“A Renewal of Protest? Observing the Yellow Vests through the Biographical
Lens”
Presentation for the Panel
“Panel Fieldwork in Political Science 2. Reflections on Ethnographic Methods”
APSA 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting
François BUTON (National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), ENS Lyon)
Emmanuelle REUNGOAT (University of Montpellier)
Cécile JOUHANNEAU (Paul Valéry University of Montpellier),
Introduction
The illustrated methodological reflection that we present here was carried out on the
basis of an ongoing investigation into the yellow vests movement that began in
France in November 2018 and continued for several months and even more than a
year for some groups. The movement was revived again in June 2020, but was much
more subdued. Our commentary is therefore primarily, but not only, linked with the
scientific debates on social movements and collective action (cf. our paper in the
Theme Panel “New Perspectives on Protest: Ordinary Citizens in Extraordinary
Movements”). It is also more largely part of discussions regarding unconventional
political participation and what connects ordinary citizens to “politics”. These
connections should be understood according to two meanings (Buton et al., 2016): is
political in the strict sense (politics) that which is the business of political leaders, and
therefore that which falls (or may fall - Lagroye 2003) within the scope of specialised
political activity, the political sphere; is political in the broadest sense (the political)
everything that is the subject of a critical analysis which is publicly valid (Boltanski,
1999 ; Boltanski and Thevenot, 2006), in most cases because it relates to a collective
issue for a given community (Eliasoph, 1998). In studying the biographical stories of
some yellow vests who are first-time protesters and thus have no prior activist
involvement in an organisation and with little or no experience of the protest
movement, we were also interested in their connections to politics in the sense of
these two meanings. The analysis is based not only on their (potential) prior voting
preferences, their opinions of politicians and legitimate political organisations
(institutions, parties, trade unions, NGOs, etc.), but also their ways of thinking about
community and categorising some issues as problematic and political (or not). In
interviews, we listened to them explain their usual connections with politics and
learned how this has changed through their involvement with the yellow vests.
Although in the study of social movements (as in all social sciences) there is currently
a plethora of publications of a methodological nature (Kapiszewski et al., 2015),
particularly on the methods of ethnographic work in activist circles (Della Porta,
2014), it seems to us that the use of biographical interviews is marginal, or at least
not considered especially legitimate. In addition, it is very significant that the majority
of works focusing on the biography of activists concentrate only on the biographical
impacts of involvement (McAdam, 1999; Giugni, 2004 and 2013) and that since the
pioneering study by Doug McAdam (1989), they primarily consider them from a
quantitative perspective (need to accumulate cases) and with a strongly retrospective
approach (several years, even several decades after involvement). It is very rare for
1
these studies to look into a small number of cases that is fewer than about 20 (less
than 10% of studies according to the meta-analysis by Vestergren et al., 2016).
Although the groundwork for this was laid by, in particular, D. Della Porta (1992), K.
Blee (2013) and J. Auyero (2003), we believe that the challenge of analysing the
biographies of activists through ethnographic interviews, even during the movement,
merits discussion.
In doing so, we must clarify that before this investigation into the yellow vests (which
was also based on survey research, Reungoat et al., RFSP 2019), we had not
conducted work on social movements, although we were led to become interested in
the topic1. Nevertheless, we are by and large more accustomed to the challenges of
using biographical tools in social sciences (Buton, 2004; Buton et al., 2016). In this
presentation, we do not want to fall into discussing methodologism as an abstract
concept that is far removed from any hard facts in the field (we are all familiar with
Paul Lazarsfeld’s joke2), nor proclaim the innovation of a tool or put forward the
umpteenth (sociological) revision.
Our objective is more simply to bring to light the ethnographic and biographical
interview as a tool for our specific field and for the questions that we are asking (in a
manner somewhat similar to Schaffer, 2014). Our approach is part of a research
trend that can be described first as both constructivist and realist (social facts are
constructions that become conventions, cf. Desrosières, 2010, in line with Durkheim’s
definition of institutions), second as processual (the social world is a product of
history and is thus never totally determined, cf. Fillieule, 2019 for involvement,
inspired by the interactionist concept of careers), and finally as following on from the
works of Bourdieu and other French sociologists (Bourdieu et al., 1991) in aiming to
be inseparably dispositionalist and contextualist. According to the concept set out by
B. Lahire (2012), we understand individual practices as being the product of social
dispositions AND the context of their activation and/or being put to the test
(“dispositions + contexts = practices”). For approximately thirty years, following
Bourdieu’s sociology and the two first “schools” of Chicago, a significant proportion of
French sociologists and political specialists have moved closer to ethnographic and
biographical approaches, which having given rise to very active debates 3, especially
with regard to the relationship between the researcher and the researched and the
way of establishing its place in thoughts 4. Lastly, our analysis is also drawn from the
notion of protagonism, which was developed by Haïm Burstin (2013), a French
Revolution historian, and introduced into French social sciences by B. Gobille and Q.
Deluermoz (2015) as a means of considering political crises or “critical situations”
(Dobry 2000, 2009) as “protagonistic situations”.
In a very typical manner, the use of ethnographic and biographical interviews came
about to participate in a conundrum illustrated by other investigations (particularly
1
Notably in researching the fight against AIDS (Buton, 2005, 2009) and on victims of war
(Jouhanneau, 2013, 2015)
2
George Bernard Shaw wrote: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” (Man and Superman,
1903); Paul Lazarsfeld added: “and those who have nothing to teach, become methodologists” (which
he felt is “an unfair misunderstanding of methodology”) (presidential address at the 57 th annual
meeting of the American Sociological Association, Washington DC, September 1, 1962).
3
See Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 1986; Revue Française de Sociologie 1990; Politix
1994.
4
As demonstrated by the French reception of Bourdieu, 1999.
