Presentation of the book "The post, the traitor and the balance. The moral life of cities »
When: 24.09.2026 20:00
Where: 48.850289, 2.326965
Organizer: Admin
The pole, the traitor, the balance: three figures that say everything
of a world where friendship is an ethics, and disloyalty, a sentence.
Discover the suburbs as a moral universe traversed by demands
loyalty, power relations and tensions between success,
respect and betrayal.
The Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme organises an evening of presentation of the book The stake, the traitor and the scale. The moral life of the cities, to be published by Créaphis in September 2026.
This session of "Books in Dialogue" will welcome Kamel Boukir, author of the book, in dialogue with journalist Sylvain Bourmeau.
At the end of this meeting, you will have the opportunity to ask all your questions to our guests.
About the book
Taken as a form of life, the suburbs are less a margin than a moral region, with its epicentre and its peripheries. The polarity of this landscape revolves around a triptych: the "post", the "treasoner" and the "balance", with on its fringes the family, the neighbourhood and educational and republican institutions. These hyperbolic figures of fidelity and betrayal draw an environment where an ethic of the challenge reigns and a sense of dismeasurement. Kamel Boukir's sociological inquiry questions the conception of an accomplished moral life: what are the links between each and every one of them? What happens to friendship when a delinquent trajectory throws childhood friends at the edge of paranoia, which works the struggle for goods and prestige at the crossroads of three hierarchical orders: the order of generations, charismatic grandeur and economic success? The postface of Daniel Cefai places this ethnography in the context of the discussions of contemporary urban sociology.
; Credits: © Editions Créaphis
About the speakers
Kamel Boukir is a sociologist and master of
conferences at EHESS. His work focuses on youth and the
Deviance, from the angle of a moral sociology where he explores the
loyalty conflicts that arise when childhood friendship sinks in
Criminal complicity. Among his publications: "Are I the guardian of my brother?" The
(Terrain, No. 72, 2022)
"We're city guys!"
morals: local spirit of youth gangs in the suburbs
(Daniel Cefai et al. (ed.), Human Ecology, a Science
social life milieus, Creaphis, 2024). At the same time, his passion for the mountain put him in contact with the
exploration stories. He introduced and translated the Journal of
Black explorer at the North Pole of Matthew A. Henson (Sensible Areas,
2020).
Sylvain Bourmeau has taken part since the end of the
the 1980s at the launch of three sustainable media successes:
political science journal Politix, weekly Les Inrockuptibles
(of which he was Deputy Director of Editorial between 1994 and 2008);
the online daily Mediapart (of which he was part of the small group
from 2008 to 2011). He was, moreover,
Deputy Editor of Libération and Associate Professor at
The School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences. He is the author of Bâtonnage , a collection of poetry, published in 2017 at
publications Stock and the author and director of a collection of
30 documentary films, "The Intellectuals of the 21st Century"
produced by Les Films d'Ici for France Télévisions and They are not
the extreme right, they make the extreme right, to appear to the editions of
Discovered in September. Director of the daily idea AOC, Sylvain Bourmeau was also
producer of "La Suite dans les Ideas" on France Culture
and associate professor at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Source: https://www.paris.fr/evenements/presentation-de-l-ouvrage-les-refus-de-la-maternite-117273
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