Cultures juvéniles et bibliothèques publiques

Abstract

Dressant une ethnographie des usages juvéniles des bibliothèques, l’article repère les codes comportementaux associés à l’acte de lire comme autant de composantes d’un rapport négatif à la lecture que produit le lieu : règle du silence, injonction à la solitude, capacité à s’enfermer et à rester immobile, présupposé d’autonomie, volonté de concentration. Sur la base de ces constats, cette étude invite les bibliothèques à offrir une scène d’expérimentation dynamique de formes culturelles et sociétales plus conviviales et récréatives, plus permissives et audacieuses de manière à se distinguer des institutions de la culture consacrée.

Ethnographic Inquiry at the Library: Analyzing Relations to Understand the Barriers to Public Reading

“…People won't accept to be constrained by one of these conditions unless the other two are removed. For example, in the annex library of a working-class, strongly-immigrant neighborhood in Toulouse in 2012 [46], a 12-year-old boy explains how the solitude that reading books requires isolates him from his male friends and, at the same time, guarantees him a privileged connection with a group of girls he really likes. If he's able to play at both tables, he specifies, it's only because he's just arrived in France (from Spain, with a Moroccan mother) and still isn't completely integrated in his group of friends (from his school and neighborhood) since his French isn't great.…”

“…What boys reject in the library is firstly the solitude and the silence and the impossibility of discussing, debating, exchanging, speaking to one another, whispering, flirting, in short, behaving and displaying themselves in a visible space according to all of a boy's social characteristics. When you observe and take stock of what teenagers do in a multimedia library, you realize that they (both boys and girls) spend most of their time moving around, looking for one another and, once they find each other, spending time together [46].…”

“…The bustle and noise created by young people walking around and exploring make them personae non gratae. And the female librarians who serve the public on Saturdays and on Sunday afternoons in this multimedia library display an allergy, even a sense of panic, brought on by the nonchalance of these youths and their ability to dodge the need for the written word by using equipment associated more with entertainment [28,46] than knowledge. Reading, like watching a screen or listening to something, is for these young users a tool, a pretext, not an end in and of itself.…”

Se retirer pour lire : variations sur l’expérience sociale de la solitude

“…Les quatre entretiens recueillis en bibliothèque sont issus de deux enquêtes, sur les étudiants en bibliothèque universitaire (Roselli et Perrenoud, 2010) et sur les jeunes en bibliothèque (Roselli, 2006a(Roselli, et 2011(Roselli, et 2014. à cette partie des entretiens un registre argumentatif soutenu, comme s'ils tenaient tous à souligner un certain degré de volonté requise par cet acte.…”

“…Dans l'enquête sur les adolescents qui désertent les bibliothèques, la lecture sous ses formes « plus populaires », au sens de partagées, semble plus fréquente chez ceux-là mêmes qui la désertent en solitaire ou en silence (Roselli, 2006a(Roselli, et 2014.…”