2
quantitative studies): the yellow vests movement is defined by both the strong
presence of profiles that are not usually seen among protesters and the existence of
original forms of action (for the French sphere of social movements). On one side, a
large portion, if not the majority, of yellow vests were new to protesting, especially at
the start of the movement. There were also a number of collaborations and tensions
between these ordinary citizens, who are removed from politics, and the activist
networks that formed another significant section of the yellow vests. On the other
side, the movement employed actions that appeared to be relatively original and
largely made up of informal occupations and blockades, regular protests that were
not structured by prior organisation, citizen assemblies and heavy use of social
media. The movement thus developed modes of action that were simultaneously on
a local and national scale, physical and digital, disorganised and regular, deliberative
and riotous, which can be compared (as they have been thoroughly) to some crisis
situations in France (1789, 1968), as well as more recent, revolutionary (Nuit Debout
protests, Arab Spring) and post-2011 anti-austerity incidents.
The question is thus as simple as it is formidable: to what extent is the (relative)
renewal of forms of protest, from involvement in the movement to possible
disengagement, related to the (relative) newness of those involved? It is formidable
because it is obviously not for us to naively claim to draw a link of simple causality
between the two phenomena, nor to note the “originality” of a contentious repertoire
(as defined by Tilly), but rather to examine them. We know that highlighting originality
is a journalistic, but also scientific, cliché (making it possible to add value to the
subject by differentiating it from older, even archaic, forms of unconventional
participation), and that the modes of action described are in essence in no way
unprecedented (Mathieu, 2019). It is rather a matter of understanding the fact that
new protesters, lacking the essential knowledge and protest means of experienced
activists, become involved and then create, adopt, use and support some modes of
action, which have been tested in most instances by the latter. In other words, we
hope that, thanks to a tool that allows us to conduct documented, thorough and in-
depth analyses of individual cases of involvement, we will be able to clarify the social
logics of protest and the specific forms that it takes, the formulation of which also
partly escapes the main parties concerned themselves. It is also formidable because
research questions are never purely scientific, but depend on the institutional and
practical conditions for producing sociological research, which keep the sound (and
expensive) quantitative investigations for research institutes or specially funded
projects and leave qualitative investigation through interviews or long-term immersion
as the only fieldwork available for “artisanal” sociology.
With part of our team in the field since November 2018, we were able to conduct a
series of interviews in February 2019 with yellow vests whom we met on the very site
of their involvement (roundabouts, protests, assemblies). Our investigation involved a
localised perspective: all of our interviewees, currently about 20, belonged to the
same area of protest around a large city in the south of France, although their activity
sometimes reached beyond this scope (to other cities, including Paris). Some of our
interviewees knew each other, and all of them knew that we had been (to some
extent) present “in” the movement and that we were not only interested in this, but
also sympathetic towards the cause. They often suggested that we meet other
“interesting” yellow vests who they were close with. These interviews vary depending
on the degree of acquaintance or even familiarity between the interviewer and the
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interviewee (sometimes quite strong, sometimes almost non-existent), depending on
the methods for leading the interview (types of question preferred) and depending on
whether it was possible to repeat the interview (we sought this option as much as
possible to extend the line of questioning). The ethnographic and biographical aspect
of the interview was developed to varying extents and was particularly more difficult
during interviews with more than one person at a time (couples, friends); the case
that we will present here is part of those on which we have the most information.
However, all of the interviews shared the same general guidelines of three major
themes: the biographies, the connection with politics and involvement in the yellow
vests. All were also based on the idea that it is important, as far as possible, to not be
satisfied with simply collecting opinions, but to also describe behaviours, social
connections and events. The point of the interview is, of course, giving time to the
interviewees to express themselves in their own words, rather than taking refuge in
the expression of these viewpoints, to which survey research too often reduces the
(supposed) opinions of their own research subjects in line with their own analysis
categories (Schaffer, 2014). Last but not least, the work of conducting interviews
consists of more than just the actual time spent interviewing and the tricky task of
transcribing the conversation into written form. In our research, we dedicated a
significant amount of time to collectively analysing the interviews carried out,
challenging our interpretations, explaining agreements and disagreements,
(re)reading the verbatim transcripts and connecting them with the stories and larger
contexts of which the thus re-established biographies are a part. One of the attributes
of our work is largely based on pooling our data and analyses, which allows us to
combat the risk of overinterpretation, an ever-present phenomenon when a
sociologist is alone with “their” data.
Before entering into an in-depth presentation of the case of a first-time yellow vest
protester (2), that of Stéphane, we shall outline our methodological approach and
discuss the challenges and the literature on the ethnographic and biographical
approach via interviews (1).
1. From the ethnographic and biographical interview as a tool to analysing the
stories of yellow vests
It is largely illusory to present, as part of this paper, the discussion of a tool
(interview) and a concept (approach) that are used so often in European and
American social sciences. There is ample literature on the matter and the timelines
and “pioneering” works are primarily restricted to their own discipline (history,
sociology, anthropology, political science, etc.) and to the national contexts (even if
the authors and works are circulated from one country to another). Therefore, we
intend to only specify how the tool of ethnographic and biographical interview, which
brings together two sometimes refined traditions, allows us to address and consider
biographical stories and forms of involvement.
According to Stéphane Beaud and Florence Weber (2010), whose Guide de
l’enquête de terrain has made a considerable contribution to encouraging the return
of ethnographic practices in sociology and political science in France, we cannot truly
talk about ethnographic research if the researcher has not spent time in an
environment of inter-knowledge that allows him to understand how individuals are
members of multiple groups and to understand the impacts of reputation. In this
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respect, we are not ethnographers of the yellow vests. Our practice of observation
was only participatory at times (it was distant even at the start, as it was a matter of
completing questionnaires). Our involvement in the movement was both consistent
and unequal in the time spent and set apart from the relatively constant presence at
irregular weekly protests (for very practical reasons connected to our working
conditions). Nevertheless, this involvement was sufficiently significant and, above all,
focused on an area of protest to enable us to cross-reference some pieces of
information with those that we were given by the interviewees who we questioned. It
encouraged us to become familiar with local protest spaces (that we now know in
detail) alongside our interview subjects, thus enabling many additional meetings that
proved effective to a certain extent in observing the impacts of reputation. In a way,
mainly when repeated, the interview thus takes place in a sequence that makes it
possible to go back and forth between developing hypotheses and gathering
information, thus balancing out knowledge through immersion, similar to our goal to
recreate as astutely as possible, for each interviewee, their networks and social
spaces in which they developed (family, work, friends, leisure, etc.).
