L’article porte sur les médiations que l’État burkinabé opère dans les situations conflictuelles d’enfants non reconnus par leur père au sein de la société mossi. Emblématique d’un contexte où mariage, sexualité et engendrement sont de plus en plus souvent dissociés, la question de l’affiliation de ces enfants est érigée comme un véritable problème social dans cette société patrilinéaire. Se fondant sur une enquête ethnographique réalisée dans les services du ministère de l’Action sociale, qui intervient pour trancher ces litiges, l’article met en lumière la pluralité des registres de représentations utilisés pour assigner ou refuser la filiation des enfants. Le recours aux examens médico-légaux par les agents de l’État donne au sang, entendu à la fois comme substance biologique et principe relationnel, une place centrale dans la résolution de l’ambiguïté de la paternité.
Households have a role to play in the so-called ‘energy turn’ in Switzerland, a policy framework that calls for more efficient energy usage. Against this backdrop, this article critically analyses the mechanisms and running of a programme aimed at improving energy usage among low-income households in western Switzerland, bringing together both environmental and social objectives or what was termed an ‘eco-social intervention’. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and informed by a Foucauldian governmentality approach, the power dynamics of this programme are exposed, and its effect on the lived experience and subjectification of both household members and energy ambassadors are discussed. We argue that while presenting the appearance of technical rationality and political neutrality, this type of programme seeks to govern behaviours and leaves the ultimate responsibility for the protection of the environment on individuals, rather than promoting more collective and inclusive actions. Furthermore, we unravel how this programme participates in the reproduction of social differentiation by aiming at a particular social group, low-income households living in subsidised housing. We conclude with a discussion on how initiatives aimed at households could engage with the more complex arrangements of everyday life, rather than solely individual eco-gestures, while accounting for power dynamics.
Based on an ethnographic survey conducted in services for the homeless in French-speaking Switzerland, this paper examines street-level social workers’ struggles between the implementation of official policies and their direct work with people. Beyond their common condition of homelessness, people looking for shelter are a very heterogeneous group: undocumented migrants and foreign workers rub shoulders with poor, local pensioners, or with persons suffering from drug addiction or mental illness. Guided by national and international residence and labour legislation, local authorities and institutions have their own policies – more or less strict in their exclusion of poor migrants – regarding the legitimate beneficiaries of a place in the emergency accommodation system. In this article, we analyse the encounters of street-level social workers with homeless people and examine the practical, value-based and ethical dilemmas they face, as well the use of their discretionary power in making more - or less - appropriate shelter available for destitute migrants.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.