Between refusal, avoidance, and expression: The presence of politics in French social centers. An ethnographic study in a small rural town

This article seeks to understand the reasons for the shift away from politics in social centers, by analyzing the obstacles and the conditions for voicing political concerns within their walls. The analysis is based on a two-year ethnographic survey conducted in a community center in Chinon, a small town in the Indre-et-Loire region of France, located in a rural environment. Building on the research of Nina Eliasoph and Camille Hamidi, we show that the factors behind the refusal and avoidance of politics are shared by other associations (such as the publicity of exchanges, the degree of homogeneity between groups, and the attitudes of employees), but are also specific to the historical development of social centers. However, certain characteristics of these structures make them fertile ground for politicization, such as the coexistence in the same premises of a variety of spaces that people can get involved in.