The recommendations from Beaud and Weber go beyond immersion. Their definition
of field surveys also reflects two priorities on which the supporters of ethnography in
American political science also concentrate 5. Schatz (2009) highlighted the
importance of the researcher being aware of the significance that those being
observed approve of their practices; Yanow (2009) emphasised the defining feature
of narrative and reflective writing. These two latter criteria, traditional in conducting
interviews for ethnographers (Heyl, 2007), are also important to us. Conducting
ethnographic interviews is a matter of keeping in mind the knowledge of anthropology
(on observation as a research technique, on attention to language and categories of
“native” classification) and the Chicago school (on taking into account individual
experiences, inter-personal dynamics and meanings specific to the interviewee), as
well as certain constructivist and postmodern criticisms (on the implicit approaches to
research or the contingent and focused nature of discourse). This is also a matter of
not forgetting that the actual interview is part of a larger sequence (well described by
Kvale 19966), from the development of an interview guide and a series of instructions
to the final writing, all of which requires rigorous reflection.
In truth, we see ethnographic research as being part of a broader form of
epistemology that is specific to social and historical sciences (Buton, 2008), which
requires a long-term empirical undertaking concerned with the contextualisation and
inherent meaning of practices and categories, reflexivity in the use of methods and
tools, and care in using the available theorisation (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).
This epistemology therefore maintains that human and social sciences are sciences
that are extremely specific and tricky because they confront the researcher with the
common humanity that is shared with the subject, although they also carry with them
a desire to break away from common sense, including with that of those being
studied. In other words, they employ various methods (statistics, interview,
observation and all possible combinations of methods possible) to achieve the proper
distance between the academic and the subject that is needed for objectification, this
distance being sometimes already there (in time, space or social sphere) or having to
be developed (when investigating in one’s own environment). It could be said that
5
In France, M. Avanza, S. Mazouz and B. Pudal conveyed the concept in this context.
6
“thematising, designing, interviewing, transcribing, analysing, verifying, reporting”.
5
research into social sciences should always overcome the distance between the
researcher and the subject being researched, and thus indicates two-fold work of first
de-singularising (objectification) and second re-singularising (restoring their
particularities to the cases studied) our subject (Buton and Mariot, 2009).
The challenge of this double movement becomes all the more important when our
interviews primarily focus on the life story model: we asked our interviewees to talk
about their childhood, their family, their professional life, etc. However, this study
requires that additional attention be paid to the distance between the interviewer and
the interviewee and to the relationship that is formed before, during and after the
interview, in the narrow sense, in addition to taking a stand on the crucial issue of
what testimonies reveal about the realities they describe. We know that in the context
of an interview (whether ethnographic, biographical or other), the relationship
between the interviewer and interviewee determines in part the information gathered
(a fact observed is intrinsically linked to the conditions under which it is possible or
created, which is also the case for the positivist model of survey research, although
the implications are impossible to evaluate accurately). Of the potential analogies for
thinking about the position of the researcher, Kvale (1996) supported that of the
miner (who is interested in “rich veins”) and the traveller (who recounts conversation
with people they meet). Other researchers have highlighted that those being
interviewed were not simply sources of information, but possibly collaborators
(Mishler, 1986), especially in the sense of emancipation. We believed that these
approaches seemed suggestive: we sometimes look for “good customers” for the
analysis, those who are talkative and easy-going (but not all are like this), we like to
use parts of stories that we have been told and we think that interviews can help
investigations to reformulate some points, even becoming aware of some
determining factors (for example). Better still, we imagine eventually revisiting them
to invite them to recount their experience of the yellow vests in front of the camera.
However, the social sciences researchers lose a lot of their own value if they act only
as miners, travellers or liberators. While the interviewer must be aware of the
connection to the investigation, it is to verify their interpretation – which claims to be
objective – and, particularly with a life story, to not fall into the trap of questioning the
truthfulness of the material when it is actually enough to listen and reproduce what is
being said as people talk about themselves. No piece of material provides
information all on its own and the biographical interview is only a tool for analysis and
sociological work. It is essential to keep in mind that “the biographical technique
(especially when the life story is obtained by directly questioning the subjects (...))
aims, by nature, to trigger the illusion of transparency in social facts, the
reconciliation of the subject and the object of knowledge, the social subject becoming
here the analyst of their own story and the interview relationship enhancing the
maieutic method” and that, for this reason, it is not necessary “to treat it like a mode
of social knowledge that is radically distinct from other means of building sociological
information” (Chamboredon 1983).
Although it is conceivable to be “working the hyphen” (Fine, 1994) and to reflect on
the result of the interview and its purpose alongside interviewees, this is by no means
necessary for a sociological study. In a similar fashion, while there is a need to take
into account the “challenge of turning the anthropological lens back upon the self”,
this is not the objective of sociological research. The aim of this is to understand both
a story and the conditions under which it is created, its contexts and relevant social
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spaces. The purpose of a biographical approach is in part (de-singularising) in
analysing the conditions in how it came to be, the interview itself providing some of
the aspects, but never the entire story (the actors do not have turnkeys) ; on the
other hand (re-singularising), in examining its own specific characteristics, which are
different to others, including those of family and friends. In other words, sociological
study consists of extricating the content of the conversation held with the interviewee
to clarify the knowledge obtained beforehand (or at the same time) on the structures
and interactions that determine it in part. To put it bluntly, it is necessary to continue
complying with the principle of partial non-consciousness for actors and, in particular,
the principle of non-consciousness regarding their social class. In The Craft of
Sociology (written in 1968) Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron mention Hoggart
and focus on a text by Schatzman and Strauss (1955) to explain all that is required in
this interview situation. Although old, the lesson is still valuable.
