Participatory, Self-Managed, Collective Building Projects: When Every Act Is Politicised

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Participatory, Self-Managed, Collective Building

Projects: When Every Act Is Politicised夽
Geneviève Pruvost
Centre d’étude des mouvements sociaux (CEMS), Institut Marcel Mauss, École des hautes études en sciences sociales,
190, avenue de France, 75013 Paris, France
Abstract
Advocates of a practical utopia, committed to the search for consistency between ecological theories
and practices, explore the notions of “participation” and of “work” from a critical perspective on industrial
development. Work is then understood as the adoption of a political stance (ecological, libertarian). In
the world of militant eco-construction, we study variations in the organisation of tasks in participatory, self-
managed and collective building projects, whether in legal frameworks such as worker cooperatives (SCOP),
or in the conflicting setting of a new airport in Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
© 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Division of labour; Ecology; Activism; Eco-Construction; Self-Management; Autonomous Resistance Zones
(ZAD)
Whether work is an obligation or a choice, alienating or fulfilling, productive or reproductive,

and whether one is an employee or self-employed, the same notion of “work” applies, in as
much as it is distinct from family time, leisure or political action – i.e. from “non-work”. Since
the industrial revolution we have seen the gradual development of a standard spatio-temporal
scission between work and other human activities, both private and public (Abbott, 1988). This
division is nevertheless a matter of considerable philosophical and political debates. Social groups
that follow the work carried out by Ivan Illich and André Gorz advocate other dividing lines that
they test out in practical utopias. The reduction of work to a wage-earning activity and to a
commodity, along with the hierarchy between manual “labour” dedicated to self-subsistence on
夽 First published in French: “Chantiers participatifs, autogérés, collectifs: la politisation du moindre geste”, Sociologie
du travail 57 (1), 81-103 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soctra.2014.12.006). Translation: Christopher Hinton.

E-mail address: genevievepruvost2@gmail.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soctra.2016.09.023
0038-0296/© 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article in press as: Pruvost, G., Participatory, Self-Managed, Collective Building Projects:
When Every Act Is Politicised. Sociol. trav. (Paris) (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soctra.2016.09.023
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xxx.e2 G. Pruvost / Sociologie du travail xxx (2016) xxx.e1–xxx.e23
the one hand, and the creativity of artistic work and political action (Arendt, 1993) on the other,
are the object of active critical analysis (Pruvost, 2013): why can work not be an autonomous,
cooperative and inventive activity?
As this re-evaluation of the place occupied by work is mainly driven by political ecology
and libertarian movements, I conducted a study on the everyday correlation between ecological
theories and practices, essentially in three rural regions (Aveyron, Cévennes, Brittany), based on
ninety-five life stories and approximately twenty ethnographical visits between 2010 and 2014.
For this population of craftsmen, farmers, low-ranking civil servants and artists, who combine
part-time domestic, professional and associative activities, and for whom living in a given place
means engaging in local affairs, what does “working” mean? In order to compare peaceable
alternative lifestyles with combative lifestyles, I continued the study in Notre-Dame-des-Landes
between 2012 and 2014. In this article I will confine my analysis to a form of action that was
present in all of the areas studied: self-managed collective projects in the eco-construction sector.
Self-managed collective construction projects reactivate the principle of militant solidarity
and mutual aid at village level and undoubtedly stem from the success enjoyed by participatory
democracy. The level of formalisation is nevertheless different. Against the protocols of public
consultation of users, is set the self-organisation of civil society. In certain militant spaces, because
the term “participatory” is linked to the style of management of the same name and thus has such
negative connotations, the name “collective construction project” is preferred. In order to bring
to light the wide range of alternatives to a wage-earning activity, we will examine three cases
which have in common the fact that they are not based on community utopia (Lacroix, 1981)
but on networking initiatives: firstly, self-managed collective construction projects which bring
together volunteers, self-builders and professionals to build private homes; secondly, building
projects which are self-managed by the members of a worker cooperative (SCOP1 ) specialising
in eco-construction and founded on a principle of equal pay and the rotation of tasks; finally,
collective building projects which are deployed as part of the fight to occupy the site of the future
Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport, where there is radical criticism of market labour and of the
professionalization of the workforce. For clarity of analysis, for each type of building project we
will highlight the conditions for taking part in the construction work, on the understanding that
all of these masons, volunteers and activists appear on the same electronic mailing lists and that
some of them move on from one project to another. The social world of militant eco-construction
belongs to a single “constellation” (Collectif Mauvaise Troupe, 2014) which includes all of these
associated registers of action.
From one end of this spectrum to the other, the notion of “taking part in the work” takes on a
singular meaning: it is eminently voluntary and does not relate to any socioeconomic necessity
or to any hierarchical imposition. Because the idea is to stand apart in all respects from the
pyramid organisation of the building and public works sector, the criteria for taking part in a
building project are extremely well thought out. Right down to the very last detail, the choice of
building materials, tools and work organisation are part of a political stance. Eco-builders are thus
“inquirers” in the sense used by John Dewey. Even if they share the same extensive conception of
work that dissolves all differences between labour and political action, participatory, self-managed
and collective building projects are nevertheless characterised by the status of the workers who
are mobilised, by the skills required, the forms of remuneration, the distribution of tasks and the
final ownership of the building produced.
1 A SCOP, in french “société coopérative et participative”, is a cooperative and participatory company.
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Each of these points allows the actors to position themselves along a scale marking the extent of
their rupture with the world of conventional work, with trade-offs that are the subject of constant
debates on building projects that only an ethnographic approach can grasp. There are no minutes of
meetings, no written reports to document my study of this type of building projects which, unlike
large urban participatory projects, are only marginally institutionalised. Proof that an alternative
way of organising work is possible can only be established in situ, both for the workers and for
sociological observation with a minimum of participation2 .
1. Professionals and laypersons in self-managed collective construction projects
The line between work and non-work is based on the bureaucratisation of activities, on the
increasing size of the organisations involved and on the creation of a job market that is no longer
local (Abbott, 1988), leading to the decline of the “domestic city” (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999).
It then follows that an artisanal or family company model is considered to have a corporatist clan
form which is not destined to develop. The fact that in some cases these forms of employment
may have had a resource and knowledge-sharing dimension and that participation in these small
units may have related to a non-commercial exchange for the common good, is rarely mentioned
throughout an entire segment of historiography, as if it were self-evident that modern-day wage-
earning activities led to the emancipation of workers. This dichotomist relationship with history
(and also between the West and the non-West) is challenged by the ecological alternatives we
encountered, which revisit pre-modern societies, and by later experiences of resisting the “march
of progress”, through the prism of a political ideal of the non-commodification of human labour.
It is for this reason that the systematic commodification of construction is perceived to be a
recent phenomenon. Beginning with a genealogical exploration of their grand-parents’ and great-
grand-parents’ generations, the life stories are unequivocal: labourers and small farmers were
definitely do-it-yourselfers - “they all had some mason in them” – and had close links with their
neighbours. Historians of the vernacular habitat confirm the idea that the principle of the self-
managed collective construction project is nothing new: for some of the population, building a
house meant monetary, domestic and local savings, and involved self-building most of the house
with one’s family and neighbours. In this context the notion of “participation” includes the idea
of exchanging services.
The Castors experiment, which took place at the end of the Second World War in response
to the housing crisis, fell within the continuity of this constructive model: working together
in cooperatives, the Castors collectively self-built their homes on plots of land gifted by local
authorities or philanthropists, the aim being to acquire a cheap detached house in accordance with
the principle of “payment in kind”3 (Messu, 2007). The self-managed collective construction
project formula is thus in line with hybrid practices: partial self-building and mutual aid are two
of the conditions allowing the middle and working classes access to home ownership.
What is being invented by contemporary self-managed collective construction projects? It is not
so much the principle of self-building or the process of gifts and counter-gifts, as the underlying
2 In addition to the building project narratives contained in the 95 life stories, more especial attention will be given to
a week of observation at a self-managed collective construction project for a straw house, one week at a SCOP building
project and seven observation visits to Notre-Dame-des-Landes.
3 “Apport-travail” in French. This notion of “payment in kind” consists in agreeing to work a certain number of hours
per month and during part of one’s paid holidays to build one’s own home – a commitment which serves as a guarantee
for contractual loans and makes one eligible for government aid.
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militant commitment. Because the practice of mutual aid required by self-managed collective
construction projects takes place in a broader denunciation of the commodification of all areas of
life, voluntary participation and the exchange of knowledge have a critical political significance
that the former mutual village aid did not possess.
Regular participation in self-managed collective construction projects is thus seen as a way
to undermine the “system” (capitalist, industrial) through the prior dismantling that it supposes
of the “system of professions”, extending, through deed, Andrew Abbott’s analyses of this his-
torically located configuration: the development of industry was in fact based on the promotion
of professionals certified by the academy and empowered by the monopoly of expertise and
action in relation to a given field of knowledge (Abbott, 1988). In the social world of mili-
tant eco-construction, the power of professionals (engineers, architects, lawyers, doctors, etc.)
is denounced as justifying a division between manual and intellectual labour, the root of social
hierarchies. What remains to be grasped is the concrete alternative that self-managed collective
construction projects offer in terms of recruiting and task organisation.
1.1. Adherence to political ecology
In order to grasp the ideal-typical outlines of self-managed collective construction projects, it

