INTERVIEW
After almost a month of confinement due to coronavirus, the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, is preparing to announce an extension of these measures, Monday evening. The uncertainty around the end date of these strict travel restrictions remains a major source of stress for the population. The French have changed their way of life, their relationships with their loved ones. Jean Viard, sociologist and associate director at Cevipof-CNRS tells the face of French society confined to Europe 1.
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A future to create
"Not only are we confined, and we don't really know where we're going. I think no one really knows. Even individually, we are a little cautious," analyzes the sociologist. "We did a month as a family, as a couple, it's fragile. We walk a little on eggs anyway. On a personal level, intimate it is not easy and we have no horizons."
"Will there be an economic crisis? Are we going to get this world to be a little more united, equal? Are we going to get this tragedy to allow us actions a little more positive? Or on the contrary terrible confrontations? "wonders Jean Viard.
"We had more in common, more future. We were living in a time when people dreamed of the past," analyzes the sociologist. "The future was global warming, inequalities ... We had no representations of the future. There somewhere we found a 'common', even if it is a war common, to use the president's words . We stick together, we stand together for those who are fighting. " Confinement would be experienced as "a small punishment" compared to health care workers and professions on the front line.
The question is: what to do with this common. The sociologist warns: after the great historical ruptures, such as the world conflicts, the choices were not more united: Nazism, cold war. "There is collaboration and the rise of borders. Everything remains open, it will depend on what one chooses. The door is open but it can open on the wrong side."
A future war against global warming
For the sociologist, the use of the word war in this fight against the virus is not shocking. "In any society there is normally a culture of peace, an economy of peace and at the same time we must prepare for war. We only prepared ourselves by armament and we forgot the essential : the care of populations. In a way, this fight against the virus, the idea that a virus can destroy an economy, a hyper-technical society, somewhere that makes us humble and reminds us that the conflict must be anticipated in times of peace. "
"This prepares us for the idea of the gigantic war to be waged against global warming. Man is not master and possessor of nature. I think that we are in dialogue with nature, we are part of it , we are one species among species. We are so powerful that we tend to forget it but our power has a limit: nature has an independent life ", underlines Jean Viard. "We may not have respected nature as it deserved and it is rebelling."