We are therefore far from the model of the biographical method proposed by D.
Bertaux, largely disseminated within the International Sociological Association (ISA)
from the end of the 1970s, to which a large section of French sociology very quickly
became opposed (Chamboredon, 1983, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales,
1986): taking into account the actor’s agency does not make it possible to forget the
structures that act within (even if they do not determine it). Although Bourdieu
appeared himself to give in to the siren call of familiarity between the interviewer and
interviewee (1999), he then returned, admittedly to old field of investigation (Manet),
to the importance of considering not only the effects of a specific environment on
forming habitus, but also the effects of all of the environments and spaces that have
been passed through and experienced across a lifetime (family, work, locality, etc.)
by the parties involved. Complying with the principle of non-consciousness, when we
know the life story, it means not only adding as much depth as possible to the
description of spaces crossed by the interviewees and objectifying these spaces,
possibly by means of ad hoc interviews (if the sociological literature does not already
provide enough), but also, and primarily, reflecting on everything “outside the field”
that the interviewees only skim over, even if they do not reveal much.
To take an example – one that is very simplified – one of our interviewees revealed
very little about her family and occupation because she did not consider these
important to the subject of the interview – her actions as a yellow vest – and because
the distance from the researcher made it more difficult to share information that is
considered personal. However, her experience of relative social downgrading
(compared to her expectations in terms of academic future and her parents’ objective
position) and her first professional experiences as a temporary care worker (medical-
psychological assistance in a care home) contributes – in addition to other elements
– to understanding not only this first-time involvement itself (the “reasons” for a
revolt), but also the specific forms it takes: those of a rather individual and isolated
rallying in actions that are often risky and therefore very real, but always in
subordinate positions. As we shall demonstrate with Stéphane, the value of using the
biographical interview tool, when based on prior and maintained familiarity, lies
simply in the possibility of having multiple analyses, thus making it possible to
understand what makes a social actor become involved and “adopt” this or that type
of action. The danger here is in overinterpretation by highlighting a coherence, a
linearity or a need for a connection between life story and protest activity. Therefore,
attention must be paid to the tensions and contradictions that can be seen in life
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stories (and the activity). The question of familiarity with the interviewees must no
longer be taken for granted and considered as necessarily being an advantage.
Alongside the hotly debated question of the biography in history, the “life story” in
sociology was originally established in the fundamental work The Polish Peasant,
before being further developed, notably in works by the interactionist sociology of the
Chicago school (Becker, 1966). In the French scientific environment, our approach
picks up from both the works of Chamboredon (1983), who considered the
biographical tool as a technique among others and refused to separate the study of a
life story from that of its relevant contexts, and those that defend a broader
dispositionist-contextualist perspective (Lahire, 2012) that is inspired by the
field/habitus theoretical model developed by Pierre Bourdieu, while going beyond it.
In addition, the study of individual cases must not fall into the trap of opposing
common and academic sense, with regard to the individual and society (Elias, 1993).
Interview technique presents common biases, especially of an academic nature,
which are well documented in the literature. The most important factor, in the context
of our study, concerns the social distance (and, to a greater extent, the relationship)
between the interviewer and interviewee, particularly when conducting interviews
with those from the working class (Schatzman and Strauss, 1955). For interviewers
with strong cultural capital, as we are, the risk is primarily in legitimist or relativist
(even “miserabilist” or “populist”) interpretations when looking at the social practices
of working class or low-income interviewees who we are researching (Grignon,
Passeron, 1989). The main bias is, of course, relativist: in our field, there is a
considerable risk of giving in to populist promotion of the social subject (the
oppressed people who “finally” become activists) and the temptation to re-establish
agency for groups that are forgotten or marginalised.
In the sociology of social movements and political organisation, it is generally
standard to conduct interview sessions from a prosopographic, therefore quantitative,
perspective. These surveys are rarely exhaustive and often function by creating
cases that are hoped to be sufficiently “contrasted” to be representative. We took a
portion of our questioning from studies of activist careers, inspired by the works of E.
Hugues and H. Becker, by asking our interviewees about the conditions surrounding
their introduction to the yellow vests and how it came about, about their activity “in”
the movement and potentially about their disengagement or withdrawal (Fillieule,
2018). Due to its nature, the “biographical impacts” of involvement are difficult to
imagine for a movement that is both new and topical. Nevertheless, we have still
given our full attention to the effects of a “life in yellow” on the family, professional
and political lives of those being interviewed (however, “career changes” are naturally
rare in a relatively short period of time). On the other hand, one concept appeared to
us to be particularly heuristic in considering the process of questioning while in the
middle of doing so: protagonism. Developed by the historian Haïm Burstin (2005) in
his study of the Saint-Marcel suburb in Paris during the revolutionary era (1789-
1794), it is the subject of strong discussion between French researchers with regard
to considering the participation of ordinary citizens during crises or critical situations
(Gobille and Deluermoz, 2015; Goujon and Shukan, 2015 for example), such as that
triggered by the yellow vests movement (as described below). In the context of
political crisis (as defined by Dobry 2009), which has a specific grammar marked by
possibility and uncertainty, ordinary citizens have a feeling of living through events
from day to day and can be established as protagonists, meaning that they throw
8
themselves into the unknown area (for them) of political action: they are no longer
content to simply go along with events, but want to participate, see what is
happening, step into the limelight and let it be known. Their act of speaking up
strengthens their feeling of living through history, more so if they protest in the
knowledge of creating history, and the desire to be recognised as doing so, by being
at the forefront and looking for forms of recognition (which could be media sources
today or, in revolutionary times, instituted by the authorities in place). Incidentally,
these steps into the limelight consist of more than just speaking out on political
issues, but can also be based on very simple, very specific actions and individual
gestures of support (bringing food, making things).