is helpful to begin with the brief organisational description proposed by the Botmobil association.
This factual note sets out two principles that are dear to ecological alternatives and which constitute
in themselves a form of participant selection:
“The project stakeholders (self-builders) welcome volunteers onto their building site for a
few weeks. The volunteers agree to work on the site throughout the duration of the building
project, on the basis of 5 days per week, from Monday to Friday, 8 hours per day. Work
starts at 8 o’clock every morning. Volunteers must have liability insurance. They must
ensure that they are properly covered in the case of an accident. [...] The stakeholder will
provide volunteers with food, a place to put up a tent, dry toilet facilities and one or two
showers. [...] To ensure that living together is harmonious, everyone must agree to maintain
a responsible attitude on the building project”4 .
The assertion that dry toilets5 are part of the basic equipment for a self-managed collective
construction project acts as an initial filter. A stance taken in relation to such a trivial object
not only underlines the care taken to self-manage waste outside the municipal or private sewage
system, it is also part of a broader policy of including the entire range of human actions within an
ecosystem. Only highly committed “greenies” and a small number of libertarians would consider
dry toilets to be the basis for any installation.
The reference to the ability to “live together” and to the “responsibility” of each individual
is more than just a formal reminder of what constitutes good conduct; to use Gorz and Illich’s
terms, it clearly sets down conviviality and autonomy (and not effectiveness and productivity) as
the means and the end. So whilst the work rate is sustained (eight hours a day) it is vital that it
also remains “harmonious”.
The choice of materials (wood, raw earth, bio-sourced material) constitutes another element
of political distinction that excludes traditional builders who have no critical considerations con-
4 http://www.botmobil.org/le-chantier-participatif.
5 Urinary and fecal excreta is covered with sawdust which neutralises smells and accelerates the composting process,
unlike classic water toilets which use up drinking water.
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cerning building and public works. For advocates of eco-construction, reinforced concrete and
breeze-blocks are products sold by industrial groups who care nothing either for the health of
the workers who make and place them, or for the amount of energy consumed to produce
and use such materials – and even less for how they affect the inhabitants and their envi-
ronment. A cause and effect relationship between the quality of the materials and working
conditions is thus created: to standardised materials corresponds the taylorization of tasks. As
far as self-building pioneers are concerned, eco-construction by industrial division of labour
is a contradiction in terms. Against mass production which turns masons into placers of pre-
fabricated materials, the objective is to reinstate the art of building with materials that are
available locally: wood, straw, earth, stone. It is within this context of defending craftsmanship
and short circuits that self-managed collective construction projects emerge as a form of work
organisation.
Participation in a self-managed collective construction project therefore originates in a minimal
agreement on these principles, marking a break between two worlds – that of citizens who describe
themselves as “coherent” because they put their political ideas into practice here and now, and that
of “classic” citizens who delegate to institutions the power to decide and to implement reforms. To
put it another way, when one joins a self-managed collective construction project, one is already
initiated into the political principle of direct action, defined here as being non-violent and not
necessarily dependent on prior approval from experts or administrations who grant authorisations
and subsidies.
In the militant world of eco-construction, openness to a broad anonymous public cannot be
taken for granted. Unlike ideas based on a so-called “collaborative” economy, such as carpooling
or crowdfunding6 , the increasing popularity of which goes hand in hand with new informa-
tion and communication technologies, self-managed collective construction projects are not the
object of sophisticated websites which bring volunteers and beneficiaries into contact with one
another. Classified advertisements on eco-construction sites – such as those run by Compaillons
and Botmobil who have had forums since 2006, or the “self-managed collective construction
project” column in La maison écologique7 — remain the norm, underlining the primacy of the
knowledge-sharing network. The absence of explanatory manuals for neophytes is proof of the
presumption that recruiting will take place within a single network that is united by political
ecology, subscribed to the same militant magazines (Silence to name but one), and attending the
same organic fairs and the same eco-construction exhibitions which are all forms of periodical
gatherings.
We can therefore see three distinct recruiting channels: the homeowner network; the net-
work of craftsmen who bring with them their apprentices (architects and masons) in order to
train them either for free or in exchange for payment as part of a self-managed collective con-
struction project which will qualify as a “building project school”; the network of magazines
and websites which promote eco-construction and which make it possible to broaden the first
two channels, whilst at the same time remaining very much below the level of institutionalised
workings found in other sectors of the collaborative economy. At every level the principles of
eco-construction are reiterated, making it possible to create work teams who have the same
ideas.
6 Via dedicated platforms, participative funding, or crowdfunding, allows people to fund their projects by using their
own social networks to ask for loans or gifts.

7 Founded in 2001, this was the first magazine in France dedicated to eco-construction.
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1.2. The convivial scrambling of hierarchies
Although participation in a self-managed collective construction project is organised on the

