Political Worlds

  Research Group 8, "Political Worlds" (coordinators Eric Darras and Vincent Simoulin) strives to renew scholars’ analyses of political practices by connecting them more closely to media discourse, to lifestyles, and to cultural practices. A major longitudinal study was begun in 2013 with online questionnaires (over 10,000 responses collected). Other studies have explored the discourse on the economic crisis, management policies on the European border  (a study on Lampedusa) and the building of Europe. The first outcome of this group has been the structuring of studies on European construction that were previously fragmented. This interdisciplinary organisation defined a working method (creating pairs of researchers from different disciplines, with considerable  preparation of scholarly events upstream by these pairs).

The second result of this Group has been enriching the approach towards several fields of study by combining different disciplinary analyses. For example, one project in this Group combines political science approaches and lexicometric textual analyses, in particular on discourse related to the economic crisis. Similarly, integrating the sociology of sport perspectives into political sociology has opened up new avenues for research. The third result is methodological innovation, particularly with the longitudinal survey.