. The thesis combines a text and a film and is an extension of the reflection led by the group of Visual and Film Sociology created by Joyce Sebag in 2008.

It is therefore an original approach, within the framework of a thesis, since it takes the form of two distinct and inseparable productions, a documentary and a written one.

The film is not an illustration of the written word, the written word not itself being an explanation of the film. These two objects were built jointly in a form of dialogue and constant complementarity.

In writing, in-depth fieldwork takes shape in the free-party world where I met Miloo, who later became the central figure of the film. This choice was made on the basis of the study of a group made up of about thirty individuals forming my panel of respondents. The making of the film is the result of several years of work and of a meeting which has proved to be relevant and revealing with regard to the thesis in question. It is also because there was an adhesion of the character to the project and a specific work, over a long time with Miloo, as well as with his father, Philippe, that the shooting was able to take place in the conditions which are developed in writing.

Indeed, throughout the writing, beyond the strictly sociological work specific to the exercise of the thesis, a thought develops around the film aimed at clarifying the process which led to its final form (in this sense , I would advise to watch the movie and then read the text). From the first works of writing the film file to the sound editing (last stage of the production), we see how the film has transformed according to theoretical and empirical advances, but also according to the changes that have occurred in life. of the protagonist. The film is a process of accompanying the character over a long period of time. New sociological considerations have developed from the unforeseen bifurcations of my work, shedding new light on the sociological subject, as well as the filmic narration.

Still at the experimental stage, this new form of reflexive action and the restitution of a thought on the social world is thus questioned and explained in the written work, in constant correlation with field data, bibliographic contributions, and , finally, with the defended thesis.

I would add, in this sense, that what has brought me to this project from the start is a desire to create bridges between the collective dimension of social history and singular stories through socio-filmic work. Thus, by drawing on the richness of cinematographic art and the richness of sociological thought, this work deals both with the singularity of individual trajectories and the persistence of social class determinisms.

 

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