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Experience of the City - Small Urban Sociology of the Café - ×
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EPISTÉMÈ Vol.2 pp.123-133
Experience of the City - Small Urban Sociology of the Café -
Key Words : City,Urban Sociology,Café,Public Space,Urbanization,Modernity,Leisure
Abstract
The public space is a notion much used in human and social sciences since the thesis of Jürgen Habermas entitled “The public space”. In this work, Habermas describes “the process during which the public constituted by individuals making use of their reason appropriates the public sphere controlled by the authority and transforms it into a sphere where the criticism practices against the power of the State”. The process in question is to be dated in the XVIIIth century in England (about thirty years later in France), century of development of the urbanization and the emergence of the notion of space deprived in the bourgeoisie of cities. Habermas shows how the meetings of lounge and cafés contributed to the reproduction of the discussions and the political debates, which enjoy an publicity through the media of this time (epistolary relations, rising press). The café is the place of the familiarity, the support of the urban sociability. It is also a tool of the construction of the social link. He allows to normalize the interactions which become established between the individuals. It is a recognized exit of the world of the leisure activities. It is because the city, and more particularly the café, is conceived as the place of the fulfillment of our modernity and the manufacturing of the citizen. We find collected the symbols of an integrated social system there: the political activity, the justifiable culture … We multiply the friendly or loving meetings there.