basis of people belonging to the same political constellation, it nevertheless involves very different
employment statuses: there are the sponsors of the house who provide their manpower alongside
everyone else; certified and paid professionals; trainees who pay professionals to train them;
volunteers who swap their labour for board, lodging and training; other volunteers (adults, but
also children) who come to lend a helping hand to their families and friends, and to take part in
the festive event. Through the collaboration that it implies between professionals and laypersons,
this heterogeneous labour force transforms the hierarchies of the building sector. “It’s an entirely
different philosophy” says Paul, 33 years old, auto-entrepreneur mason, reader of Kropotkin and
organiser of self-managed collective construction projects. Far from being atypical, this reference
to anarchistic experiments constitutes an everyday political basis for some of these ecologists who
reject all forms of hierarchy.
How is the division of labour organised in practice? Observation of the building project run
by Liliane, 52 years old, nature instructor and “vélorution”8 activist, and Michel, 52 years old,
organic baker and activist in a local exchange trading system (LETS), allows us to identify the
structuring principles.
Liliane and Michel financed their work through “payment in kind” and by drawing on their
savings; during the first year they used a professional Botmobil mason who was paid as part of
a self-managed collective construction project. In the second year, feeling that they had gained
sufficient experience, they relaunched the self-managed collective construction project, this time
taking on the dual role of general contractor and project manager. They trained the volunteers (of
whom I was one) on the building site. They had remained on excellent terms with the Botmobil
mason and did not hesitate to contact her for advice, thus demonstrating a high level of exchange
between professionals and non-professionals.
The stated goal is in fact autonomy, the idea being that the builders should not be dependent
on the sole knowledge of the craftsman. The craftsmen’s task is to train their clients, along with
the trainees and volunteers. Unlike Andrew Abbott’s demonstration regarding the way in which
professions work, here we see the professionals themselves making their expertise available to
laymen, who, in turn, write their blogs and participate in forums to offer a step-by-step explanation
of each stage of the building project (Pruvost, 2015).
Another recurring aspect is that the sponsors and the professionals who help with self-
managed collective construction projects are not aiming for productivity, but rather to create
a link; a successful building project is not a project that ends on time, but one where friend-
ships develop between the masons, the owners and the volunteers, where useful contacts are
made and diverse skills are learned – from herbalism to information on the international envi-
ronmental struggle. So to help with a self-managed collective construction project is not just
to learn or pass on a building technique, it is also to broaden one’s network. If economic
criteria for a building project’s profitability are not a significant factor, this is also due to the
alternative lifestyle adopted by all of the participants, and which reduces the need “to make
money”.
8 Word formed from the French word for bicycle (vélo) and revolution: a movement aimed at encouraging people to
use non-polluting means of transport for everyday travel.
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Such a work organisation is similar to the political project described by André Gorz: it is not
a case of giving one’s time “for free” on a project that does not have self-subsistence as its sole
objective, but rather of experiencing “the pleasure of learning, of cooperating, of improving”
(Gorz, 1988, pp. 270 and 272). Self-managed collective construction projects are an intermedi-
ate version of the horizon that A. Gorz describes, distancing oneself from purely commercial
relationships and favouring principles of pedagogy, hospitality and conviviality (Illich, 2005).
If self-managed collective construction projects are having so much success, it is because they
construct far more than one person’s home.
The division of labour I observed takes account of this superimposition of functions, where
the pleasure of learning and of being together is an imperative for participation: the most physical
tasks, which are extremely hierarchical in the conventional building sector, are shared among all
members of the building project. For example, inserting bales of straw into a wooden structure is
a non-mechanical task requiring strength and a large workforce, and it is unthinkable that anyone
would avoid taking part, be they architects, masons, self-builders or volunteers. As a sociologist,
studying this type of building project therefore means full-time participation in the work. One
cannot slow the group down by taking notes at inappropriate times, especially as an apprenticeship
is based on “what the hand knows” (Sennett, 2010). Contestation of the division between manual
and intellectual labour, between practice and theory, is one of the backdrops to participation in a
self-managed collective construction project.
This collective participation also applies to physical work, such as pushing wheelbarrows or
using pulleys to move material from one floor to another. This recurring issue was observed on
Liliane and Michel’s building project where the hardest tasks led to an informal rotation of job
assignments – with, unlike what occurs in the building and public works sector, a great deal of
attention being paid to ergonomics and to physical exhaustion with the idea of softening the “dirty
work” (Hughes, 1996).
However, this task-sharing does not extend to any reconfiguration of the building project by the
volunteers who, unlike inhabitants or local residents who are consulted during the participatory
phases of major urban projects, have no say in the building project. They are not involved upstream
and simply remain the ones who put a pre-established plan into action. Yet this performance
relationship does not mean abandoning all sense of initiative. The latter is to be found elsewhere,
in the organisation of work and in manual inventiveness. For example, Patricia, in her second week
when I arrived on Liliane and Michel’s building project, had acquired a certain level of technical
assurance which enabled her to show some initiative. As a sign of her growing experience and
of the trust built up with Liliane and Michel (who Patricia knew hardly any better than I did),
she developed her own personal way of applying mud to straw bale walls. Liliane considered her
work to be a truly aesthetic success, even though it took longer than had been planned.
“Participation” in self-managed collective construction projects thus takes place at a com-
pletely different level than that of participatory consultations (Nez, 2011) where there is a strict
division of labour between project design and its performance by professional builders and where
it is inconceivable for users to pick up a trowel. It is based on the convivial scrambling of hier-
archies between volunteers and professionals – not in terms of know-how (there are of course
those who master the technique and those who are simply there to learn), but in terms of the
performance and purpose of the tasks. Learning to use the materials at hand, collectively shar-
ing both repetitive tasks and tasks which are creative and recreational, swapping ideas, networks
and projects, without losing sight of building deadlines – all of these reconfigure the building
project event which is based just as much on the sociology of techniques, work and leisure as on
politics.
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1.3. Conﬂicts and the expression of vulnerability
Whilst the participative aspect of home construction provides a clear motivation for the work-
force mobilised, it does not defuse all conflicts. The heterogeneous skill level of the work teams is
the most delicate issue with which the general contractors and project managers have to deal: how
to ensure that everyone finds their place? What to do with people who overestimate their skills?
How to arbitrate skill-related conflicts between professionals and highly experienced volunteers?
“Running a self-managed collective construction project is first and foremost a question of inter-
personal relationships. It requires a great deal of energy! At the end of the day I’m exhausted!”
(Gwenaëlle, teacher, then mason, then eco-construction trainer, 40 years old).
The relative feminisation of eco-construction at all levels – self-builders, architects, masons,
volunteers – can be seen as an indicator of the way this sector functions: virility as a collective
mechanism against harsh working conditions, so prevalent in the construction industry (Dejours,
1997) is not a necessary resource. Care for one’s own body and for other people’s, for materials
and for the environment outweigh the work rhythms required by the productivity imperative.
Authoritarianism – of which we found no examples – and machismo are always possible, but
unlike the case of wage-earning activities, they cannot be exalted with the same level of legitimacy:
if volunteers are unhappy, they can use their right to exit and leave the building project. Forums
are powerful means of exerting pressure when it comes to one’s reputation, so important in the
small world of eco-construction. Finally, on some building projects debriefing procedures are put
in place to rectify group dynamics which get off to a poor start.
Dora’s building project is a prime example of this benevolent practice of listening to others,
rooted in non-violent communication. After a trajectory as organic farmer and activist defending
indigenous rights in South America, Dora lived in a cabin and then in a yurt. Currently receiving
RSA9 , but with savings she built up during her previous employment, she decided to build a small
house (30m2 ) by organising a building project school (with trainees who are paying for their
training) that is also participatory (with friends, family, volunteers) under the tutelage of Georgio,
carpenter and auto-entrepreneur working in eco-construction, who also happens to be her friend.
“Georgio belongs to a non-violent communication talking circle. So it’s a tool he used a lot
in the building project, and that was great, because every morning at breakfast and every
evening before dinner, we formed talking circles. [...] It was great, because little by little,
as days went by, you saw people loosen up, open up bit by bit.
And there was a moment when the circle was a fabulous mediation tool, it was when we
started to put up the frame. Georgio said “There are too many people. I need to concentrate
properly, so I’ll choose six people out of the fifteen”. Among the participants there was
a man called Gérard, who was about sixty years old, and he was an architect. His ego
took a hard hit when he wasn’t chosen for the frame. [...] When Georgio placed the first
beam, there was a huge silence, Georgio was concentrating, doing his calculations. [...]
And Gérard come onto the building project to take some photos. I said “Gérard, I’m sorry,
but it’s important that you leave. We said we only wanted six people”. He really didn’t like
that! He left, shouting: “Safety, safety, no way!”. He knew what the situation was, that we
weren’t wearing helmets, etc. [...]
At the evening circle, Gérard started to say that, really, “the safety was hopeless” [...] Then
it came to my turn to speak [...]. I said: “When there is fear, there is adrenalin and that’s
9 Minimum guaranteed income.
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what screws everything up. [...]. I don’t want any of that here. For the last four days we’ve
been experiencing trust, goodwill, sharing. That’s what I want to share. If there are people
who smell fear, who feel unsafe [...], you’re putting the rest of the group in danger and
you’re putting yourselves in danger”.
This sent a shockwave running through the group. We carried on with the circle [...] and then
Georgio too decided to set things straight by saying: “Here, safety is all about responsibility.
When you’ve made the decision to come here, on the understanding that [...] I’m not an
engineer, that Dora isn’t an architect, that we work with the tools that we have, you are here
to learn. You take responsibility, you are your own best insurance policy. We are not in a
world where there is insurance, where there is a lawyer standing by for you. We’re not in
that world, we’re in the world of self-building”. That sent another shockwave through the
group, and we had another round. And it was great. [...] When it was over, we both stayed
