Politics: Understanding a Volatile Realm

Abstract

This chapter is written while observing a shift in political practices: the political activity in parliament seems to have shifted away from its traditional center of debate toward peripheral loci. Political activity seems to have been dislocated. I redefine politics as a form of a conflictual event which used to take place in parliament. Politics as a form of conflictual event does however not correspond to the classical definition of politics or to an organizational activity. While investigating what happens in organizations as far as situations where personal positions come into conflict with organizational logics are concerned, one can see that politics does happen in organizations. In ordinary speech and in organizational logics, we seldom consider these situations to be politics, even if they correspond to my definition of the term. In order to deepen the analysis of this conception of politics, I shall use a case study which allows me to refine my definition with specific characteristics that go along with the phenomenon of a displaced political activity. This finally brings me to citizenship as a useful concept for understanding conflictual situations at the periphery of organizations.