2. Stéphane, “a yellow vest for two generations”
As part of this paper, we want to illustrate the purpose of our ethnographic and
biographical approach through the case of Stéphane, whose place in the yellow vests
is worth evaluating through astute description of his involvement, his social and
professional life and his connection to politics. The materials collected made it
possible to better understand both the reasons for Stéphane’s involvement and the
form that it takes within the movement.
First of all is a very succinct summary of the yellow vests movement in France. It
appeared on 17 November 2018 in the large-scale occupation and blockade of
roundabouts across the country to protest the increase in an environmental tax on
fuel that had been criticised online for several months. Against all expectations, the
protests grew rapidly, but without an official representation making itself clear, over
the end of November and in December 2018. In addition to the occupations of
roundabouts taking place were the opening of motorway tolls, blockades of fuel
stores and hypermarket warehouses and protests that, from 24 November, 1 and 8
December, took on a very pronounced riotous nature, especially in areas of power
around the Champs-Elysées. The movement had very quickly created a major
political crisis that led President Macron and his government to make concessions
that were judged (at first) as being substantial (speech on 10 December) and to
adopt clear repressive measures. Like any political crisis, the end of 2018 lead to a
general challenge of the republican government and representative democracy, fed
by continuous media coverage (especially by 24-hour news channels) and a rise in
those speaking out in the political sphere, among intellectuals and experts and the
population itself, while support for the movement was largely expressed through
survey-based opinion polls. The feeling that something is happening and that it
should be reported, whether discouraged or encouraged, also became widespread,
which led to huge and all-out discussion, both in written and audio-visual form, and
various historical precedents being dredged up (references to the French Revolution
and May 68 were gradually established). One part of this discussion that cannot be
ignored is the factor of the yellow vests themselves, especially online 7, but also taking
the form of surveys carried out by social science researchers, including the authors
of this paper, throughout 2019.
Although the rallies saw a downward trend across 2019 and more so in the first
quarter of 2020 (marked by the overall quarantine from mid-March to mid-May in
response to the coronavirus pandemic), the yellow vests movement’s ability to
7
For example, photographers such as Serge d’Ignazio.
9
endure, which was unprecedented in France, was striking. Weekly protests held
every Saturday in several large cities, defined like so many as “actions” by the yellow
vests themselves, that became increasingly violent and heavily suppressed by the
police and the justice system were added to other forms of expression. Despite the
prohibition and their dismantling by law enforcement, the roundabouts persisted or
were “taken back” here and there in France over the course of the year. Local citizen
assemblies were also established, but most were at risk of being shut down after
summer 2019. Lastly, organisational, structural and coordinating initiatives came to
light, largely without result, with the notable exception of the Assemblées Des
Assemblées (ADA). These initiatives, of which there were five between January 2019
and March 2020, are ad hoc groups that aim to coordinate the movement on a
national scale. Each local group of yellow vests (local groups or roundabouts) could
send two representatives. The ADAs established a place to meet and exchange
ideas on ways to continue the protest. One also voted to merge with the movement
against pension reform in December 2019 – February 2020. Another trait struck
observers and stood out in the first interviews: a strong section of the yellow vests
are first-time protesters with no prior political involvement, from working-class and
low-income backgrounds and seemingly belonging to a “marginalised” France,
although this analysis category is too wide ranging to be precise (Bruneau et al.,
2018), it refers at least to those who are the most “invisible” or “hindered” groups in
the country (Beaud et al., 2006; Jeanpierre, 2019) and those who would ordinarily not
express themselves and their discontent in this fashion.
Stéphane’s involvement is undoubtedly representative of a small minority of yellow
vests in that he combines local, primarily in the assemblée faction (citizen assemblies
in large cities), regional and national action, in his efforts to coordinate the
movement, which led him to visit some of their “media personalities” and to become
heavily involved in the ADAs. To put it another way, Stéphane currently has a level of
notoriety that reaches beyond his local area, a large city in the south of France;
without being identified as a leader by major national media sources, he has spoken
in reports and documentaries, even on some local television studios. However, at
first glance, Stéphane is a first-time protester who has never had long-term
involvement in politics and nothing predisposed him to act in a social movement.
From a working-class background, having not undertaken further university studies,
he is a self-taught freelancer who, throughout a somewhat tumultuous professional
career that has led him to travel, had a variety of projects in website design, became
unemployed following job burnout and found himself at the start of the movement in
November 2018.
We met Stéphane on several occasions and in different circumstances in the context
of our investigation into the yellow vests, starting in December 2018. As he was
identified very early on as an important actor in rallying in the city that was our main
area of study and therefore considered by us as a first-choice source to understand
this movement, Stéphane agreed to an initial 2.5-hour interview with ER in February
2019. He then met FB for an in-depth biographical interview (4 hours 40 minutes) in
June 2019 and then for an additional interview (3 hours 20 minutes) in June 2020,
with others planned. We thus have a corpus of full interviews (more than 10 hours)
that are supplemented by several exchanges during protests and during some ADAs.
For lack of a place in this presentation, we did not request many extracts from
interviews or fieldwork notes. This means that the presentation of Stéphane’s social
10
life will be summarised briefly here, although it will have the advantage of not being
reduced it to its most basic sociological details: a man of approximately 40 years old,
whose parents are working class (labourer and “casual work”), unemployed after
having been (throughout a tumultuous career) primarily a computer graphics
designer and web developer, no higher education qualifications, in a relationship, no
children, has been living in the centre of a large French city for four years.