with Gérard. He cried. We chatted. He went off for a walk with his dog and then he came
back. He decided to reintegrate the group”.
This narrative offers a concrete example of the razor edge on which these heterodox practices
evolve and which are designed to bring about a “post-professional ethos” (Illich, 2005, p. 89): to
combat the risk society (Beck, 2001), trapped in a State web of hygiene and safety standards, the
aim is to re-establish a right to united self-organisation.
Awareness of these political issues, and the exchange of views – involving rhetorical and
emotional know-how – are apparently not shared by all participants in self-managed collective
construction projects, as can be seen from the case of Gérard, who was required (not without pain)
to accept different professional standards whilst working on the building project — a change which
proved possible through the creation of a space for discussion and through the establishment of
a more intimate relationship that allowed him to express his vulnerability (Charles, 2012a).
This point is an important aspect of work organisation in self-managed collective construc-
tion projects. Whilst it is recommended not to specialise, so as to become autonomous for as
many different tasks as possible, some people reach manual, physical or relational limits: “I
quickly realised that I wasn’t going to be able to cope, that it wasn’t for me. So I did all the
cooking. I helped out here and there, but it was basically my partner who worked on the build-
ing project” (Bruno, 38 years old, three-quarter time engineer and owner of a house partially
built via a self-managed collective construction project). From collective cooking to keeping
the building site tidy, from bringing in materials to keeping everyone in a good mood, differ-
ences in gender, age, physical strength, technical skills and the ability to express oneself are
all absorbed as complementary resources which allow the work collective to function in all its
diversity.
The fact that participants in self-managed collective construction projects have their ground-
ing in political ecology (which is known to recruit mainly from the educated middle classes10 )
certainly helps to maintain cohesion within the building project. However, this social and political
homogeneousness does not suffice to explain why self-managed collective construction projects
are effectively “participatory”, thus satisfying the majority of their participants: the very mecha-
nism can change the way things are done during the course of the project. It constitutes a test that
is likely to reconfigure people’s viewpoints. Prior adherence to the principles of political ecology
10 Ecologists have been characterised as belonging to intellectual professions (Ollitrault, 2008). However, our study
revealed a population whose main professions are manual and whose education is based on ongoing training (self-taught
or certified).
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and their implementation during the construction project explain the success of this atypical man-
ner of organising work: why would the owners of a house accept that the work be done by laymen,
over a longer period, with random skills and requiring a welcome in keeping with the level of
voluntary commitment? Why would volunteers come to help a private individual build a house
that they will not be able to use? Why would craftsmen agree to work for less money and with
work teams that they do not themselves choose? At all of these levels it is a case of participating
in a vast undertaking of knowledge exchange, where the labour market is less important than a
social project that involves the joint construction of a cooperative and sustainable world.
2. Unpaid labour under debate: the alternative to a self-management SCOP
Eco-construction professionals do not all agree on the virtues of self-managed collective con-
struction projects. Some of them object to the abuses inherent to the use of unpaid labour in an
economy which remains a market economy. The free exchange of one’s labour in return for train-
ing and upkeep suggests a world in which the redistributive State is short-circuited. Yet it is rare
for eco-construction projects to self-produce all of the materials required and to do without any
monetary exchange. So how can we propose an economic alternative that is both self-managed
and paid? We are going to explore another conception of participation, based on the way work
is organised in a SCOP (which we will call SCOP Interstelle) and on the debates which are tak-
ing place within a national eco-construction association, located on the far left of the political
spectrum and of which the SCOP in question is a member11 .
2.1. Debates on the excesses of self-managed collective construction projects
The first criticism aimed at self-managed collective construction projects relates to the owner-
ship of the finished product: unlike factories self-managed by workers, where the means of
production, the manpower and the sale of the finished product belong to the co-operative which
redistributes the profits, the volunteers who work on self-managed collective construction projects
do not own the building that is constructed; it belongs to a private individual. Jacques, a member
of SCOP Interstelle, 60 years old and a mason, believes that under the cover of solidarity, there
is abuse in the “organic” world: “What I look at is who owns what. You build a barn here, a
workshop there, you’ve been fed and housed for a summer, working in a nice atmosphere on a
wonderful self-managed collective construction project, but at the end of the day, who owns the
walls?” In response to this type of criticism, the owners of self-managed collective construction
projects offer to open up their homes to the public. Whilst they own their detached house, the
latter was built as a show home to demonstrate the energy efficiency of one or more given tech-
niques. The inhabitants thus turn their lifestyle into a “public demonstration” (Rosental, 2009)
of the well-being that an ecological lifestyle procures. Ownership of the property nevertheless
remains private, and the extent to which it is open to the public depends entirely on the militant
engagement of the owners.
The second criticism relates to the issue of the volunteers working for free and thus competing
unfairly with craftsmen who work on the basis of estimates. To this must be added the “building
project school” mechanism, whereby trainees pay for their training, which allows clients to buy
11 For reasons of anonymity, we will not give the name of this SCOP, nor its construction speciality, nor the name of the
eco-construction association.
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materials and benefit from a free workforce who are even more highly motivated by virtue of
having paid for their training. For some eco-builders, this denunciation can go as far as to criticise
the status of auto-entrepreneur: it is easier for the latter, who is not subject to the same payables
as craftsmen, to run self-managed collective construction projects on which the remuneration and
duration are more flexible. This statutory criticism relates more broadly to two political beliefs
which are under debate, one based on a possible reform of the State, the other on its necessary
dislocation. One side focuses on the possibility of a supportive society which redistributes the
contributions levied on labour, whilst the other no longer has any faith in the Welfare State – a
disenchantment that particularly affects the younger generations we met during our study.
A third criticism relates to the lack of professionalism of certain self-managed collective
construction projects which do not keep their training promises. Lucie, 55, a member of SCOP
Interstelle as well as being an eco-construction teacher, objected to a small advert for a building
project which she felt suffered from all of the above excesses:
“That reminds me of an email I just received for an earth construction course and a yoga
course. I read it more closely and realised that it was about building the classroom for the
yoga teacher. Are you kidding? Paying to build someone else’s house, that’s really taking
the mickey! And the girl who’s running the course isn’t even 25 years old ... She says in
her bio that she has run three building projects. That’s not a lot if you are going to run a
training course...”
For some eco-builders, this criticism relates more broadly to the need for a professional identity
(Dubar, 2000), requiring solid experience that guarantees professionalism: if just anyone can take
part in a self-managed collective construction project, the fear is that know-how will be passed on to
poorly trained amateurs and opportunists who will call themselves “eco-builders” without having
the skills or the political conviction. For the members of SCOP Interstelle, this is nevertheless a
negligible risk. It is inherent to the diffusion of eco-construction which, from the moment it is not
in the hands of bio-business, constitutes in their eyes a powerful lever for the expansion of a new
social project.
It should be noted that these controversies, however lively they may be, do not create suffi-
cient antagonism between eco-builder critics and adepts of self-managed collective construction
projects to cause any refusal to cooperate on building projects. They relate to the issue of informal
monitoring of good professional practices and allow each individual to position himself in rela-
tion to the State. In all cases, including in the majority of self-managed collective construction
projects, it is not a question of secession by an autocratic community organisation which wants
to do without any commercial exchange, but of exploring the social forms of the ecological and
economic “transition” (Hopkins, 2010).
2.2. Conditions for worker participation
The way the Interstelle SCOP works provides an instance of the self-management version of
“transition”, subscribing to the redistributive state while at the same time re-evaluating the nature
of work in a way that undermines the very foundations of hierarchical salary-based remuneration.
First of all, as is the case with self-managed collective construction projects, no-one joins
Interstelle by chance. The proximity of political commitments encourages consensus: Robert, 63,
mason, is an anarchist activist; he grew up in a suburb built by his parents who were members
of the Castors. He became a painter and then a mason; Jacques, 60, mason, is a former special
education teacher and anti-nuclear activist for the last forty years. He is an activist in several
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eco-construction and environmental associations; Lucie, 55, mason, did not finish her studies in
architecture, moving into sociology instead; she is an eco-construction teacher and an activist
with ATTAC, fighting discrimination between the sexes; Fabrice, 54, mason, is a former master
mason who refused to do the required tour of France, leaving the country to live in Asia; Lili,
50, mason, is a highly committed anarchist and feminist activist; Antoine, 35, mason, is an anti-
nuclear activist and phytopurification installation engineer having previously worked on various
self-managed collective construction projects and having trained in heritage restoration; Gilles,
32, master carpenter, with the highest possible carpentry qualifications, also refused to do the
tour of France. Libertarian, he is a one-third-time brass band leader. The method of recruiting
strengthens the sense of belonging to the same political family: in accordance with the articles
of association of the SCOP, which has been in existence for 15 years, every prospective act of
recruitment is subject to a vote by all members, after one year working alongside the applicant,
thus allowing everyone to test their mutual compatibility.
This common basis explains the specific place accorded to paid work at Interstelle: for most of
the SCOP’s members, construction work is not a full-time job and is embedded in the continuity
of other activist activities, which leads them to mostly work for clients who share their opinions
to some degree. In this SCOP, making a profit is not an end in itself: it suffices to make enough
money to pay the monthly salaries - usually minimum wage and independent of skills and jobs.
With this strong self-management principle as a basis, all members are therefore salaried and
paid at the same hourly rate, whatever their seniority, qualifications or level of responsibility
(whether or not they are running a building project). This egalitarianism is based on a shared
political principle: the labour is part of a collective action that is not divisible. This can be seen in
the following conversation between Jacques, Lili and one of their oldest friends, Jean, a 55-year-old
