Habitus from the Outside

Unanswered Questions and the Presence of

Institutions
Nicolas Mariot1

Abstract
This short paper aims to revisit what researchers do when they attempt, through
questionnaires, interviews, or archives, to collect actors beliefs about highly
regulated and institutionalized events (such as exams, ceremonies, official
speeches, etc.). Three cases of non-response in surveys are examined in an
attempt to interpret these silences. What do they indicate? At the end of this
study, two points of view are advanced. The first is that collecting reasons is often
a pointless exercise because it only serves to demonstrate the infinite diversity of
actors reactions. The second is that it is problematic in the sense that the quest
for beliefs leads the researcher to forget that, very often, the actors manage very
well without them while still behaving as they ought. It is a question of activities
where individual actions can be supported by social institutions.

Nicolas Mariot is a CNRS senior research associate (European Center for Sociology and Political Science, CESSP,
Paris). His work focuses on the relationship between conformism and commitment in Western societies. His
publications include, most notably, Bains de foule. Les voyages prsidentiels en province, 18882002 (Paris:
Belin, 2006), with Claire Zalc, Face la perscution. 991 Juifs dans la guerre (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2010) and,
most recently, Tous unis dans la tranche ? 1914-1918, les intellectuels rencontrent le peuple (Paris: Seuil, 2013).
http://www.jourdan.ens.fr/mariot/ ([email protected])

his short paper has come about as a result of an invitation from members of the

Politix editorial board to take another look at the controversies surrounding the role
that is, and should be, assigned to beliefs in the analysis of political action. I would like
to sincerely thank them specifically for this opportunity to revisit articles that were
important during my own education and, more generally, because my discovery of the
social sciences came just as the journal was publishing its first issues. As I told the
organizers, I will say nothing here that I have not already said on the subject and, as you
see, this written version preserves the oral style that it had originally. I simply want to
take advantage of this anniversary to return to a specific problem related to the
invitation given to me, and which I would formulate as follows: what is the use, in the
social sciences, of studying beliefs? Beyond the response I will give, I will also use
comparisons with other research to attempt to provide a somewhat broader scope than
just my own areas of study.
Why define the problem in this form? I want to use this question to look back at the
discussions that took place in Politix around what I call the normative model of the
enlightened citizen. In particular, I want to return to the back issues devoted to the
socio-history of the vote and its frameworks2 and to those addressing the notion of
political competency, especially Le populaire et le politique I & II.3 I think we could
broadly summarize the contribution of these articles (they are far from being the only
ones to have addressed the question but, since it is the anniversary, only this journals
issues and articles will be mentioned) by saying that they came to gradually undermine
the standard image of the citizen in democratic theory. This image was that of an
individual as a social atom with a set of values, opinions, and representations that he
was supposed to be able to express at all times, and which were meant to enable his
behavior to be explained. This undermining remains incomplete in my view, largely due
2

J. L. Briquet and Y. Dloye, La politique en campagnes, Politix 15 (1991) and Y. Dloye and O. Ihl, Des votes
pas comme les autres, Politix 22 (1993).

A. Collovald and F. Sawicki, Le populaire et le politique, Politix 13 and 14 (1991).

to the strength of the model. It is even possible to suggest that, more recently, among
the many studies about (and for) participative democracy, it has sometimes taken a
step backwards. The trend is quite real nonetheless. In some ways, my work simply
consisted of lifting this analytical framework straight out of elections and applying it to
the analysis of collective behaviors relating to official ceremonies.
First point to note: you will see that I apply a very broad understanding of the notion of
belief in this study. I do not mean it as something that is false or that people hold to be
true against all the scientific evidence. I will not talk either about the difference between
believing in (showing trust) and believing that (agreeing with a proposition).4 Here, I
understand belief as referring broadly to ideas, thoughts, and opinions, to what people
have in their heads, to that which is not visible but must be uncovered through
questioning those being studied, in particular, using interviews and questionnaires or
simply by having open discussions with them.
I come back to my question then: what is the use, in social sciences, of studying beliefs?
To attempt to respond to this, I would like to return to one of the first steps I took in my
PhD programa long time ago now, nearly as long ago as the first issues of Politix.
During my first year in graduate school in 1992 to 1993, I chose Franois Mitterrands
trip north for the inauguration of the new Euralille train station as my first study topic.
The idea, in a very positivist approach, was to go and find out if what I had been told in
different classes throughout my educationthat political ceremonies reinforce social
connection and revitalize the shared values of the group being consideredwas true.
This involved finding out whether the occasion could be measured using a questionnaire
given out to the public. I designed a plan of action, intended to be as scientifically
rigorous as possible. After lengthy negotiations, I obtained permission from the
presidential palace to be included in the official cortge along with the necessary passes
allowing me to follow the president. Five or six friends from my graduate course agreed
to administer the questionnaire for me on the other side of the barriers. As agreed, they
4

