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Pour une sociologie des marges. Savoirs, engagements, méthodes

Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Cynthia Colmellere

Naviguer dans les marges disciplinaires : l’interdisciplinarité et le conflit d’expertises dans les études des violences de genre

Stéphanie Pache
This article analyzes the place of feminist sociology in the field of violence studies. It describes the hierarchical relationships between the disciplines involved in this field and examines their effects on feminist scientific production. I describe the study that prompted these analyses, noting the problems that arose while conducting it, and the situation of the field and the marginal status of sociology within it. In the first part of the analysis, the status of sociology and psychology in the Quebec and North American context is discussed. The effects of sociology’s marginal status are then illustrated and discussed in their institutional and cultural dimensions.

Marginalisation de l’étude des processus coloniaux en France : symptôme d’un déni de colonialité ?

Clara Denis-Woelffel
This article examines the marginalization of theoretical approaches to the study of colonialism in France. To do so, it revisits a range of controversies emerging from the French political sphere since 2020, focusing in particular on the accusations directed at scholars and approaches analyzing colonial processes in Palestine after 2023. It then interrogates the nature of these controversies in light of postcolonial, decolonial, and settler colonial studies frameworks. A more in-depth analysis of the application of settler colonial studies to Palestine—a case that appears to crystallize resistance to acknowledging the theoretical contributions of approaches analyzing colonialism—leads us to establish a connection between such resistance and the permeability of Zionist and European colonial models. This article thus demonstrates that the marginalization of the study of colonial processes in France does not stem from a conceptual deficit, but rather from a French denial of coloniality that hinders the recognition of the enduring structures and contemporary effects of colonialism.

Construire des affects communs face à la catastrophe : d’une démarche de recherche et de création en art et en anthropologie

Sandrine Teixido
This article aims to examine what characterizes a dual practice of research and creation in art and anthropology. To do so, I return to the A Tale as a Tool project, the creation of visual works, and the use of narratives to show how this approach seeks to create interpretive communities with a view to building desirable futures. Analysis of this approach shows that issues centered on the perception of disasters involve mobilizing and alternating practices drawn from anthropology, art, and literature. While this approach lies on the margins of disciplinary divisions, I have chosen to show how it can offer the possibility of productively occupying the margins between disciplines in order to build common affects with citizens mobilized in research.

Les marges de l’attendu. Tensions dans la co-construction des savoirs

Mathilde Kiening and Marianne Blidon
This co-authored article examines the margins of the expected in knowledge production, drawing on a qualitative study based on interviews and discussion groups conducted as part of a European research project. It explores the tensions between institutional norms, academic expectations, and situated experiences. The expected operates both as a center and as a norm, structuring the frameworks of knowledge production while simultaneously generating dynamics of circumvention and redefinition. Grounded in feminist and queer epistemologies, this article analyzes how academic norms shape research, how the research process itself can unsettle these established frameworks, and how interactions between researchers and participants generate new forms of knowledge. In doing so, it questions the dynamics of recognition and legitimacy of experiences that exist on the margins of dominant norms.

Écrire une thèse en prison. Méthodes de l’enquête et réflexivité de recherche en situation empêchée

Ainhoa Ozaeta Mendicute
If ethnologists, anthropologists, and sociologists regularly reflect on their qualitative research practices, few studies at the intersection of sociology and economics account for the “behind-the-scenes” processes involved in the production of knowledge. Furthermore, although the social sciences have examined how relationships with so-called sensitive fields are constructed, few studies explicitly conducted in prison settings have been documented. This article will therefore analyze the methods of a “constrained” research project carried out in detention over two years, focusing on women working without pay to provide family care within households in the Basque Country.

La pratique du dessin auprès de femmes trans’ détenues : une méthode marginalisée pour un public marginalisé

Ludine Cayla
This article discusses the drawing workshops conducted in 2019 as part of my doctoral thesis with incarcerated transgender women in the “specific unit” of a French men’s prison. These workshops provide valuable insights into the incarceration experience of these transgender women and their interpersonal relationships within the specific unit where they are separated from other incarcerated people, leading both to stigmatization and to the construction of a form of “trans community” life. More broadly, this article emphasizes the importance of arts-based methods in sociology—methods that are often marginalized, leading to the marginalization of certain groups.