craftsman who has just founded another SCOP:
Jean — I’ve got a big problem. I had a disagreement with a member about the salary of the
last mason we recruited. I wanted him to be paid at the same hourly rate as the rest of us
and this member didn’t want that, because he has less experience and he’s less productive.
Jacques — You need to tell your guy that the productivity problem is a false one, it splits
everything up into bits - it’s meaningless, because even if you’re world plastering champion,
if there’s no-one to prepare your mortar, then you’re no longer world plastering champion!
The problem is the competition from labourers who will do the work for less. In our SCOP,
productivity is a problem with the overall organisation of the building project, not between
us. We don’t care who is the most productive.
Lilli — What matters, is a work collective’s productivity as a whole. The first factor for
improving productivity is organisation, well ahead of individual skills. Productivity cam-
ouflages the idea that competition between individuals is more important than collective
organisation.
Jacques — And also, why should someone who is productive earn more money? It’s not
logical. How can you judge the relative importance of management, commercial aspects,
administration in a building project? When you go through the details of your salary, it’s
complicated.
Jean — I agree, but we don’t have the same history as you. I’ve got a member who is ...
how can I put it ... who is ... from a different background. More of a traditional craftsman.
And that’s important too. To work with people who don’t share our vision of the world.
At Interstelle, the level of coherency is maximal: all of the members are paid at the same hourly
rate and own an equal share of the cooperative’s capital.
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The integration of trainees in no way affects the principle of fair pay. The SCOP has a good
reputation in the sector and there is considerable demand for training courses. At first glance,
taking on trainees might seem paradoxical for a SCOP which refuses to organise self-managed
collective construction projects because it does not want to exploit an unpaid workforce. Indeed,
the trainees who join as part of a paid professional training programme are legally disqualified
from receiving any additional salary. Yet Interstelle’s members feel that the work that the trainees
do within the cooperative is part of the labour included in the quote given to the clients. So in
order to provide some level of compensation, they reimburse the trainees for all of their travelling
expenses to and from the building project. This allows them to maintain their objective of diffusing
eco-construction through training courses, whilst at the same time making it possible to cover the
trainees’ travel costs.
As is the case with self-managed collective construction projects, in this SCOP the notion of
“participation” is thus conditioned by the sharing of common principles and the respect of free
association; yet to this is added the principle of a salary as recognition of the work done, something
that is fundamental for Interstelle’s members who politically defend the idea of solidarity-based
reversion of some of the money earned to a redistributive State.
2.3. Equal sharing and task rotation
Once these principles have been laid down, how is work on a self-management project organised
in practice? The wage-earning option requires considerable administrative management which
in this case is the object of a job-sharing ethos that is unusual even for a SCOP: Interstelle’s
founders felt that in relation to feminism and self-management it was politically coherent for all
management tasks to be shared. In this SCOP with mixed workers, unlike what happens in the
building and public works sector there is none of the usual classic gender-based division of labour
into manual work, reserved for men, and secretarial work, reserved for women (Gallioz, 2007).
Every quarter, the SCOP’s associate members thus spend two full days together calculating the
hours worked by each member and trainee, and working out their payslips on an Excel spreadsheet
(updated every year to incorporate any new accounting standards). As Jacques explains: “There’s
been total transparency ever since the SCOP was created. Everyone knows who earns what and
what organisations are paid: VAT, URSSAF12 , Pôle Emploi13 , health cover, meal allowances,
travel expenses. Every quarter we remind everyone that we are paying for our training, for our
pensions ...”. This accountancy and secretarial work, which in practice means that all SCOP
members must stop working on the building project and get stuck into spreadsheets, invoices and
mail, is a “pleasant chore” for everyone, says Antoine, with no hint of irony. It is an opportunity for
everyone to get together – a rare occurrence as everyone is working on different building projects.
“We debrief, we eat well, we shout a lot and even if we end up with our own specialities – some
in VAT, others in URSSAF, we try to switch around in order to prepare for when people retire!”
says Gilles, who is in the process of learning to prepare payslips alongside Jacques.
One pivotal moment during these two days is the half-day dedicated to sharing out the building
projects and to making a provisional week-by-week work schedule for the following three months.
As explained in the book (Lulek, 2009) on the Ambiance Bois organisation (a self-managed
12 The main task of the Union de Recouvrement des cotisations de Sécurité Sociale et d’Allocations Familiales (URSSAF)
is to collect employee and company contributions to finance French social security, along with employment insurance,
the French national fund for housing assistance, the old-age solidarity fund and the universal health cover fund.
13 French employment centre.
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sawmill on the Plateau de Millevaches, famous throughout the world of ecological alternatives),
establishing the work schedule is the most fundamental part of self-management: who does what
and with whom? At Interstelle, the work schedule is established on a collective basis; each member
states his preferences in accordance with how far away the project may be, his family situation
and the type of construction.
Self-management also concerns management positions: as in all SCOPs, management is
elected, but in the case of Interstelle it does not have any decision-making powers relating to
operations or work schedules. Furthermore, at Interstelle the rule is that everyone must run a
building project during the year in order to avoid any monopolisation of this position. As Jacques
explains: “This means that I am a labourer for six bosses and the boss of six labourers”. Gilles
adds jokingly: “In any case, we’re all a bit neurotic, we wouldn’t put up with a boss, we couldn’t
work any other way.” Although Interstelle’s members make sure they alternate control of their
building projects, the position is not all-powerful. Running a building project means first and
foremost dealing with client relations, keeping a logbook and anticipating orders, rather than
imposing any division of labour: the organisation of tasks is discussed on site with an informality
that contrasts with the hierarchical authority generally invested in building project managers and
architects. During an interview, Clara, 29, former department manager now a trainee mason sent
by a training organisation during the course of the ethnographic building project, underlined the
special conviviality that reigns at Interstelle compared to other courses that she had done in the
building sector.
From an ethnographic standpoint, it is tricky to take account of this cooperative way of working,
due to the simplicity of the mechanism: meals shared under the shade of a parasol, personal news
exchanged between workers (demonstrating bonds of friendship and trust), discussions about
current political events, questions about the distribution of tasks and technical skills, jokes about
management of the dry toilets on site, concerns about the weather... this flowing from one subject
to another might seem unexceptional. But it is its fluidity that marks the grey area between work
and non-work: at Interstelle it is self-evident that relationships are not purely professional and
that it is possible to explore different registers without fear of a wage deduction or of retaliation
from a superior, because such is not the issue.
If we only consider the business of construction, we observe the following organisational
recurrences: we find the same ergonomic respect for occupational health as that found in self-
managed collective construction projects, even more so at Interstelle in that unlike occasional
volunteer work it is a question of physically enduring over time. The principle of polyvalence,
induced by task rotation, is also a response to the time constraints of each individual’s overcrowded
activist and personal diaries. The question of productivity remains central, but due to the absence
of any hierarchy it is redefined in terms of the workers’ availability: for Interstelle members,
the key to well-being at work and to the SCOP’s economic viability lies in the collective daily
consultation on task and workforce distribution, so that the production of necessary materials
remains proportional to capacities for implementation. This ability to think ahead and to implement
collective management, as professionals, differentiates them from laymen and from pyramid work
organisations.
2.4. How to defuse hierarchical temptation?
Does this organisation of self-managed work, which is taken further than the democratic struc-
tures found in SCOPs, prevent leadership conflicts or phenomena? Theoretically, good relations
are ensured by the voluntary and elective manner of bringing in new SCOP members. They are
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strengthened by the constitution of individualised work schedules and by the principle of direct
democracy. The question thus shifts towards the skills required for an organisation of this type:
“You have to be able to have a go at one another. To lay down limits”, explains Fabrice. Gilles’
attitude is very similar: “It’s good to have loudmouths like Robert, it balances things out. Per-
sonally I don’t have a problem, when I have something to say, I say it.” The free circulation
of criticism is thus set down as a condition for good relations. In such a context the ability to
publicly express one’s disagreement and symmetrically to be criticised, constitutes a condition
for effective management of the work collective. On the other hand, being too reserved or too
susceptible can lead to problems. Those who do not have this dual skill – that of being able to say
what one thinks of other people’s work and hearing what others think of one’s own work – are
unable to remain for any length of time in such a structure. One example of this was the refusal
of a trainee we met after the event to join Interstelle: the mode of communication was too direct
for him to handle.
There is another aspect which can prevent a SCOP from operating properly: in the absence of
any hierarchical entity, self-management supposes a commitment to one’s work that lies some-
where between serious and enthusiastic. According to Fabrice, “the problem is people who no
longer feel like working but who nevertheless come to work.” At Interstelle, because members
generally work in teams of two, non-participation in the work is immediately noticed, unlike what
happens in major construction projects in the building and public works sector where there are
excessive employee numbers that make it possible for labourers to leave the building site without
being noticed (Jounin, 2010). The most senior members of the SCOP thus mentioned the case of
a former member, a mason, who had lost all motivation to work. It had taken some time for him
to agree to leave the SCOP of his own accord – it was unthinkable that he be made redundant.
In this SCOP, as in self-managed collective construction projects, the fight against the depletion
of the Earth’s resources (both natural and human) is based on the militant principle of converting
others through example, down to the smallest details of work organisation, and on an equally
extensive conception of work as a space for demonstrating political coherency whilst at the same
time adopting a different conception of participation. Unlike the rotation of volunteers on a self-
managed collective construction project, it is the durable constitution of a work collective that
guarantees the horizontal operation of Interstelle; the latter has opted for radical sharing of all
tasks within a legal wage-earning framework provided by the SCOP – a framework that makes it
