International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 114

Underestimating the Political Dimension in Urban and Geopolitical Violence
affiliation based on interaction, 12 i.e. of a subject also being an actor who is capable
of 13 acting, understanding, and doing, 14 within the context of a group (from the
couple to the state) as defined by the Parsonian model of institutional individualism,
15 and as currently understood for example by social epistemology in studying
the degree of naturalness. 16
This epistemological argument will be established as follows: in the light
of various examples, we will assess the pertinence of analyzing a particular act or
behavior (by a person or structure) in itself, not by simply describing a normative
ought. In other words, we will consider a subject as the morphological sign of a
political motivation to shape a reality in order to bind it to an affiliation and derive
from it a particular status; and to do so irrespective of whether the historic social
form in which it is presented varies across different individuals and societies.
*
I
Political Affiliation Formalizes Status Affiliation
Yves Sintomer and Marie-Hélène Bacqué use the “key concept” of “disaffiliation”
to study “former working-class towns in the Paris area,” specifically
Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers (Bacqué and Sintomer 2001, 217). The two
authors observe that these neighborhoods must not be studied solely from the
perspective of marginalization—with the integration/exclusion binomial in some
sense replacing “class conflict” (ibid)—because the populations they study appear
12 Weber (2019 [1921], 338-9): “( ... ) rulership is the chance that specific (or all) commands will be
met with obedience on the part of a specifiable group of persons. It is not therefore each and every
kind of chance of exercising ‘power’ and ‘influence’ over other people. In this sense, in the individual
instance rulership (‘authority’) can also rely on the most varied motives for conformity: from dull
habituation to purely purposively rational considerations. Present in every genuine relationship of
rule is a specific minimum of willingness to obey, hence an (outward or inner) interest in obedience.”
13 Julien Freund (1967, 37) states that the “specific objective of politics is determined based on the
sense of a collective, i.e. it consists of the will of a political unit to preserve its integrity and independence
in internal harmony and external security. ( ... ) politics is also the place—but not the
only place—where man attempts to give consistency to general and ultimate human ends, such as
justice, freedom, happiness, etc.” In The Politics, (IV, 4, 1291a, 15-20) Aristotle takes up the claim in
Plato’s Republic that a city is also formed “for the sake of the necessaries of life,” one of which is “the
common advantage” (III, 7, 1279a, 10), making it possible to lead a “good life” (I, 2, 1252b, 30). We
should also not forget that for Aristotle his Nicomachean Ethics is “in a sense the study of Politics” in
that the “Good,” among others, “must be the end of the science of Politics” (I, 3), which he specifies
in The Politics (I, 2, 1253a).
14 Baechler 2000.
15 Bourricaud 1977.
16 Bouvier and Conein 2007.
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