Entre familiarité et étrangeté : enquêter sur un autre monde de l’enseignement supérieur

• Main Author: Olivia Chambard
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre 2019-10-01
• Series: Terrains/Théories
• Subjects: capitalism; social criticism; field work; higher education; entrepreneurship
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/teth/1985

This article provides a reflexive feedback on an ethnographic survey conducted as part of a social science thesis on entrepreneurship education in French higher education. It shows that investigating a field with which the researcher initially maintains a relationship of distant familiarity and a critical a priori can prove fruitful, provided that certain preconceptions are overcome. These one, induced in this case by an approach consisting in studying a segment of higher education where values and practices differ from one's own academic universe, leave room for an analysis of the complexity of the social world studied, without giving up criticism. The article shows how, under certain conditions, an initial "denunciation drive" can have a heuristic value and more generally constitute a driving force for knowledge of universes that are little investigated by the social sciences.