possible to test the political ideal of egalitarian self-management and of social contribution.
3. The collective building project as direct action
The self-managed collective construction projects which are deployed as part of the occupa-
tion of the site at Notre-Dame-des-Landes offer yet another configuration of participation and
direct democracy at work: there is no commercial exchange of knowledge, or even of workforce,
against goods in kind. The term “collective building project” is preferred to that of “self-managed
collective construction project”. As for the word “work”, this refers to a legal framework for
paid activities which cannot be used in this place of libertarian experimentation. The question of
participation and of task organisation therefore needs to be asked once again: in this struggle, it
is not just a question of occasionally militating against the construction of an airport, but also of
suggesting alternative lifestyles designed, among other things, to revolutionise our relationships
with work. The sociology of work and professions cannot therefore do without studies of militant
action involving the occupation of sites (above and beyond factories) in order to understand the
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transfers that take place between the militant space-time and the acquisition of knowledge and
which may lead to veritable conversions that are indissolubly professional and political.
Evidence of this can be found in the effects of the Larzac struggle which brings together all of
these levels of reconfiguration. Some of the antimilitarist activists who between 1971 and 1981
defended farmlands against the proposed extension of a military camp effectively helped the
farmers who had mobilised to defend their land – to such an extent that they themselves became
sheep farmers (or more accurately politicised farmers who renewed agricultural unionism by
creating the Confédération Paysanne14 in 1987) and contributed towards the development of alter-
globalism. Whilst it is too early to measure the long-term effects of the struggle at Notre-Dame-
des-Landes, ethnographical observation nevertheless allows us to take account of the intensity of
knowledge exchange at all levels: for some of the activists, participation in the activities that take
place over the zone’s 1650 hectares represents a political, agricultural and artisanal apprenticeship.
3.1. To participate is to take a stance
Whilst this is a total struggle – “against the airport and its world” to use the hallowed phrase –
one of its main targets is “big and useless projects” (Camille, 2014), thus aiming very specifically
at building and public works, as an energy-intensive sector based on the exploitation of temporary
workers for the benefit of major groups with links to the financial markets and to the government
that subsidises them.
A reminder of the chronology is needed here15 : in 1972, a project to build a new airport at
Notre-Dame-des-Landes in the Nantes countryside was adopted by regional planners. The project
was buried and then reactivated as a project of public interest in 2008, despite the European law on
water forbidding construction on wet zones. Then began a first wave of occupation of this “future
development zone” (ZAD16 ) by opponents of the airport scheme. The second phase began in 2010,
when Vinci, the leading European operator of infrastructure concessions (motorways, roads, car
parks, airports) obtained all of the land, the construction market and airport management. The
conflict became more radical as from October 2012, when more than two thousand police came
to destroy a large proportion of the squatted farms and cabins that had been built, evicting their
occupants in order for work to begin. In response to police violence, on November 17 2012 a
reoccupation demonstration was organised, bringing together more than 40,000 people to rebuild
what had been destroyed. Then followed a second wave of occupation: the ZAD, renamed “zone
to defend”17 in French (autonomous resistance zone), grew from 80 to 250 permanent residents. It
was not a case of building barricades to block the police, but of demonstrating radical opposition
to regional planning policies (deemed to be tools used to control populations) by building cabins
(among other things). The ZAD can be visited as an open-air zone for anarchistic experimentation.
In this struggle we find paradigms of proof by example and of the politicisation of the slightest
act. It really is a question of finding a different way to build: instead of concrete, fuel oil and
septic tanks, one uses wood, recycled materials, felt, straw or earth insulation, wood-burning
stoves, solar energy and dry toilets. In this respect the ZAD cabins benefit from the artisanal
and militant know-how of an entire population that has made the political – and not economic –
choice to live in lightweight homes (trailers, yurts, tipis, cabins) in rural zones, and who in 2010
14 “Peasant-farmer confederation”.
15 For a detailed chronology, see http://zad.nadir.org.
16 “Zone à aménagement différé”.
17 “Zone à défendre”.
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mobilised to protest against adoption of the law (dated 21 December 2010) on orientation and
programming for the performance of homeland security (LOPSI 2) which aimed to prohibit this
particular lifestyle. Living on little, ceasing to build permanent structures and reducing human
imprints on the land constitute an alternative credo that even those activists who are the most
recalcitrant about political ecology are obliged to accept once they are immersed in the boscage,
given the objective difficulties in accessing water and electricity. For the zadists who are not
particularly sensitised to ecology, to move onto a ZAD is thus to simultaneously experience a
struggle – with all its attendant meetings, demonstrations and targeted initiatives – and a rural
way of living where the hierarchy of manual activities is totally revisited. There are numerous
militant narratives recounting the same astonishing story of integrating the zone’s modus vivendi,
whether by engineers, students, transients living in vans or former cooks; they can be summarised
in these terms: “I came to join the demonstration at the ZAD, I thought I’d be here for three days
and I’ve been here a year. I didn’t think I’d be sleeping in a cabin, and even less that I’d learn to
build one”.
More broadly, the collective construction of cabins is part of a type of politically located
mobilisation taking place in the wake of the Peoples’ Global Action in Toulouse in 2006, of
ATTAC’s18 alternative villages since 2008, of the Climate Camp in Notre-Dame-des-Landes in
2009, or of the lightning building project organised by a Lausanne squat in 2010, which consisted
in secretly self-managing the prefabrication of a straw house and installing it as quickly as possible
in a public park to militate in favour of the right to housing (Collectif Straw d’la Balle, 2013). The
support committees which have been created in France along the same lines have pre-constructed
cabins that can be dismantled and rebuilt on the site. Building at the ZAD in a record time, using
organic materials, is thus part of non-violent direct action, extending the action of self-managed
collective construction projects into a statement of one’s position – in all senses of the term – in
a public place.
What is this public space? On the face of it, the boundaries of the zone are marked out by
barricades. It is nevertheless an open area within which vehicles and pedestrians can move around
freely. The barricades are in fact chicanes which physically and symbolically cause people to slow
down, thus marking the passage into a world free from private and public law. The construction
of a cabin at Notre-Dame-des-Landes is thus an act of free political expression, seeing the action
undertaken by militant eco-construction through to conclusion: building is not “work”, it is the
accomplishment of a social project. So is all participation in the project welcome, or are some
militant groups exclusive?
3.2. Who does what? Divisions and militant turnover
The highest levels of participation in collective building projects at the ZAD tend to take place
during major demonstrations at the site; in such cases they do not worry about militant differences,
numbers being the main goal. Local residents, people from Nantes and Brittany, activist friends
from all over Europe, anarchists from all kinds of movement, autonomous protesters, members and
sympathisers from Europe Ecology and the Front de Gauche19 come together in “self-managed
18 Attac (Association for the Taxation of financial Transactions and Citizen’s Action) is an association mobilised against
the hegemony of finance and global commodification; it promotes the idea of citizens taking over control of their lives,
the construction of an active democracy and the building of convergences between social movements as part of the
alter-globalisation movement.
19 A French left-wing electoral federation.
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collective construction projects plus plus plus” (to take up the formula used by a carpenter we
met in Brittany), setting aside their party banners, which are not allowed on the site.
The process is different for the cabins prefabricated by some of the Notre-Dame-des-Landes
support committees which are essentially based on regional knowledge-sharing networks from
the same activist circles. On-site construction of cabins by the residents also follows affinity-based
logics, be they political or based on friendships that have developed over time. For example, we
saw that radical greenies who will only use nails, hammers, saws and dead wood, will not begin
a building project with zadists whose overriding objective is to squat existing houses or cabins
that have already been built and which are deemed to be more comfortable.
However, it would be too simplistic to suggest that this affinity-based sharing of building
projects constitutes the sole method of distributing the workforce. The principle of openness is
preserved through the proliferation of “collectives”20 , thus allowing people to find a militant circle
that suits them, without counting the political mutations that take place at a biographical level: for
some, moving within the ZAD’s space-time might mean moving from one cabin to another, in other
words experimenting with different lifestyles and different political propositions. The principle
of mutual aid between neighbours also reshuffles the cards in relation to initial divisions. Instead
of affinity-based logics, it is more a question of multiple cross-over experiences that make it
impossible to draw any rigid cartography of this struggle.
The multiple nature of these experiences is strengthened by the constant arrival of sympathisers,
encouraged by the ZAD’s internet site which plays the role of weekly messenger calling for people
to take part in the collective building projects, drawing on a population which is sensitive to the
cause without necessarily being militant (in the classic sense of the term). To give just a few
examples, some people simply came to visit the site out of curiosity, found themselves helping
on a building project to insulate a geodesic dome with wool, and ended up remaining on the site
longer than they had planned. Others came to do some “cop bashing” on the barricades, but when
spring came they started to farm.
The integration into various building projects of the students and colleagues in our study
group21 is symptomatic of this process of conversion. One important detail compared to the eco-
logical alternatives examined before, is that within this protest space sociologists are considered
to be experts loyal to the capitalist State. In such a context, it is not a case of being a participating
observer or an observing participant, but of participating on a full-time basis. The question of neu-
trality is not raised: to go to the ZAD is to support this “sit-in” protest and to make a contribution
to the best of one’s ability and as far as one’s political beliefs will allow. In my case, going to the
ZAD essentially meant participating in building projects. So what about the actual sociological
work? It was retrospective and – and this is an important point – collective: increasing the num-
ber of viewpoints (both political and sociological), debriefing together, creating friendships and
mutual trust among us – all of these elements were needed to understand the social inventiveness
of this unprecedented political mosaic.
One important result of this study mechanism was that we were all able to take part in building
projects, whatever our political affiliations and our initial degrees of militant commitment. This is
20 Such is the term used in libertarian circles, as distinct from “communities”.

