Uncertainty of Exchange : A Case of "economie solidaire" in France(<Special Theme>Accountabilities: An Inquiry into Orders of Things and Humans)

Abstract

This paper explores the "unaccountability" of experience in a world that is becoming more accountable by examining the "economie solidaire" in France as a case study. "Economie solidaire" is a movement that tries to create a sphere of reciprocal exchange or gift economy in local communities, thereby trying to counter the spread of the market economy. I analyze this movement, which started in France in the 1980s, as an effort to construct a more accountable gift economy, and examine its consequences for its participants. In section I, I review a group of works that emphasizes the role of material devices in making social situations more objectively accountable. In this paper, I call such works "dispositif" studies, and try to clarify their features. The notion of "dispositif " (which may be translated as "device" in English) was introduced by Michel Foucault to designate a network of discursive and non-discursive (i.e. material) elements that render a specific type of cognition possible (e.g., about sexuality or madness). Foucault's idea has been inherited by newer theories, such as the "Actor-Network Theory" of Bruno Latour and Michel Callon, the "Convention Theory" of Laurent Thevenot, and the "Governmentality Study" of Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller. Those authors emphasize the importance of such material devices as standards and scales in scientific enterprises, market economy, or administration. To sum up, they demonstrate that: (1) Many social situations are becoming more accountable by virtue of the multiplication of "dispositifs. (2) These "dispositifs" make opaque and uncertain situations objectively intelligible and publicly accountable. (3) The process of "accountabilization" takes place not only in the market economy and neo-liberal administration, but also in protest movements such as the ecological movement or anti-capitalist movement, whose values are publicly justified with the aid of "dispositifs." We can say that "dispositif" studies have thus succeeded in capturing the process of "accountabilization." But they do not make clear the experience of people in that transformation process. I thus set that problem at the core of this paper, and examine it by analyzing the case of "economie solidaire" in France. In sections II and III, I look at "economie solidaire" in France and analyze it as a case of the "accountabilization" process. In section II, I describe the history of "economie solidaire" characterizing it as a reflexive process, i.e., a process in which a social practice is constructed referring to a social scientific theory. Sociologists such as Jean-Louis Laville interpret "economie solidaire" as a re-emergence of reciprocity in the post-welfare state era, following Michael Polanyi's idea. But that schematized interpretation is not just an interpretation, because it informs actors, who in turn form their practices according to it. Thus, in spite of the extreme diversity of "economie solidaire" in practice (ranging from care work for old people to local currency), most of them regard the construction of a reciprocal gift exchange and the creation of a social bond as their principle value. In section III, I look at a local currency association (SEL=systeme d'echange local in French) in southern France as example of "economie solidaire," and describe how this "SEL of the poor" constructs a new gift economy. As with other practices of "economie solidaire," this SEL association tries to create a sphere of reciprocal exchange, not only between those who suffer the social exclusion because of unemployment, but also with the richer people in the local community. The members of the association use the local currency

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