Resisting the future: Preparedness, degradation, and “inquietude” among survivalists in contemporary France

Abstract

In France today, an increasing number of people consider themselves to be “survivalists.” Presuming an inevitable crisis, they are organizing themselves to acquire and develop the skills, techniques, and knowledge they believe are necessary to survive the potential dissipation of mainstream ways of life. Based on ethnographic data collected in the Southwest of France, this article aims at understanding the motivations surrounding “preparedness”—as well as the discourses it generates and the practices it engenders—by repositioning them within the political and social context in which they emerge. For the most part, French survivalists develop traditional anti-liberal discourses, values, and practices, wherein notions of disaster or collapse are used as vehicles to promote a conservative political agenda. However, for some, prepping may also be a way to confront a feeling of the degradation of their lives, transforming survivalism into a paradoxical way of re/affirming one’s place in the world.