PROFET

While the majority of social science studies on the State focus on its employees and institutions, or the way it works, our project stands apart from these approaches by focusing attention on the people subject to this administration. It looks at the concrete terms in which governed populations perceive and face State power. In a context where the intervention of public power is increasingly questioned, PROFET offers an ambitious and multidisciplinary study of ordinary relationships to the State in France. PROFET focuses on representations and practices that may not necessarily be political but nonetheless reveals a certain relationship to public institutions. The governed are faced with State power in a variety of practices ranging from paying taxes or putting their children through school to going to court or acting to defend their safety. The original nature of the project lies in its crosscutting approach to the State, examining different institutions head-on as a range of modes on which the same social relationship operates. The project deals with the different ways people are faced with the State, combining quantitative and qualitative methods and using different scales of observation. The first key issue is devising and analysing an unprecedented questionnaire administered to a representative panel of the French population and devoted to the different ways in which an individual can face State power. The second section of the project includes four ethnographic studies in urban and rural fields focusing on the relationship to tax, to school, to the police force, and to the law, as well a cross-cutting study looking at the relationship street-level bureaucrats have to the State. This project brings together specialists from different disciplines (sociology, political science, law, history, and educational science) and is organised around three themes of reflection. - The first theme focuses on socialisation to the State. Ordinary relationships to State institutions will be broached as a variety of modes of inclusion in society, considering both situations of interaction and forms of influence at a distance. - The second theme relates to inequalities in access to public services. This question addresses the objective and perceived inequalities deriving from differences in social position and means, or geographical disparities, among other factors. - The third theme looks at the different strategies used by governed populations in their dealings with the State, whether through collective mobilisation or individual reactions. If we consider the application of the law as an arena in which conflicting interpretations and power relations come into play, we can bring to light widely varying types of behaviour and strategies ranging from consent to resistance. This research programme aims to renew studies on the State and to build a new research space that can fit into partnerships with other European countries. Our anticipated results will therefore provide scientific knowledge, but our project also aims to improve the knowledge of decision-makers and to find a wider audience by contributing to contemporary debates.