J. Pouillon, Remarques sur le verbe croire, in La fonction symbolique, ed. M. Izard and P. Smith (Paris:
Gallimard, 1979), 4351.

were to ask every tenth spectator to fill out a simple form. On the front, there were
questions, both closed and open of course, about the event and, on the back, there were
questions collecting demographic information on the respondents. It was my intention
that the analysis of the survey results would constitute the core of my masters thesis.
By asking the spectators about what they understood and how they felt about the
ceremonys staging, I remained straitjacketed by the dominant stimulus-response
model. The goal for me was thus not to call this model into question, but simply to verify
whether or not it could be empirically validated. This research logic seemed obvious to
me. Since the function of political ceremonies (so I was told) is to revitalize the values of
the assembled group, it seemed justified to go and ask the people whether or not they
were in agreement with the actions and words of the speaker and even whether they
could feel the force of the key symbols laid out in front of them, to use the usual
terminology pertaining to this field.5 The underlying hypothesis, if I can still use this
term, was that if a large enough number of participants acknowledged experiencing the
same feelings or approving of the official statements being made, then I could conclude
that the ceremony was effective and, if not, I could conclude that it was not. While this
approach was comparable in some ways to asking worshipers at a church service if they
believed in God or what message was conveyed in the sign of the cross they were
making, I was not at all conscious of this when constructing the questionnaire. I did not
yet understand that the specificity of this type of ceremony lies precisely in the fact that
adherence to the gestures, symbols, and credo expressed is depersonalized because it is
assumed collectively. The condition for its success lies in releasing those participants
who wish to be released from any justification or explanation (they can take part while
thinking of something else, in other words without believing in it). I was not yet familiar
with the Langs article about MacArthur Day in Chicago,6 which was about one of the
stops in the triumphal tour made by the general after his forced return from Korea. It is

See, for example, the classic work, M. Edelman, Politics as Symbolic Action (Chicago: Markham Publishing
Company, 1971).

K. Lang and G. Engel Lang, The Unique Perspective of Television and Its Effect: A Pilot Study, American
Sociological Review 18, no. 1 (1953).

still, even today, a model empirical study for the analysis of mass approval
ceremonies, to use Robert Paxtons formula.7 If I had been familiar with it, I would
have realized the extent to which the behaviors and forms of the event are preestablished on both sides, by the organizers as well as the public or, to put it another
way, the extent to which the social institution of the tour is essentially based on
expectations, the absence of which would strongly disappoint the public.
However, let us return to the Lille study. At first, the task appeared to me to be
complete. Nearly three hundred questionnaires had been filled out and I had interesting
demographic information about the public attending the event and at my disposal.
Disappointment soon set in however. First of all, my friends who had administered the
survey had told me about the respondents perplexity when they saw the questions. I
noted that many of the questions had not been answered, in particular those where I
had asked people to explain their attendance, to say what they thought of the event, or to
give their opinion on specific elements of the ceremony. People had either basically
repeated belief expressions when this had been present in the wording (a way of
avoiding the issue, for example, yes, it is important to be there because it shows that we
are united, because it is an important event, because after all it is the president, etc.) or,
more often, they had given no response at all, often considering the questions to be
incongruous. For a long time, I left this part of the survey aside, believing that I had
worded things badly, rather than trying to understand what these silences said about the
event and its function. For me, it was a technical problem to do with the survey, not the
objectives. I would say now that the survey was not badly constructed (leaving aside the
demographic section and the information it provided on the respondents); it was just
meaningless.
Let us now attempt to expand the scope of this very classic problem. Does studying an
event that involves an audience mean having to understand how it is received by this
audience? In other words, what are we doing when we give in, as I did, to the common
temptation to say, does understanding the reality of a mass political event (a
7

R. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York: Knopf, 2004).

