Geographers, urban policies and the powers that be in France (1960-2000) : between scientific autonomy and political heteronomy
This paper aims to assess the relation between French geographers and urban powers between the 1960s and the 1990s. Through qualitative and quantitative textual analyses and study of archives, we defend the hypothesis that the objectives and strategies of the French State and local authorities in terms of urban policies and urban planning influenced the nature of the work carried out by a large part of French urban geographers.
First, we show that from the 1960s onwards, French geographers became more and more concerned by urban problems, considering them not only as scientific objects but also as political issues. A series of debates thus highlighted a desire to support or correct the urban policies conducted by the State or local authorities. The aim of these debates was to show that geography could be an aid to policy-making and statecraft, particularly in a context of competition with other social scientists or professionals such as urban planners. Then, we show how this issue contributed to the transformation of the discipline, whether it be within scientific works (a growing part of the urban literature dealt with planning and policy-related topics) or in terms of research practices (urban geographers carried out research funded by contracts with private or public stakeholders) and teaching (geographers set up a number of degrees to enable students to enter the labour market related to urban planning and development).
Through this empirical work our broader objective is to understand what the powers that be do to social science. If we consider, following Pierre Bourdieu, that science constitutes a field, i.e. a "relatively autonomous space, [a] microcosm endowed with its own laws" (Bourdieu, 1997) within the social world, then it is a matter of bringing to light how its autonomy can be constrained by heteronomous logics specific to other fields. In doing so, we hope to enrich the theoretical debate on the role of geography in relation to the powers that be.
Mots clés : History of geography|Urban geography|Sociology of social science|Science-policy interface
A103678MP