A peaceful society is one that knows how to adapt and overcome the tensions within it. However, it is a society of compromise that can be accompanied by frustrations and demands – due in particular to the deterioration of living and working conditions and class inequalities – that must not be hidden, and to which must be addressed.
To achieve this peaceful society, Françoise Benhamou suggests the courses of action to be prioritised. According to her, school is the lifeblood of the matter. It is at school that inequalities can be erased or worsened. It is therefore necessary to focus everything on education, for example by strengthening the attractiveness of education professions and by putting the values of democracy back on the curriculum.
A peaceful society is a society of trust, and this can only be achieved through the quality of its public service offer, to which we can add the cultural offer, which is essential for building coexistence. In addition, associations play a key role in preserving social ties, a key element in stemming the isolation observed at the territorial level.
It is also imperative, according to the author, to find the relevant information and communication tools on all these subjects, in order to achieve a peaceful society.
What is a peaceful society?
To the question of the definition of a peaceful society, everyone could go from one answer to another… A peaceful society is undoubtedly a safer society, engaging in serene debates, capable of confronting ideas and proposals, but without the violence that sometimes accompanies it. Only a peaceful society can accept and take ownership of much-needed reforms, and overcome the tensions or contradictions that the conduct of private or public affairs inevitably generates. For example, the requirements of the environmental transition may lead to the refusal of certain factories… which the requirements of reindustrialisation, industrial sovereignty and territorial development lead us to recommend. It is then necessary to develop the industrial project to adapt it to environmental standards and convince a reluctant population of the importance of the project. Because a peaceful society is a society of compromise, it can be accompanied by frustrations and resentments that cannot be answered with a simple wave of the hand.
A subject at the heart of the public debate
Jérôme Fourquet has shown that there is an “archipellization” of French society, a fragmentation that feeds on the absence of common unifying projects and, more profoundly, on the dislocation of cultural matrices. Among these, he points to de-Christianization, the fragmentation of the traditional electoral benchmarks that constituted political parties, the questioning of secularism, etc.
This erosion of the fundamentals of living together and of common values is reflected both in the importance of abstention from electoral appointments and in the rise of personal and individualistic aspirations to the detriment of more civic aspirations. It paves the way for the authorities’ refusal, even if they are linked to experience or competence. In the background, criticism of institutions can lead to withdrawal or violence. Where Albert Hirshmann evoked three possible paths in the face of the failures of public or private institutions, voice, exit, loyalty, the first two prevail, in the form of demands that can lead to anger, or defection, of the choice to stand aside from a society that ceases to be inclusive.
The reproduction of inequalities from one generation to the next remains significant; However, the social ladder is not totally broken. Indeed, while children from wealthy families are three times more likely to be among the top 20% of their families than those from low-income families, we can see that for the same level of parental income, children’s incomes vary, and above all that 12% of young people from the poorest families are among the top 20% of their age group.
This is what philosophy calls “extreme democracy”, or what Dominique Schnapper, in his book The Democratic Spirit of Laws, describes as “ultra-democracy” or “radical democracy”. It thus refers to the drift from a society where democracy is exercised within an institutional framework to the demand for unlimited democratic aspirations that call into question all authority and all institutions. How can we understand such a “democratic malaise”? Can this be explained by the deterioration of the working and living conditions of certain categories? The Observatory of Inequality, in its 2023 report on inequalities in France, describes France as a country where “inequalities between social classes remain acute”. The authors, Hicham Abbas and Michaël Sicsic, propose an original measure of intergenerational income mobility in France by directly linking parents’ incomes to those of their 28-year-old children. Their results, based on 2018 data, show that intergenerational inequalities need to be analysed in great detail. The reproduction of inequalities from one generation to the next remains significant; However, the social ladder is not totally broken. Indeed, while children from wealthy families are three times more likely to be among the top 20% of their families than those from low-income families, we can see that for the same level of parental income, children’s incomes vary, and above all that 12% of young people from the poorest families are among the top 20% of their age group.