demonstration, a meeting, the introduction of a new public policy measure) mean

having to verify its effectiveness with the targeted audience? What I mean is, are we
right to believe that the solution lies in going to find answers by asking people, for
example, why are you here, why are you doing that (cheering, booing), what do you
think about it, what is your opinion of . . . ?
So far, I have mainly referred to surveys by questionnaire. However, the issue certainly
does not just apply to the methods or techniques inherent in a survey. In this type of
quest for respondents beliefs, opinions, values, or other internal representations, the
fact that it is done using questionnaires, interview, or by examining archives makes no
real difference to the core issue. In all cases, it is a matter of examining the personal
motivations of those being studied, either directly, by asking them, (questionnaires or
interviews) or indirectly, using documents generated by those who were in charge of
monitoring or reporting on the event. This equivalence of methods is observable in the
work done by historians on festivals and ceremonies and also, to a large extent, on
demonstrations and other collective mobilizations. What does this work on the events
reception by its audience involve for these researchers? Their end results amount to
putting forward, using many boxes and stockrooms of archives, an inventory, which is
as precise and complete as possible, of the variety of behaviors and attitudes in the
audience.8 For Hazareesingh, the method (to carry out a thorough inspection of the
departmental archives and festivities that are as representative as possible of territorial
balances) was thus perfectly congruent with the goal of the study, which was to show
that the citizen emerges under the influence of the empire. This book is intended as a
tribute to the political individualism of the French citizen,9 he wrote in his
introduction. Should we be surprised, however, that by increasing the number of
8

See, in particular, R. Dalisson, Les Trois couleurs, Marianne et lEmpereur. Ftes librales et politiques
symboliques en France, 18151870 (Paris: La Boutique de lHistoire, 2004) and S. Hazareesingh, The SaintNapoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College). [S.
Hazareesingh, La Saint-Napolon. Quand le 14 juillet se ftait le 15 aot, trans. Guillaume Villeneuve (Paris:
Tallandier, 2007)]

Hazareesingh, La Saint-Napolon, 29. (Note: All citations from this work have been translated into English by the
translator of this paper.)

observations, he ends up concluding that Within each dpartment [French

administrative area], there were localities where the Saint-Napoleon was warmly and
enthusiastically celebrated, and otherssometimes just a few miles awaywhere the
opposite was the case?10 Above all, and we will come back to this point, is it really a
decisive step forward to attest to the diversity that characterizes any collective practice?
To qualify this kind of attempt (and once again, I think it is fairly generalized in
sociological work on mobilizations), I will use the terms proposed recently by Boltanski
contrasting reality with the world. The author starts out from the observation that,
in sociology, the possibility of radical uncertainty as to what things are really about as
well as the anxiety it produces are too often minimized or even unsatisfactorily
masked. If we apply this to the field of festivals and ceremonies, we find that each one is
subject to the risk of accident or failure. A consequence of the fragility of things, the
description proposed by Boltanski of life in society leads him to reintegrate this radical
uncertainty through the opposition between, on the one hand, the world, namely
everything that happens that is uncertain and unpredictable and, on the other hand,
reality, defined as that which hangs together.11 In this sense, uncertainty is connected
to the world, while reality is the space where risk is measurable and controllable. We can
say it yet another way: if the world represents that which is uncertain and hazardous in
our existence, reality tends to provide stability and permanence. It is this uncertain
world that, through critiques drawn from events, threatens the institutional
arrangements of reality and makes it fragile.12
What is the point of this opposition for analyzing the types of political ceremony we
have been discussing? We can show this by saying that, through looking first at
individual appropriations of the ceremonial message, the specialist in the reception of
events is not (or barely) interested in the material or mental reality of the rite as it is
10

Hazareesingh, La Saint-Napoleon, 16.

11

L. Boltanski, De la critique. Prcis de sociologie de lmancipation (Paris: Gallimard, 2009). (Note: All
translations of citations from this work have been translated into English by the translator of this paper. No official
English translation is in the public domain.)