It can be said that we have a close, active relationship with Stéphane (exchanging
texts and e-mails, going for a drink) and this is largely based on trust that is primarily
supported by our own sympathy for the movement and our recognition of his
personal contribution to it. Stéphane is unquestionably a “good customer” and doubly
so as he provides a mine of information on the movement with shrewd analysis of its
complexity and has proven to be willing to chat and talk about himself. However, he
is also an ally with whom we want to establish other forms of collaboration (filmed
accounts, for example). Lastly, this relationship is indivisibly founded on an
intellectual agreement between academics and an ordinary, self-employed citizen on
intellectual matters and in other areas, whose objective is also to tell the story by
rebuilding his experience in written form. This explains the general tone of
seriousness and reflection during the interviews: Stéphane wants to explain and
clarify to us, as if teaching, and he has to try not to lose his train of thought when he
digresses and addresses a wider audience through them. Even when referring to
very personal aspects of his life, he remains exact, a skill obtained in part in the
communication tasks that he carries out on behalf of the movement.
Stéphane’s involvement in the movement is as much political as it is intellectual, as
he quickly adopted the form of a testimony and is working to unify and consolidate
the movement. At first glance, he felt distant from the first actions taken by the yellow
vests – he has no car and lives in the city centre – but he went to a protest with his
partner and took a camera to document what happened. In autumn 2019, after a
period of job burnout in a small company and a complicated, bad experience moving
to a new city with higher rents, Stéphane decided to live temporarily on benefits in
order to complete several film projects – one of which is fiction – that he had had in
mind for a number of years. In the era of smartphones and social media, producing
images to document facts has become commonplace and widespread, which is in
fact how Stéphane met the administrator of a yellow vests Facebook group for the
city – through taking photos. Stéphane initially helped him, before quickly becoming
involved in the local city centre assembly, which meets outside every week, and then
in the communication committee for this assembly. He tells of how he immediately
felt that communication is essential in a movement that wants to be horizontal and
without leaders, which he likes. This gives him an opportunity to make use of his
professional expertise (using a computer, drafting reports, developing IT tools,
especially through networks, etc.) and he was given, almost by default, the task of
representing the assembly at the first ADA, which took place in Commercy at the end
of January 2019. From starting out being an observer who accumulated hours of
footage, Stéphane has gradually become an important actor in the local fight, being
present at general meetings, protests and even passing through some roundabout
demonstration sites, but above all involved in the work of “unifying” ADAs. He took
part in five ADAs, which throughout 2019 brought together several hundred yellow
vests from all over France for two or three days, and he also organised one, which
took up six months of his time. In doing so, he approached some media figures,
11
particularly because he contributed to developing the ADA’s stances (as a charter or
voted motions) and endeavours to establish its structure of national coordination,
while still maintaining its horizontal nature. He has been asked to answer questions
from journalists and to participate in televised debates; in particular, he has broken
into public speaking alongside local politicians, to the point that he says he is now
ready to debate the president of France or the minister of the Interior, or with well-
known intellectuals who support the yellow vests. In addition, he is working on
contributing to a collection of accounts and an analysis of the movement by other
members, which was initiated by a historian who is a yellow vest member.
As we can see, this involvement is intense: Stéphane sees and presents it as a
“project” and a “job”, the guiding principle of which is in maintaining the unity of the
movement against divisions that undermine it, and in particular against political
misrepresentation, especially by left-wing movements (notably the LFI party, trade
unions, “autonomists”). In the first two or three weeks of the movement, the yellow
vests were encouraged by right-wing conservative and reactionary political and
media forces and their movement was interpreted using the analogy of medieval
peasant revolts, fascist associations from the 1930s and more recent movements
that are opposed to government taxes, such as the bonnets rouges8. However, from
mid-December 2019, the movement was heavily flooded with left-wing activists,
particularly anarchists and trade unionists. The latter seem to have contributed to
ousting the extreme right-wing activists and to directing the demands already being
established towards social, fiscal and democratic justice, which were the demands
set out at Commercy. In both the city being studied and the ADAs, the movement
thus saw the meeting, collaboration and, sometimes, the opposition of first-time
protesters and long-term activists. One of Stéphane’s goals with the ADAs was to
prevent the latter from getting the upper hand over the former, which would lead to a
partisan aspect in the movement. On his part, it was a matter of ensuring that the
yellow vests do not become more of a “leftist” movement so as not to ostracise some
of the first-time protesters. In his opinion, the yellow vests are “a movement of people
who do not have a movement”, and although activists, such as those from Zone to
Defend (ZAD) or Nuit Debout, can offer interesting points, starting with the practice of
horizontality in debates and mistrust of spokespeople, they must not take over and
damage the “intellectual collective” that is the foundation of the movement’s
inclusivity. This concern is translated in concrete terms, to give only one example, by
the place given to ADAs. Stéphane is in favour of them only meeting at irregular
intervals, so that they do not appear to be a sort of “government” of the yellow vests,
the heart and soul of which is, above all, local and can be found at roundabouts, in
villages and in citizen assemblies.
In addition to being heavily involved, Stéphane also contributes on an intellectual
level, as he has, of course, a very considerable capacity for hard work, especially in
maintaining connections between the yellow vests and preparing events, although he
has only very little involvement in the group’s demonstrations. This point is extremely
important: Stéphane had attended protests for a long time and was convinced that
police violence happened prior to, and actually led to, the riots. He was therefore
outraged by the many injuries inflicted by police 9, seeing them as penalties handed
down by the justice system on the yellow vests. He is in danger sometimes himself
8
Originating in Brittany in October 2013, the Bonnets rouges (red hats) movement protested against
the introduced of an environmental tax on heavy vehicles and to maintain employment in the region.
12
(his camera was broken in clashes with law enforcement). However, he does not
take part in organised activities in the region that involve direct contact with the
police, such as blockades or occupation of roundabouts. He participates publicly as
little as possible and less and less frequently. Over time he has become increasingly
and strongly critical of violence by demonstrators in that it discredits the movement,
especially in the mass media, which systematically and unsurprisingly focuses on the
riotous and destructive aspect of the movement, which is certainly sensational but
also morally condemnable.
