Sur l’utilité du concept beckerien de « monde de l’art » afin d’appréhender un objet multiniveau. Le cas des projets de théâtre dans les quartiers populaires

On the usefulness of the Beckerian concept of “art world” in order to apprehend a multilevel object. The case of theatre projects in working-class neighborhoods. Since the 2000s, there has been renewed reflection on the ways in which Social Scientists should look at the articulation between scales of data analysis and observation. Far from being fixed, these scales can evolve over the course of an investigation, through a dialectical relationship between data analysis and its progressive conceptualization. Based on these reflections, this article illustrates how the articulation between these scales was conceived in my PhD thesis. This comparative ethnographic research focused on theatre projects that took place in working-class neighborhoods and on the emergence of a professional ‘world’, at the intersection of urban and cultural policies, professional theatre, socio-cultural activities and social movements. An initial problem statement was possible thanks to the reading of numerous research works, but I widened my analytical focus following a series of observations in the field. This led me to readjust my methodological tools and to rely on the Beckerian concept of the ‘Art World’. However, some modification to this concept was also necessary in order to make it heuristic for my study. The Beckerian theory proved useful for my study as long as we take into account the existence of ‘power struggles’ between individuals who are differently positioned in the social space (public authorities, artists and related workers, social workers, etc.) and return individual interactions to their original social structure.