En chantier de te retrouver

• Main Author: Fanny Girin
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Éditions de la Sorbonne 2016-06-01
• Series: Socio-anthropologie
• Subjects: Naval Shipyards; Refinery; Reputation; Subcontracting; Temporary Staff; Industrial Site
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/socio-anthropologie/2063

Though outsourcing is leading to the disappearance of traditional collectives, other types of social ties are emerging. The latter are not based on production-directed statuses but on a system of reputation that aims to maintain people on site. Based on observations from two temporary building sites at naval shipyards and a petrol refinery, this text explores these relations from the perspective of the subcontractors and the contracting parties. The first site shows how monitoring one’s reputation fits into the work of the subcontractor. The second highlights the ways in which the client’s agents feed into this reputation while also seeking to de-emphasize their role as contracting parties, which is a source of pressure on workers. The study as a whole shows that the ephemeral collectives which grow up around these building sites intermesh with other longer-term collectives that are nevertheless based on the principle of the ephemeral.