Considering Stéphane's most fundamental characteristics, this type of commitment
makes sense. As a white-collar worker with an unstable job on low income and living
in the city centre, Stéphane is willing to invest his time primarily in observation,
organisation and cooperative tasks. His “neutral” political position is more intriguing:
while he feels relatively “left-wing”, he does not claim it in the movement, which he
intends to spare from any political exploitation. The interviews here provide initial
answers. Voting for the left on and off, political culture was not passed on to him by
his family or at school. In his family, it is more a question of indifference to politics
and mistrust of politicians (“all rotten”) that dominate viewpoints. At boarding school,
he socialised more with those who, like him, had aspirations of an artistic career and
his higher education came to an end after the first year at a well-known school for
comic book design, where his taste for manga style design was not (yet) widely
shared and valued. From the age of 19, he had to work as a freelancer, on a job-by-
job basis, in a professional world with no trade unions and far from the places of
intense political socialisation that universities can be. As with his work, however, he
trained himself in political matters and acquired a vision of the world through the
internet and social networks, according to which the powerful decide the fate of the
world (he researched the Bilderberg Group in particular). His broad geographical
mobility, in several cities in France, but also for a brief period in the United States
(while he was in a relationship with an American student), his continued professional
commitment, his passion for the arts (he draws comic strips, plans to make
documentaries, is creating an art installation with his new partner, who is an actress
and dancer) also lie in the way of a commitment to politics, whether conventional or
not. However, a few things happened just prior to his participation in the yellow vests
movement. Firstly, he visited the Zone to Defend (ZAD) at Notre-Dame des Landes 10,
a hotspot for protest in France during the 2010s, for several days, thanks to a
computer engineer friend. It was there that he discovered, and became interested in,
self-governance and a horizontal practice of democracy. Secondly, shortly after
arriving in his new city, he also met activists in La France Insoumise (LFI), a left-wing
movement created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon during the 2017 presidential campaign
(in which Mélenchon won more than 7 million votes, i.e. 19.6% of the votes cast). He
helped his new friends a bit by taking charge of a candidate's communications for a
few months, but he was very quickly annoyed by the pretentiousness of the national
leaders of LFI around Mélenchon, who were making decisions for the local group,
which is supposed to act autonomously through the collaborative platform “L'avenir
en commun”. This brief experience – as well as his professional availability, and
perhaps the artistic community that his girlfriend is involved in –, pushed him to
9
Cf. the work of journalist David Dufresne, who has produced a dossier of police violence cases by
setting up the “Allo Place Beauvau” platform.
10
The mobilisation is based on the illegal occupation of a site planned for the construction of a new
airport in the countryside near Nantes. This led to the long term setup of occupants living alternative
lifestyles generally based on a strong sense of horizontalism.
13
educate himself on politics again, even prior to the yellow vests bursting on the
scene, with all the good will and modesty of someone who is self-taught. He
continues to develop his historical and political knowledge by reading intellectual
essays (such as those by Emmanuel Todd and Hervé Guillemin) and watching
videos on the internet (such as those by Usul, a “leftist” close to the online
newspaper Mediapart). While he unequivocally rejects the extreme right and the neo-
liberal French president, Stéphane nevertheless refuses to define himself as “on the
left”, in defiance of politicians of all stripes that is inherited from both his family and
from his professional community of freelancers, but above all because he sees the
yellow vests as the reunion of the French people, without any exclusion whatsoever,
whatever the voting preferences are of the individuals among them. As it makes a
detailed analysis of a relationship to politics possible, the biographical and
ethnographic interview enables us to understand what other methods would describe
as a contradiction between an intense involvement in modes of action sought out by
the assembly in radical left-wing circles and the desire to “break down the barriers”.
We could use Stéphane’s statement at length for comments to describe how, through
his participation in the yellow vests movement, and above all through his role as
spokesperson for them, he now possesses political expertise that is both subjective
and objective (in the sense of Bourdieu) and that is much more consistent than
before. On the one hand, the movement has enabled him to acquire a very precise
knowledge of the political field, of institutions, of political abbreviations, but also of the
complex mechanisms of delegation and the practice of democracy from the bottom
up; on the other hand, he has gained a sense of authority to speak politically,
including with speakers such as the intellectuals he has come across (including us),
which has resulted in him sharing his knowledge with them on several occasions (the
interview situation makes it possible, perhaps even encourages it, but it is not
enough, far from it). However, we will instead focus our analysis on what, in
Stéphane's biographical trajectory, allows us to hypothesise about the socially gained
aptitudes that enable the activation of, through involvement in the yellow vests, a
cooperative and neutral position that is marked by the avoidance of politics in the
narrow sense (that of political formations and leaders), in its 'assemblist' version
here.
Indeed, Stéphane's biographical trajectory sees him taking up different positions that
allow (and sometimes require) a certain autonomy while also favouring roles
involving observation, adaptation, and acceptance of different points of view. Having
gone freelance early in his working life, Stéphane knows all about geographical but
also social mobility, with ups and downs in environments that are very different from
his home environment (we will return to this point) Self-taught in everything –
including drawing, his childhood passion, which resulted in him attending a well-
known comic book school that he soon left -, his “project-based” profession
presupposes having the ability to learn new skills, to find and win over customers, to
sometimes lead teams, to bounce back after failures, and even to show a certain
resistance towards the hierarchical authority that he has come across on a few
occasions (especially in his last position, with the constraints of an employee without
the benefits). It is not only in his professional career that Stéphane has had to learn,
observe and deal with things. He describes his school experience at boarding school
– an experience that educational sociologists consider decisive – as characterised by
learning to reconcile with the immediate surrounding world: “seeing the plurality of
14
points of view, encountering people who come from different backgrounds and then
seeing how you position yourself, that you can still talk to everyone, that sometimes
there are people who are assholes and you have to let them do their thing rather than
attacking them”.
