Town together, emancipations and tyrannies within the ordinary of the urban world.
With this introductive conference, I suggest we explore the tensions between the diversity of presence modalities in a town and the making-up of a common world. Thus, we will have to think the meeting of the town experience in the first person – the singularity of the body committed to a town – and the material and conventional systems which are parts of the organisation of urban order. I shall proceed by first examining what constitutes the depth of a human life – the good life – and I shall then tackle what is at stake in a common world – the good town – and I shall finish by questioning the various “tyrannical” processes at work in contemporary towns and which contribute to reduce the diversity of presences in towns (colonisation, domination, exclusion). Lastly, these three phases will allow us to draft a few possibilities for a renewed public action tending to make up a town which would indeed be multifaceted, make space for people despite their different rhythms, convictions and capacities, and for experiences being held at the limits of politics, such as bonding, conviviality and creativity.
Researcher from the Urban Sociology Department at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – Institut Marcel Mauss
Luca Pattaroni, Doctor in sociology is a researcher from the Urban Sociology Department (Lasur) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, an associated researcher at Institut Marcel Mauss (GSPM, EHESS) and the co-director of EspaceTemps.net. In the continuity of his work on squatters, social work and questions about autonomy and responsibility, his current research deals with relationships between towns, diversity and justice.
