Sur la Zone: A Critical Sociology of the Parisian Dangerous Classes (1871–1973)

Abstract

This article contributes to the sociology of urban marginality and of the Lumpenproletariat and makes a rare attempt to describe la Zone, a territory on the edge of Paris that was occupied by the “dangerous classes” for over a century. The study takes an inductive approach fueling critical analysis with material drawn in part from social surveys and in part from literature and popular culture. It identifies a dialectical tension in the various descriptions of la Zone, which, despite strong social and political contrasts, converge in their shared distrust or even open suspicion of these Parisian margins. This discursive structure, made up of oppositions and combinations of contraries, also recalls the forms of social control to which the classes viewed as dangerous can be subjected, within this case study and beyond.