Getting by in rural France: La débrouille as a form of quiet popular resistance?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the informal economic practices adopted by those on low incomes in the French countryside and the different meanings attached to them. Two groups are distinguished: the first, from the agricultural or rural working class, resorts to la débrouille (a term which reflects a set of activities involved in getting by, making do, and being resourceful) out of necessity and do not attach any political significance to these practices; the second, from urban working or lower middle class backgrounds, politicise this way of life as a means of reducing their dependence on the capitalist system. This article is based on interviews and ethnographic material from forty people living in six different rural areas in France. The analysis adopts an emic perspective of la débrouille to question its scientific (and political) interpretation in terms of resistance, showing the diversity of meanings attached to it, ranging from an ambivalent popular ‘sense of self’ to a more politicised appropriation of this working class way of life.

KEYWORDS:

• débrouille
• rurality
• invisible economy
• politicisation
• DIY
• resourcefulness

Acknowledgements

I warmly thank my research contacts for their trust, Ivan Sainsaulieu and Julien Talpin for their support, the two EJPCS reviewers for their very relevant and valuable comments, and Nicolas Carter for this high-quality translation. This article takes part in the special issue coordinated by Ivan Sainsaulieu (Lille, CLERSE) and Julien Talpin (CNRS, CERAPS): The discreet mobilisations of subaltern classes and groups: Adaptation tactics or alternative forms of life?

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Le système D – D for débrouille or its more ‘emphatic’ variant démerde – is pithily explained by Robert Neuwirth (2011) as ‘the ingenuity economy, the economy of improvisation and self-reliance, the do-it-yourself, or DIY, economy’.

2 These three French non-profits work with people (private individuals and farmers) in financial difficulty, offering assistance in the form of food banks, legal support, and training. Some are based exclusively in rural areas, while others have local centres in every part of the country.

3 Ethno-accounting examines the informal economy, unseen by national accounting systems, encompassing self-manufacturing, forms of mutual aid (barter, gifts), and unpaid or undeclared work. See the collective issue coordinated by Cottereau et al. (2016).

4 Vocational high-school level qualifications.

5 General middle-school lever qualification.

6 An exam-based diploma originally aimed at those leaving school after primary level; discontinued in 1989.

7 To be proficient at la débrouille – to really know how to se débrouiller – is to be débrouillard. Démerde, se démerder and démerdard are mirror equivalents in a more ‘vernacular’ register.

8 Zone à défendre (Zone to Defend): neologism adopted for a militant blockade by ecological activists. The ZAD at Notre-Dame-des-Landes, near Nantes, contributed to the cancellation of a planned new airport; the one at Le Testet (mentioned below), in southwest France, succeeded in preventing the construction of a dam.

9 Before evolving into a wider protest movement, the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Jackets) revolt stemmed from demonstrations against the impact of a new carbon tax on fuel prices in car-dependent rural France.

10 Articles D212-19, D212-27 and D212-36 of the French Rural and Maritime Fishing Code.

11 Article R231-6 of the Rural and Maritime Fishing Code authorises the slaughter of ‘animals of the caprine, ovine, porcine species as well as poultry and lagomorphs when the slaughter is done by the person who reared the animals, and all the animals slaughtered are destined for consumption by his/her family’.

12 The Confédération Paysanne is a left-leaning French farming union that defends small-scale agriculture.