Bottom right?

Bottom right
Work, worldviews, and political positions in the bottom right quarter of the social space
By Amélie Beaumont, Raphaël Challier, Guillaume Lejeune
English

This article revisits the debate on the shift to the right of the working classes and advocates for a relational and localized approach in order to take a different look at these questions, starting from the concept of social space as defined by Pierre Bourdieu. The goal is to analyze the relationship to politics of groups with rather few resources (located in the lower half of the social space), but with relatively more economic capital than cultural capital (located on the right of the social space). By seeking to perceive the differences among poorly endowed groups, we give ourselves the means to think in subtle shades about a phenomenon (the right-wing and far-right vote) that is neither entirely new nor uniform. Immersion fieldworks appear to be particularly well suited to capture the social logics at work in the distant relationships to politics that often characterize these groups. The introduction then presents the main results of the research on the “bottom right” quarter gathered in this special issue. The text thus addresses the place of work, the worldviews that result from the configurations in which groups are taken, and the decisive role of the political offer in the conversion of these worldviews into political positions.

Keywords

  • social space
  • right-wing
  • economic capital
  • social classes
  • work
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info