Streetology

Streetology reminds us that cities are not only shaped by planners, institutions or infrastructures, but also by the ordinary cultural practices through which people inhabit places and give them meaning. Ulysse Rabaté offers a rich and deeply original account of the political life of popular culture, showing how neighbourhoods are continuously made and remade through everyday experience. A remarkable contribution that geographers, urban scholars and anyone interested in contemporary cities will read with great interest.

Martine Drozdz, urban and cultural geographer and CNRS senior researcher, Maison Française d’Oxford

From his inquiries and personal involvement in everyday life in working-class neighbourhoods, Ulysse Rabaté establishes a new field of study: “Streetology”. Its purpose is to describe “street culture” as a framework of attitudes, discourses, knowledge and skills directly linked to the experience of discrimination. His groundbreaking analysis of self-organized demonstrations, riots, active resistance, artistic production and local events accounts for the logics of politicization proper to a form of life in which violence is ever-present and turns opposition to the norms of “others” as a vehicle for inner solidarity.

Albert Ogien, sociologist and director of research at the CNRS

Introduction: Thinking about working-class neighbourhoods: a French path worth discussing
Chapter 1: Moments of denial
Chapter 2: What can the social sciences do?
Chapter 3: Illusion of the disappearance of politics
Chapter 4: A culture of working-class neighbourhoods?
Chapter 5: Images of Streetology
Chapter 6: New conventions underpinned by new world views
Chapter 7: From chronicle to politics
Conclusion: The worst as a driving force?

Ulysse Rabaté is a political science researcher at CRESPPA (University Paris 8) and teaches at the University of Rennes. His work focuses on the political practices of contemporary working classes, considered in relation to institutions, but also in terms of their cultural impact. He was elected in Corbeil-Essonnes and, during the 2010s, opposed what was known as the ‘Dassault system’, named after the billionaire who had set up a clientelist system of vote buying in this working-class town in the Paris region. This extraordinary experience now feeds into his research on corruption, modes of resistance and the ordinary relationship with politics.