Furthermore, his family set-up is quite exceptional but is not an isolated case (Weber,
2005). Born from a short-lived relationship, he did not know his biological father,
having discovered his existence very late on, or the man whose name he carries,
who married his mother after his birth but his mother divorced very quickly. For more
than 30 years, his mother has shared her life with another man, who works in the
truck industry, but Stéphane has never seen him as his father, but more of an older
brother. Thus, he was brought up by his mother but also by his maternal
grandparents in an “extended Mediterranean” family, i.e. patriarchal. Having fled
French Algeria in 1957 and primarily lived in the south of France, his grandparents
had a large family in which Stéphane's mother is the eldest daughter and as such, as
he points out, the “second mother” to the siblings. Stéphane thus spent part of his
childhood at his grandparents' home, with his mother but also with his aunts and
uncles, like “the little one” loved by all, even the centre of their affectionate rivalries.
His grandfather mostly worked in construction independently while his mother took
on odd jobs: life was lived modestly, in a socially diverse neighbourhood with the
majority of people being working class, but also including some more bourgeois
families - who he socialised with to a certain extent. Stéphane described a happy
childhood, though certainly affected by the absence of a “real” father, but also with
the privileged status as an only child, (to be) eldest of the third generation. The way
in which he describes the very strong rivalry between his mother and grandmother
highlights that he does not want to decide, judge or take sides, but rather
acknowledge the different points of view and deal with them in a dispassionate way.
Stéphane comes from a family of “pied-noirs” who did not have any particular social
status: none of the aunts and uncles (except one) have a higher education
qualification or work in middle management positions. He has not completed any
studies either but, at the height of his career, he was in a position to become a
homeowner, or a small business owner, in short to become a class defector, in a
French society where moving up the social ladder is not the norm. Yet he declares
that he has chosen to refuse his social standing. Through his professional activity, by
the financial wealth he enjoys at times, by the social circles he is involved in (mainly
thanks to his girlfriend), Stéphane could be considered as a “defector” from the
working classes to the middle classes. However, he does not see himself as such,
but rather thinks of himself as a precarious artist - who prefers to revive his passion
at the turn of his forties rather than continue working for a system he no longer wants
to support. His attitude towards the possibility of moving up the social ladder and its
consequences, and therefore towards a central problem faced by individuals who
move around socially, thus expresses a loyalty to where he comes from, which
seems to play a decisive role in the intensity and form of his involvement in the
yellow vests. This is what the phrase “yellow vest for two generations” encapsulates:
Stéphane seeks to defend a definition of the yellow vests that is inclusive of his
parents and grandparents. He sees the yellow vests as ordinary citizens, who do not
feel represented or are poorly represented in politics, who are angry and therefore
frequently resort to “protest” votes relating to those in power, as exemplified by those
who support the National Front. This includes citizens forgotten or otherwise crushed
15
by a capitalist system that makes them, according to another phrase, “calves for the
slaughterhouse”, and who therefore have no choice but to fight to avoid this sad fate.
The strength of this loyalty – he also returned to the south of France to be closer to
his parents and his seriously ill stepfather – seems to us to be the cornerstone of his
interest in the unity of the yellow vests and respect for the most modest among them,
and his actions to prevent any form of political exploitation that would lead to
separating them.
For the first time, Stéphane's involvement in political protest is thus the product of a
specific biographical trajectory. It remains that a potential reason for this involvement
lies within the crisis itself. By its nature, a crisis enables the expression of positions
that have little legitimacy in the course of ordinary life, in which institutions endure:
the crisis of the yellow vests is thereby a protagonistic situation, to follow the path
suggested by Deluermoz and Gobille (2015) based on the notion of protagonism
forged by the historian Burstin (2013). Indeed, it seems to us that Stéphane
embodies, in a particularly important way, the figure of the protagonist found in many
“ordinary” yellow vests, who are first-time protesters, without a history of activism.
The crisis caused by their protest makes them political subjects for the first time in
their eyes, speaking out and making themselves known, feeling like history is being
made and waiting for the recognition of this capacity for action that has been
acquired at last. In Stéphane's particular case, it is obvious that his involvement in
the ADAs and in the development of their collective positions, his obsession with a
horizontal and transparent structuring of the movement and its perpetuation and
posterity, his public appearances, his publication projects, his enthusiastic meetings
with significant figures and prominent intellectuals, his fundamental belief in the
movement's ability to change the world, if not immediately, at least in the long term,
in short, sets him apart as an emblematic protagonist. That is to say, a common man
finally recognised as deserving of a chapter in our specialised representative system,
a “democracy of abstention” (Braconnier, Dormagen, 2007) in which pure political
professionals are increasingly common (Bollaert, Ollion, Michon, 2017). However,
taking into account the idea of a protagonistic situation would presuppose completing
this first interpretation with an analysis that is more sensitive to the dynamics of
Stéphane's protest process, focused on the different stages of involvement and on
the effects of successive situations that are marked by uncertainty but also by
enhanced reflexivity, the experience of a richer and denser time, on the capacity to
act and on the desire to testify.
To conclude, our case study raises a difficult question: do the first-time protesters
simply take up – thereby appropriating and modifying – methods of protest already in
use, whereby the profound contradiction lies in its tension between the revolutionary
aspect that is deeply critical of the system in place and the deliberative aspect that
seems specially adjusted to the new spirit of capitalism and the representative
regime (concern for communication, horizontality, informality, consensus) (Boltanski,
Chiapello, 2006) ? Or is the involvement of ordinary citizens in the yellow vests
movement perhaps, and more radically, a work of democratic subjectification in the
sense of the philosopher J. Rancière (2014), that is, a demand for equality among all
“citizens” as political subjects in the strictest sense of the term?
16
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