12

L. Boltanski, De la critique, 9195.

defined and pre-established by its institutions, particularly because these are viewed as
limitations to the expression of the agents free creativity or deep feelings. What this
specialist is trying to understand, from his inventory of personal reactions, is the world
itself in all its diversity. However, this quest to encompass the vast world of participant
reactions is, to my mind, subject to two potentially damaging risks.
The first, which is almost unavoidable and already apparent in the case of SaintNapoleon, lies in being able to observe nothing more than an infinite fragmentation of
meanings.13 We can obviously consider this risk to be negligible given the large number
of studies whose principal result consists in describing, with endless lists as supporting
evidence, the extraordinary variety of exhibited behaviors, depending on the different
cases and circumstances. In my opinion, however, affirming this fragmentation does not
necessarily represent an advance in knowledge. I think this risk is absolutely real and I
think it is clear in the disappointment we feel when reading some studies of political
rites. These may represent a lovely catalogue of festivals across the villages of France,
but they leave us dissatisfiedthis collection of beliefs that are like a stamp collection or
a museum piece, like the treasures collected by anthropologists at the end of the
nineteenth century. We also see it at work in historical studies of public opinion, such as
those based on analyses of censored mail during the two world wars.14 The authors
quote extracts from pro letters and then other sections from anti correspondence.
Hidden in the middle of this juxtaposition is meant to be the unobtainable average
opinion, but the inventory ultimately leads to the conclusion that there are fors and
againsts.15 Lastly, we can see this danger in the recent popularity of attempts to pin
13

L. Boltanski, De la critique, 92.

14

See A. Cochet, Lopinion et le moral des soldats en 1916 daprs les archives du contrle postal (PhD thesis,
Universit Paris X, 1986) and F. Lagrange, Moral et opinions des combattants franais durant la Premire Guerre
mondiale daprs les rapports du contrle postal de la IVe arme (PhD thesis, Universit Paris IV, 2009). On
Vichy, see the classic work by P. Laborie, Lopinion franaise sous Vichy. Les Franais et la crise didentit
nationale, 19361944 (Paris: Seuil, 2001).

15

For more developed critical discussions, see A. Loez, Pour en finir avec le moral des combattants, in Combats.
Hommage Jules Maurin, ed. J. F. Muracciole and F. Rousseau (Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2010) and B. Gati,
Lopinion publique dans lhistoire politique: impasses et bifurcations, Le Mouvement Social 221 (2007).

down feelings and classify political emotions, the latest El Dorado in the sociology of
mobilizations.16 As with studies on opinions, research faces a constant risk of exhaustion
given the truly interminable (because it is infinite) nature of identifiable testimonies
(without even discussing their solidity).
The second risk inherent in the search for public reactions lies in remaining
straitjacketed by the Western citizen norm. In the social perspective for analysis that I
have been discussing, the goal is to reveal what remains hidden behind apparently
shared decorum and behaviors. The event becomes worthy of interest when we can see
in it the expression of multiple opinions, beyond the apparent homogeneity of attitudes.
There is a shared objective for all these inventories, which, even in the most
orchestrated of events (ceremony, elections), is that of individuals who retain free will,
self-sufficiency, autonomy of the will, Eigensinn, and even agency.
Second point to note: I want to point out in passing that this goal of reaffirming agents
autonomy of the will can have very different political motivations. These range from
illustrating the autonomy of the working classes even in festivals orchestrated and
controlled by the dominant classsuch as in Thompsons analysis of charivari17to
showing that, even in the ex-Soviet-bloc countries (to cite but one example), ordinary
people were less submissive than first appeared. However, we can see that, while the
political continuum is broad, these efforts all tend in the same direction. They almost
always attempt to reveal the autonomy behind the conformism and rarely show how
resting on the social institutions is a much more frequent attitude than we think. This
includes the most militant activists because they are the most accustomed to the
machinery of collective action.

16

See the work by James Jaspers with titles evocative of this desire to rediscover agents creative autonomy: The Art
of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1997) and Getting Your Way (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) or his article A Strategic Approach to
Collective Action: Looking for Agency in Social Movement Choices, Mobilization 9, no. 1 (2004).

