A Party in Search of Go-betweens
Type de matériel :
88
This article addresses how relationships between the French Socialist Party (PS) and student organizations were built. The analysis considers these organizations as collections of individuals instead of unitary entities. The multi-positionality of young activists’ engagement, elaborated through network analysis, allows us to comprehend how connections were built between two social spaces that were disconnected through the 1960s. This process may be broken down into three periods. In the first, a handful of activists from a minor current of the PS became involved in the Mutuelle nationale des étudiants de France (MNEF) as voluntary go-betweens with students. The second was marked by the deliberate engagement of party leadership and the creation of specific organizations headed by a small group of activists. The third period saw the institutionalization of such relations so they would outlast the departure of their initiators.
Réseaux sociaux