Pratiques de care en solidarité avec les personnes exilées à la frontière franco-britannique : résister aux nécropolitiques migratoires en contexte postcolonial

Flora Malverde
This article explores the concepts of subsistence care and resistance care, developed through research conducted with associations supporting exiled people in Calais. Their practices are understood as forms of subsistence care and resistance against necropolitics targeting the material conditions of existence of exiled people, particularly through the “zero settlement point” policy. The work carried out by volunteers, whose workforce is largely feminized, is analyzed through the lens of marxist feminism and social reproduction theory insofar as it aims to sustain the subsistence of exiled bodies. Nevertheless, these solidarity practices are marked by tensions, as associations are compelled to reproduce humanitarian neocolonial logics while simultaneously seeking to challenge the racist and securitarian structures of the European migration regime.

Entre action et recherche, les marges au pluriel : une démarche auprès des jeunes Autochtones en Guyane française

Julien Joanny
This article is based on the work of La Critic, an association working at the crossroads of socio-anthropology, popular education and social intervention. The aim is to describe a research-action project underway with young indigenous people (Teko, Wayana, Wayãpi) in isolated areas of French Guiana. This case study examines the concept of margin at several levels. The young people in question live in a specific territorial context marked by isolation. Prey to a whole range of cultural, social, political and geographical problems, these young people have complex backgrounds and are certainly vulnerable. Implementing action research in this context raises a number of questions concerning both the relationship with the field and the knowledge production process.

Élargir l’espace des marges petit à petit : l’exemple d’une recherche-action féministe et participative en contexte autochtone

Véronica Gomes
This article offers a reflection on collaborative and feminist research in an Indigenous context, as graduate students. It draws on lived experience, reflections, and the stages of my learning process as a researcher: how to use all available resources to push the boundaries and margins of what is possible, the obstacles and contradictions encountered, as well as the solutions proposed. This article addresses my learning and my way of navigating the university system and producing knowledge in accordance with Indigenous research ethics and principles through a feminist action-research approach that utilizes photovoice. It demonstrates that working on the margins requires time and innovative strategies to conduct research differently.

« Tu nous as à nouveau invisibilisées ». Retour sur une expérimentation audiovisuelle pour enquêter sur les violences à l’encontre des lesbiennes dans les transports en commun

Manon Marguerit
Visibles is a documentary on lesbophobic violence in the transport co-directed in 2022 by the author. In this article, she discusses how the documentary is an experimental attempt to give a voice to lesbians. Thus it proposes an answer to Spivak’s question “Can the subalterns speak? She reports on the preparatory phase of the survey and the shooting and the montage, to show that they are moments of negotiation between the participants and the directors to find their (right) place in the documentary. This reflexivity must be pursued during projections, so that the director may accompany the viewing without taking the place of the participants.

Artifices de l’auto-ethnographie

Pierre de Thier
As part of research into body modifications, this article offers a reflection on the shared experience between participants and the researcher. I explore the ways in which auto-ethnography relies on a device that dissolves the dualism between the researcher’s I and their subjects. I then analyse how the I is broken down and reassembled through affective semiosis of my fieldwork. Next, I will show how disgust places me in a situation of double marginality. This position allows for the development of an uncomfortable stance that questions the ontological basis on which the I is said to constitute the we. I conclude by reiterating the need to look beyond the artificial nature of auto-ethnography in favour of analysing the constitution of multiple I, we and others.

Se sentir légitime ? La place des émotions dans la recherche sur la contestation

Mélissa Blais and Anne-Marie Veillette
Although much research has explored the role of emotions in the social sciences, particularly in the context of social protest, few studies have examined the emotional dynamics of belonging and legitimacy among “insider” and “outsider” researchers during fieldwork. These emotions, however, are crucial for understanding how researchers position themselves in relation to their research. This article draws on four focus groups with 18 French-speaking researchers to explore the role of belonging and legitimacy, as well as the impact of fear and anger on their self-perception as insiders or outsiders.

Entre le personnel et le collectif : contributions de la théorie du positionnement situé à l’étude des grossesses et des accouchements non assistés

Audrey Bujold, Pierre Pariseau-Legault and Christine Gervais
This article examines the dominance of biomedical and postpositivist perspectives in perinatal care, highlighting their effects on the medicalization of childbirth and the marginalization of the social, emotional, and experiential dimensions of care. Rather than presenting the empirical findings of a doctoral study, it aims to document a reflection on the relevance of mobilizing standpoint theory for the study of a minoritized group in nursing science. The article thus outlines the contours of this approach, presenting its epistemological and methodological foundations, its key concepts, and their implications. Through the figure of the outsider within, it shows how the experience of motherhood constitutes an epistemic resource that makes it possible to reconcile situated engagement with scientific rigor.