In search of the political significance of relations in public

This special report argues that public encounters represent a good entry point to study the fabric of a political and moral culture in everyday life. It is a plea for a study of political principles as they appear and are put into play in people’s lives and in actual situations, and among them more specifically, urban civil interactions. The articles gathered here show the importance and the relevance of these relations in public, in terms of the analysis of how a political community works. They shed new light on how civil interactions display a sense of the public that is profoundly linked to what a democratic regime is or should be, trying to define, but never from scratch, the best way to live together as a political community.