17

E. P. Thompson, Rough Music: le charivari anglais, Annales ESC 27, no. 2 (1972).

We can sum up the consequences of these two risks by exaggerating them slightly.
Choosing to study the beliefs and opinions of participants means accumulating obstacles
that block the way to perceiving how most of our actions are pre-established by social
institutions, in particular when these are public and collective. It means not being able
to see that we can participate without belief or even while thinking about or doing
something else. This is particularly so because these are actions that go without saying,
in other words they are meant to be accomplished without the need for participating
individuals to justify them. I think that we end up here in a kind of internal
contradiction inherent to an analysis of the reception of an institutionalized event. The
researcher asks people to judge their own behavior, even though it is in fact preestablished and framed so as to free its agent from needing to formulate such a
judgment or justification.18
When I was giving my oral presentation, many participants were looking at their cell
phones. It is part of the nature of this type of public meeting to preserve a dimension of
freedom by allowing those present to not fully participate. It is enough that the forms of
the situation be respected overall, such as relative silence during presentations (but
whispering is allowed because it could show interest or at least allow the speaker to
think so), sometimes applause when a speaker is finished or at least a polite return to
attention (listeners lift their heads and sit up in their seats), and a few questions or
comments from those who are dedicated. If every research seminar or conference
required absolute concentration on the part of its listeners for and about every topic, no
one would run the risk of attending.
From this perspective, I think that, what is decisive for social science, is not to inventory
the immense possible variety of individual opinions and judgments, but rather to
determine in what way the event is based on shared ideas and procedures that are never
discussed and which allow it to be recognized. This is what I have tried to do by working
on the process of depersonalization of instruments of celebration. The meaning of
18

For further development of this point, see F. Hran, Le rite et la croyance, Revue Franaise de Sociologie 27,
no. 2 (1986).

10

gestures (applause, cheers, banners) preexists their expression; they in no way depend
on what people have in their heads nor, in particular, on their intentions.19
Now I would like to expand the scope of the subject by leaving behind my ceremonial
settings to look at other studies, which, to my mind, deal with the same sociological
problem when confronted with cases of non-response. Among the possible choices, we
could take a moment to look at the work of Orange. In two recent articles, the author
takes a fresh look at the doctoral research in which she had tried to understand the
reasons why students, mostly from the working and middle classes, chose advanced
vocational training courses (post-baccalaureate courses leading to the senior technician
diplomas [Brevet de technician suprieure BTS]).20 A key aspect of the study involved
passing out self-administered questionnaires in the classes. The students were asked to
think about the choices they had made the previous year (their final year of high school)
and also to explain the reasons behind their choice of further study.
Orange soon saw that respondents regularly tripped up on a decisive question. It was
the one asking them to recall the list of choices they had made during their final year of
high school. Some respondents stumbled over this question and ended up abandoning
it, saying I dont remember. The author thus showed the existence of a very wide gap
between the choices actually made during the final year of high school and those that the
respondents were able to recall later. Nothing very surprising in that so far. Braconnier
and Dormagen have shown how some of their study subjects could not remember their

19

For further development of this point, please refer to my earlier articles: Quest-ce quun enthousiasme
civique? Sur lhistoriographie des ftes politiques en France aprs 1789, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 63,
no.1 (2008) and Does Acclamation Equal Agreement? Rethinking Collective Effervescence through the Case of
the Presidential Tour de France during the 20th Century, Theory & Society 40, no. 2 (2001).

20

S. Orange, Le choix du BTS. Entre construction et encadrement des aspirations des bacheliers dorigine
populaire, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 183 (2010), and Interroger le choix des tudes
suprieures. Les leons dun rat denqute, Genses 89 (forthcoming).

11

vote from one round of an election to the next.21 How then can we think that high school
students might remember even more complex and distant choices?
The situation got worse, however, when the author added, very logically, a question of
opinion or judgment: What were the two strongest motivations for your decision to
pursue a BTS? Several students dried up completely and were stuck. The researcher
pushed them: But still, you must have some idea . . . This got them no further and,
after a long pause, they ended up answering: Because you have to stay in school. The
author then showed that the problem raised by the non-responses is neither a question
of method (there were items missing) nor entirely a lack of memory, but in fact a core
sociological issue. This failure helps us see what is too often forgotten or what remains
invisible when we force an answer. The act of choosing a course of study may not be a
decision in the sense that it is often driven by social institutions (school, friends, family)
and, furthermore, it is experienced as a requirement over which students have little
influence (you have to stay in school). Contrary to what is assumed by requiring an
individual and solitary response to a questionnaire, the question asked does not come
from a decision made with full awareness and is not a solitary and personal act. In fact,
Orange showed how the choice of study was, in many cases, not an individual choice
because it may not have been a choice at all. The author described particularly
illuminating scenarios where the decision was made among and with friends when it
was time to fill out the forms in class, an exercise like any other, and that the head
teacher consciously left the students alone with their decisions and responsibilities.
I would like to finish by closing the circle, in fact by coming back to what is now an old
issue of Politix, as old as my Lille questionnaire: the May 1993 issue entitled Des votes
pas comme les autres. I would point out that, at that time of course, I was absolutely
incapable of making the connection between the two. Why mention this issue? Because
it contains two articles that raise, with evocative titles, questions very similar to those I
have been asking and in a form that is doubtless more familiar to political scientists.
21

C. Braconnier and J. Y. Dormagen, La dmocratie de labstention. Aux origines de la dmobilisation lectorale en

milieu populaire (Paris: Gallimard, 2007).