21 The study involved 9 stays at the site and mobilised approximately fifteen Master’s students, PhD students and
researchers over a three-year period; some of them stayed just once, others visited more regularly. In order to comply with
the rules for this collective study, I will only use field notes that I took during my own stays and will maintain a maximal
level of anonymity in my description.
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clear proof that contribution to the zadist action is more important than the affinity-based logics
which underpin each building project.
During my seven stays at the ZAD between 2012 and 2014, I was each time aware of the same
organisational principle: anyone on the site can offer to help, without knowing a single zadist on
the building project. No-one asks where you are from, why you are there, or even what your name
is. “Everyone’s called Camille” is significantly repeated at the ZAD, using this gender-neutral first
name to assert that the protest has no identifiable leader. No boss or association president who must
be asked for authorisation. At first, this radical principle of free entry is disconcerting: the ritual of
greeting newcomers and showing them around the building project – which is usually performed
by the sponsors of self-managed collective construction projects — varies considerably at the ZAD
and is quite often absent. Only work breaks and commitment over time provide opportunities to
develop more personal relationships that the militant imperative of discretion has set aside.
Furthermore, unlike participatory projects or Interstelle’s self-managed building projects, the
workforce is not stable and changes from one day to the next: the zadists, who designed the plans
for the cabins and some of whom are professional builders or experienced do-it-yourselfers, deal
with launching the building projects, but as they have other militant or professional activities they
are not present all the time. To this must be added the fact that no-one can predict the number
of participants passing through the ZAD, and even less their skills. “Is there anybody running
this thing?” laughs one zadist on a building project, when he asks if anyone has a screwdriver
and no-one replies. The absence of any titles to differentiate between people serves to maintain
this lack of clarity: no-one would dare use the term “building project manager”. Here we find the
horizontal spirit of self-managed collective construction projects which means that the biggest
experts in eco-construction carry out the same manual tasks as everyone else, thus accentuating
the indistinction between skill levels. It is nevertheless easy to rapidly spot those who are able to
tell you what needs to be done and, more importantly, how to do it.
Given the rate of turnover at the ZAD, is it possible to maintain the pedagogical aspect
emphasised in self-managed collective construction projects? There are workshops on specific
construction techniques, relating to the militant tradition of popular education which prevails in
the world of eco-construction. These workshops nevertheless stand out in that they are completely
free and are based on the adoption of an amateur stance: “We’re here to learn together, by trial
and error. We don’t want professionals who look down on us. The idea is for everyone to take
ownership of the technique, to have their own experience of the materials”, says one woman
running an eco-construction workshop. Pedagogical transmission is expected to take place over
the course of the building project and there is always someone who has time to explain a given
technical skill.
One major difference from self-managed collective construction projects is that it is possi-
ble to do nothing, to simply watch. Given the excess amount of available manpower, there are
frequently more people just talking than those who are actively working. The unspoken rule is
that participation in the building project is voluntary. These projects are most certainly open
to the public in that they can be seen and photographed (as long as no face can be identified)
with a view to disseminating the glad ethos of zadist determination: “no sooner destroyed than
rebuilt”. Another difference from self-managed collective construction projects is that partici-
pation in a building project in no way creates any right to remuneration in kind: visitors are
advised to bring their own food and there is no guarantee of a place in the collective sleeping
areas.
In summary, the rule for participation that is the most widespread over the zone is that of
offering one’s workforce in accordance with the needs of the building project in question.
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3.3. Founding breaches
This self-regulation of places in construction work is not always achieved without upsets or
shutdowns.
One of the demands made by the feminist group which has been formed at the ZAD relates
precisely to the sexism of some of the zadists on projects to construct barricades and cabins;
through a series of inappropriate words and gestures, the latter have reproduced the stereo-
type of the technical inaptitude of women, thus discouraging some among them from taking
part in the construction process22 . With the idea of proposing a transmission of knowledge
that took these experiences of exclusion into account, a non-mixed building project reserved
for “chicks-trans-dykes” was organised between April and September 2013. As far as the
ZAD feminists were concerned, it was not a case of accusing all of the building projects
of (hetero)sexism, but of highlighting a form of discrimination that runs across all protest
movements.
From the choice of materials to choice of location, the construction of cabins is another source
of major conflict: for example, for some radical ecologists it is not coherent to pirate electricity
from EDF’s nuclear grid in order to bring electricity to the new buildings. This stance is far from
being shared throughout the zone, which is populated by squatters, punks, autonomous individuals
and farmers for whom the anti-nuclear protest is not a founding issue. The cutting down of trees
also causes fierce debates: some people feel that it is ludicrous to destroy the boscage’s forest in
order to build wooden cabins; whereas for others, using local resources and taking care of the
forest is justification for cutting down a few trees. The former are described as “primitivist” and
“tree-huggers” by the latter, who are in turn accused of being “bourgeois” who have chosen the
wrong protest movement.
The most recurrent conflict is the choice of where to place the cabins: should they take over
the wasteland, the forests, the farmers’ fields, the roads, the paths? There is nothing anecdotal
about these options – they define alliances with the farmers and local residents and take account
of a greater or lesser concern for the environmental cause. These political rifts lead to zonal
strategies on the ZAD. It is mainly in the eastern zone that the collectives the most committed to
anti-industrial austerity and “deep ecology” (Naess, 2009) are to be found.
Another conflict upsets the principle of free exchange – that of how to manage the use of
materials and tools on each building project. In the western part of the zone, a tool shop has been
created through donations. Anyone is free to serve themselves, as long as they bring the tools
back when they have finished. The difficulties in moving around and the fact that the cabins are
dispersed over 1650 hectares (it is especially difficult for the cabins over in the east, far from the
spontaneous donation circuits) mean that it has not been possible to maintain minimum levels of
common tools. Zadists bring their own tools to the site and lend them out within a circle of people
they trust.
As far as construction material is concerned, a tacit rule states that all material accumulated
next to a building project belongs to that project. But the practice of “free-shopping” – a term
used on the ZAD to denote the act of freely helping oneself in certain places reserved to that
effect – is sometimes extended to cover stock for ongoing building projects and this can give rise
to conflicts which, from the “free-shoppers”’ standpoint, are contrary to the ZAD spirit, whereby
22 During each of my stays at the ZAD, I calculated that women represented between one third and one quarter of the
total population.
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nothing inherently belongs to anyone. Here we touch upon a fundamental aspect of collective
building projects on the ZAD: non-ownership.
Conflicts cease on this point. Just like self-managed collective construction projects, contribut-
ing to the construction of a home confers no right to ownership or to right of use. The time spent
sharing in a building project is an end in itself. However, an additional step is taken compared to
participatory self-building: initiating the construction of a cabin and the fact of having purchased
the materials and tools, confer no specific rights regarding the cabin built. If a zadist collective
builds its own cabin and then disperses, their cabin might be taken over by other zadists who,
seeing the door open and the place deserted, decide to set up home and add their own aspects
of construction and finishings. The rough and ready architecture of cabins that have passed from
hand to hand are evidence of such successive occupation.
A cabin is thus in all respects an uninterrupted collective building project based on participation
that is itself founded on the principle of donation-without-counter-donation, with no need for quid
pro quo (Testart, 2007). This mode of construction is not just a militant tool; it represents another
way of inhabiting the land. At the same time and inseparably, another relationship with work is
disseminated. Some zadists live off their savings or receive RSA and make do with that, bringing
the Gorzian political project up to date with a subsistence income which does not lead to inactivity:
inhabitable cabins are built, fields are cultivated. The market valuation of “graft” (the term “work”
is forbidden at the ZAD) is also disputed by separating productive activities from remuneration.
No-one is obliged to help with the different tasks required for living on the site, or to be trained
in the name of free participation or free training. Against the norm of professionalization and
specialisation stands the viability of eminently lay polyvalent knowledge.
It is impossible to picture what horizons the combination of these principles and their long-
term dissemination might form. We will confine ourselves to observing that farmers, students,
labourers, craftsmen, white-collar workers, social workers, the unemployed and punks all come
to the ZAD, help to build a cabin, a bread oven or a greenhouse, and are metamorphosed: they
leave their jobs, think about creating a SCOP, do initiation and training courses in “ecovillages”,
make plans to buy land or to join an existing collective, and become involved in other protests in
addition to the one at Notre-Dame-des-Landes. It truly is a total political experience.
4. Conclusion
For committed eco-builders and zadists it is self-evident that “so fundamental and pervasive is
the group of occupational activities that it affords the scheme or pattern of the structual organization
of mental traits. Occupations integrate special elements into a functioning whole” (Dewey, 1976,
pp. 41-42). In return, these schemes determine the reconfiguration of educative, professional and
governmental institutions. It follows that to change the organisation and conception of work is to
change society. How is this shift operated? The singularity of the ecological alternatives studied
resides in the asserted simplicity of the mode of conversion.
Because these self-managed collective construction projects are small and are aimed at people
who are close (locally, politically or in terms of family and friends), because they escape the
“procedural tropism” of institutions (Blondiaux and Fourniau, 2011), because they are based on
a manual contribution that can be adapted to suit physical strength, age, skills and availability,
because they are founded on the notion of sharing and task rotation, because it is possible, for the
time it takes to complete a building project, to work on a project the means and ends of which
go beyond the mere promotion of eco-construction, this type of initiative, far from stagnating,
is becoming more popular every year, reversing the tendency found in participatory democracy
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mechanisms which struggle to mobilise citizens and inhabitants over the long term (Charles,
2012b).
However, there is nothing homogenous about these ecological and libertarian alternatives. In
spite of their common principles, the three types of building project organisation that we stud-
ied propose different conceptions of work and different levels of participation. The voluntary
exchange of one’s workforce against board, lodging and training, under the supervision of a
paid professional, forms the basis for self-managed collective construction projects. Against this
mixed economy of participation is set that of a necessarily paid return within the legal framework
of a SCOP where worker participation is full and complete: the paid employees share not only
the means of production and the profits, they do everything to ensure that the decision-making,
management and task-distribution processes are as horizontal, egalitarian and rotational as pos-
sible. The construction of cabins at Notre-Dame-des-Landes breaks away from these two models
by directly and publicly rejecting commercial exchange and opting for the free association and
self-organisation of civil society.
Whilst these experiments which explore the avenue of non-autocratic alternatives are distinct
from one another, are they at odds with one another? The heterogeneity, which some qualify as
“biodiversity” and which can traverse each work collective, is not raised as an obstacle to any
significant extent. Conflict, the absence of any reference model, the experimental aspect, the free
circulation from one project to another are proclaimed as libertarian peculariarity: the myriad
of political proposals, sometimes combined, sometimes juxtaposed, forms a network that is not
designed to become a system, but rather to expand from circle to circle, redefining the contours
of politics (Ogien and Laugier, 2014): it is not a question of “saying” but of “doing” in the form
of direct action (in the sense that it takes place here and now) that is non-violent (in the sense that
no weapons are used), that consists in radically changing one’s lifestyle. This politicisation of
the slightest act cannot but lead to a redefinition of the notion of work which takes the form of a
political, ethical, playful and creative experiment likely to reconfigure the world (Dewey, 1976).
Acknowledgements
For their comments on the initial version of this article, I wish to thank the masons from two
SCOPs (including the SCOP studied), the participants in a participatory project organised by one
of the said SCOPs, as well as Albert Ogien (IMM-CEMS), the coordinators of this special issue
and the members of the Sociologie du travail editorial committee.
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SOCTRA-3213; No. of Pages 23 ARTICLE IN PRESS