Nevertheless, the feeling of a breakdown in the social ladder, of a deterioration in the chances of progression in the income scale, and the fear of a “social descensor” – if we can put it that way – which would manifest itself in a downgrading for the children’s generation, are very strong in the middle classes. The assurance of an improvement in living conditions from one generation to the next has been replaced by the fear of a deterioration in the future of children. It is striking to note that some even fear falling into poverty: according to the DREES opinion barometer, in 2018, in metropolitan France, 24% of people thought they were at risk of becoming poor in the next five years, and 18% already considered themselves poor, a figure up 5 points compared to 2017.
This climate is nourished by a double questioning about the school. The first relates to the level obtained by pupils, whose Pisa rankings show the deterioration over time and the growing inability to compensate, even partially, for the inequalities at the outset. The second concerns the school’s ability to transmit republican values. On the first point, we observe that between CP and CM2, about 70% of students with difficulties in French or mathematics improve their results when they belong to a very privileged background, compared to 42% in the opposite extreme (Report on inequalities, Observatory of Inequality, June 2023). In other words, the family compensates for the inefficiency of the educational institution when its level of education allows it. Without it, inequalities widen.
On the second point, according to the Ministry of Education (Directorate of Evaluation, Foresight and Performance), which regularly publishes a survey on violence in schools (verbal and physical attacks on persons), it will have affected during the 2021-2022 school year, an average of 12.3 serious incidents per 1,000 students (Fréchou, 2023). But the perception of diffuse or actual violence in schools is stronger than what the statistics measure. This is accentuated by dramatic episodes, such as the assassination of Samuel Paty in October 2020. It has deleterious effects on expectations of school and on the attractiveness of jobs in schools.
What should I do?
Because, as we have just seen, social and societal issues are multifaceted, it is not easy to select a few proposals. Of course, a real housing policy, combined with an urban policy (mobility, security, urban planning, etc.) is essential. However, the focus here will be on two main themes: education, and what can be described as the politics of socialization.
Education, Democracy
The question is widely documented: school is the mother of all battles, where social or cultural handicaps manifest themselves, and the place that can aggravate them, maintain them, or compensate for them according to one’s ability to educate, taking into account the variety of children’s abilities, as well as family itineraries and contexts. This is a matter of equal opportunities, preparation for entry into working life, knowing that the educational path is decisive for the point of entry into the job market, transmission of knowledge and republican values, and also of the economy: a note from the CAE (2022) establishes a positive correlation between the level of skills in mathematics and work productivity. A lot is at stake at an early age, and we need to strengthen the efforts already made. However, according to the National Family Allowances Fund (CNAF), nearly half of the 17,000 or so crèches are understaffed: more than 9,500 places, out of some 471,000, are “closed or unoccupied due to recruitment difficulties”. We can therefore highlight these few courses of action:
- Increase the salaries of nursery employees in order to strengthen the attractiveness of the professions;
- Rethinking teachers’ professional careers;
- Strengthen the policy to combat inequalities by reducing the number of students in classes in the most disadvantaged areas;
- However, we must not give in to reducing the debate on schools to the sole question, however essential it may be, of inequality. Launch a major open and participatory debate on the identification of the basic skills necessary for all citizens, and on the definition of a common base of knowledge;
- To create a school of trust, of learning not only the knowledge but also the values of the Republic. Acculturate to the notion of the commons;
- Putting back on the agenda civic education programs based on tools that speak to young people (such as serious games); use social media for this purpose. Explain democracy in all its facets.
Politics of socialization and living together
In a note for the Council of Economic Analysis, we show that an increased effort in favor of culture on the part of a city has a small but robust effect on the abstention rate in elections, and a significant effect on well-being (Alexandre, et al., 2022, Beuve et al. 2022). In the same vein, academic studies conducted in Italy establish a correlation between cultural consumption and reduction in delinquency, all other things being equal (Denti, Crociata & Faggian, 2023). More generally, the presence and quality of public services – like all services that contribute to the improvement of daily life – build trust, which is the raw material of a peaceful society. This does not necessarily mean more public spending, but a reflection on public spending that is more adequate to the needs of the population.
