Webminar 2022-2023

Sociability areas

Maurice Agulhon defined sociability as "the systems of relationships that bring individuals together or link them into groups, more or less natural, more or less constraining, more or less stable, more or less numerous". While the category was already well known to sociology researchers, its appropriation by French historians has led to the publication of a whole series of innovative works over the last few decades. It is particularly interesting to reflect on their historically defined physical settings, which are no longer considered as neutral spaces that add or subtract nothing to social, economic or cultural action, but as places capable of revealing the structure, tensions or conflicts, or even the continuities of a society, social group, economic system or cultural current at a specific historical moment. In fact, an analysis of places of formal sociability, structured in statutes and having a legal existence (for example, casinos, clubs or cultural or recreational associations, working-class or popular), but also those of informal sociability, not legally established, spontaneous and that can be observed in the public square, at the market, at the station, at the theater or cinema, or at the tavern or café, is enlightening. In all these cases, the layout of the space, the furniture, the building materials themselves or the decoration are strictly linked to their social and historical functionality, reinforcing their functions as social stimuli or, conversely, attempting their regulation and social control.