Gaxie, Daniel <br/><br/>
Understandings of Politics and the Mobilization of Social Experiences 

 -  2002.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 65 
<br/><br/> Using several series of in depth interviews, this article shows what the relationship to politics, particularly the investment in political objects and one’s preferences in these areas, owe to the various socializations that make up the experience of the social world of an individual. It exemplifies how people depend on visions and outlooks of the world worked out through their personal social history to grasp political questions. Beyond describing the cognitive instruments mobilized in these situations, there is the question of explaining the conditions for accepting these representations and the factors of the activation of their cognitive resources. This is also the opportunity to widen the problematics of researches touching upon political socialization and to question some of their results. The theoretical stake is to go beyond the dualisms – explanation vs. comprehension, objectivism and subjectivism, determinism and liberty, interests and beliefs, holism and individualism, quantitative and qualitative methods – that too often structure and limit research in social sciences.