In the same vein, academic studies conducted in Italy establish a correlation between cultural consumption and reduction in delinquency, all other things being equal (Denti, Crociata & Faggian, 2023). More generally, the presence and quality of public services – like all services that contribute to the improvement of daily life – build trust, which is the raw material of a peaceful society. This does not necessarily mean more public spending, but a reflection on public spending that is more adequate to the needs of the population.
Other research (Algan et al. 2020) has shown that isolation is a profound factor in the disintegration of society and malaise. They show that the yellow vest movement of 2018-2019 largely stemmed from this suffering linked to isolation. The authors recommend “redefining the objectives of territorial policies to give more space to well-being criteria, favouring locally initiated projects rather than centralised policies and promoting access to services, whether private or public, in order to preserve social ties in the territories”.
Among the structures that can contribute to the preservation of social ties, associations play a crucial role. While their number (1.3 million active associations in France in 2013 according to the most recent data from INSEE) testifies to the importance of this mode of exercising a certain form of citizenship, this world is poorly known, poorly evaluated, helped without a global vision or identifiable strategy. The September 2020 recovery plan included an increase in public subsidies to anti-poverty associations. But it’s not all about subsidies. It is necessary to carry out an evaluation, draw up a strategy and support associations, including beyond the fight against poverty.
Three courses of action can therefore be favoured in order to move towards a more peaceful society: the one relating to public services, the one relating to the existence of living spaces in rural areas and peripheral neighbourhoods, and the other relating to community life. To this can be added the cultural offer as part of what cements societies and contributes to consolidating living together. None of this can exist without relevant information and communication tools.
- Enhance the quality of public services through reflection and evaluation carried out at the territorial level in participatory exchange formats;
- Fighting loneliness (1). Ensure that there are living spaces that can be equipped with computers, a multipurpose room, and that have moments of animation (such as third places), in territories and neighborhoods that do not have them;
- Fighting loneliness (2). Promote the vitality of the associative world;
- Create information tools on local cultural offerings. Indeed, if there is no cultural desert in the territory, the existence of an offer at affordable rates and nearby is often not well known;
- Work on communication, including digital communication, in public services, while ensuring that there is always a possibility of using a “physical” interlocutor in order to combat digital exclusion.
Bibliography
- Abbas H. & Sicsic M., “A new measure of intergenerational income mobility in France”, INSEE Analyses, 73, May 2022, https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/6441712
- Alexandre O., Algan Y. and Benhamou F., Culture facing the challenges of digital technology and the crisis, Notes du Conseil d’analyse économique, n° 70, February 2022, https://www.cae-eco.fr/la-culture-face-aux-defis-du-numerique-et-de-la-crise
- Algan Y., Malgouyres C. & Senik C., Territories, well-being and public policies, Council of Economic Analysis, Notes of the Council of Economic Analysis, No. 55, 2020, https://www.cae-eco.fr/Territoires-bien-etre-et-politiques-publiques
- Beuve J., Péron M. & Poux C., “Culture, well-being and territories”, Conseil d’analyse économique, Focus n°79, February 2022.
- Denti D. Crociata A. & Faggian A., “Knocking on Hell’s door: dismantling hate with cultural consumption”, Journal of Cultural Economics, 47, 2023, p. 303–349.
- Fourquet J., L’Archipel français. Birth of a Multiple and Divided Nation, Le Seuil, 2019.
- Fréchou H., “Results of the 2021-2022 Sivis survey among public schools and public and private middle and high schools under contract”, Information Note, n° 23.02, DEPP, 2023, https://doi.org/10.48464/ni-23-02
- Hirschman A., Exit Voice & Loyalty – Responses to Decline On Firms Organizations & States, Harvard University Press, 1972.
- Martin R., Renault T. and Roux B., “Decline in productivity in France: failure in maths?”, CAE, Focus N° 091‐2022, September 2022.
- Schnapper D., L’esprit démocratique des lois, Gallimard, coll. “NRF Essays”, 2014.
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