12

These are the articles by Franceries, Des votes aveugles. Lexemple des lecteurs FN en
milieu populaire (Blind votes: The example of NF voters in the working classes), and by
Daniel Gaxie, Le vote dsinvesti. Quelques lments danalyse des rapports au vote
(The disinterested vote: Some elements for analyzing relationships to voting).
I cannot, in the space available, summarize the former, but simply wanted to note that it
is based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with National Front voters and to quote
the first two subsection headings, which are fairly explicit in relation to what I have just
described and save me having to go into further detail: Where we learn that voting is
not a political gesture and Where it appears that voting requires no further comment.
In short, the author showed that, to understand why and how these voters chose to vote
(because they did, in fact, vote) for the National Front, we cannot rely on what they said
because they said nothing about it or perceived their action outside of the sphere of
ideology.
In relation to Gaxies article, I will again say just a few words directly related to my topic.
The article is based on a survey by questionnaire at the exit of the polling stations during
the 1989 municipal elections in Amiens. The author begins by pointing out that, of the
3,000 voters asked, fewer than half (1,353) agreed to respond. Of all the results
obtained, I will settle on a single percentage which clearly calls to mind the
questionnaire administered to the vocational students described above. More than a
quarter (28.5%) of respondents gave no answer to the question of what counted the
most for them in their voting decision. This percentage rose to 35% for those with no
qualifications, manual workers, and those who were not very interested in politics, and
even to 44% for those who declared themselves not at all interested in politics. This was
true even though they had a significant selection of possible responses to choose from,
which ranged from most to least political (services provided, personality of the leading
candidate, composition of the list, a general issue, the state of the city,
accomplishments, program, political considerations, other responses). I simply want to
comment on these few results by adding that, while we are right to focus on the
investment differential based on class, this should not lead us to forget the significance
of the average rate (more than a quarter of non-responses). In every social category, the
13

phenomenon of resting on social institutions exists. Moreover, giving a response does

not necessarily mean a strong and ongoing commitment. Recent studies have shown, in
addition, that disinterested or collective voting can be a socially shared activity, such as
among Web users in the 16th arrondissement of Paris (taking, for example, the Paris en
campagne survey).22
By way of conclusion, we can suggest that, on the basis of these three examples of
partially incomplete questionnaires, we simply have to bear in mind that the nonresponses are not just a technical problem to do with the formulation of the questions,23
nor are they simply a problem restricted to responses from the working classes. The
regularity with which social science surveys on a whole range of subjects register blank
responses such as these raises a much broader sociological question that I think too
often goes unnoticed. It is the fact that, in many areas of our societal lives, our actions
seriously lack commitment. To the question, what is the use, in social sciences, of
studying beliefs? I would therefore respond (jokingly) that the process should at least
show that, for many social activities, people do not have any beliefs and that they
manage very well without them. Beyond such evasions, this conclusion seems to me to
be important for thinking more deeply than we usually do about the role played by
conformism in our societies. One possible way to develop studies of this topic could thus
consist in systematically examining the material systems and institutions of meaning
attached to each of our social activities and the fact that we mobilize them without
paying them any attention. Both share an interesting quality in that they are
immediately observable. It is in this sense that these pre-established ways of doing and
thinking make up what I called in the title a habitus from the outside: their power is
external to individuals and therefore does not depend on what people think of them.

22

See . Agrikoliansky and S. Lvque, Les absents du scrutin: logiques de la dmobilisation lectorale and .
Agrikoliansky, J. Heurtaux, and B. Le Grignou, Des conduites sans croyance? Mobiliser dans les beaux
quartiers in Paris en campagne. Les lections municipales de mars 2008 dans deux arrondissements parisiens,
ed. . Agrikoliansky, J. Heurtaux, and B. Le Grignou (Bellecombe-en-Bauges: ditions du Croquant, 2011).

23

On this point, see the work of J. P. Grmy, Questions et rponses: quelques rsultats sur les effets de la
formulation des questions dans les sondages, Socits Contemporaines 16 (1993).

14