Participatory, Self-Managed, Collective Building

Whether work is an obligation or a choice, alienating or fulfilling, productive or reproductive,

du travail 57 (1), 81-103 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soctra.2014.12.006). Translation: Christopher Hinton.

1 A SCOP, in french “société coopérative et participative”, is a cooperative and participatory company.

1. Professionals and laypersons in self-managed collective construction projects

1.1. Adherence to political ecology

In order to grasp the ideal-typical outlines of self-managed collective construction projects, it

own social networks to ask for loans or gifts.

1.2. The convivial scrambling of hierarchies

Although participation in a self-managed collective construction project is organised on the

use non-polluting means of transport for everyday travel.

1.3. Conﬂicts and the expression of vulnerability

9 Minimum guaranteed income.

2. Unpaid labour under debate: the alternative to a self-management SCOP

2.1. Debates on the excesses of self-managed collective construction projects

2.2. Conditions for worker participation

2.3. Equal sharing and task rotation

2.4. How to defuse hierarchical temptation?

3. The collective building project as direct action

3.1. To participate is to take a stance

3.2. Who does what? Divisions and militant turnover

20 Such is the term used in libertarian circles, as distinct from “communities”.

3.3. Founding breaches

Arendt, H., 1993. Condition de l’homme moderne. Calmann-Lévy, Paris.

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