Abstract
Based on the case study of Clermont-Ferrand, Védrine studies the progression from an industrial town where enjoyment was banned to an urban setting where it is encouraged. Michelin’s influence, Védrine notes, is stamped on Clermont-Ferrand. In 1832, the Michelin Company turned the town into an industrial city with four factories and many social facilities—housing, schools, hospitals and so on—that embodied a paternalistic spirit aimed at winning the loyalty of the workers. Unlike other French cities, in recent times Clermont-Ferrand has not experienced deindustrialization. Michelin still is the foremost local employer, property owner and taxpayer. Today, however, the company needs fewer manual workers and more white-collar workers, whom it attracts by promising a good quality of life. Védrine examines how the production of spaces where the life of the workers was tightly controlled has been replaced by the production of new spaces where the managers’ enjoyment is ensured through the consumption of leisure, culture and aesthetic displays.
This article draws on ‘Des espaces disciplinaires aux espaces de jouissance: les transformations de Michelinville’, published in Espaces et sociétés, 2014/n. 158, pp.135–149.
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Notes
- 1.
From 1999, 75 interviews with employees, retired people, inhabitants, urban actors (architects, urban planners) and political actors, were completed by an ethnographic observation of the city spaces and a few events (e.g. protest marches and the public funeral of Edouard Michelin), and the analysis of documents produced by the company. On the relevance of ethnographic analysis, see, for example, Pardo and Prato (2012).
- 2.
For example, ‘Clermont-Ferrand, the city which would like to forget Michelin’ (Libération, 21 September 1999), ‘A city looking for a new identity’ (Le Monde, 3 February 2000).
- 3.
Demain Clermont (March–April, n. 313 and May–June 2016, n. 314, p. 3).
- 4.
For another country where the workforce is cheaper, or for Paris, like a lot of parent companies.
- 5.
The factory ‘Estaing’ was essentially a storage unit for routing and vehicle maintenance, with up to 2000 employees. When it was destroyed, it retained only 500 employees, who were then transferred to one of the others factories in Clermont-Ferrand .
- 6.
A small river which was buried by Michelin.
- 7.
Telling the story which resulted in the creation of a tramway on tyres deserves its own study to explain all the political and economic dimensions. The point here is that for Michelin it is a way both of putting into circulation its innovation and advertising it.
- 8.
This slogan was accompanied by a communication campaign about the new public place.
- 9.
- 10.
Clermont-Ferrand is a candidate for European Capital of Culture in 2028.
- 11.
Both local and global, managed by The Mission of international relationships.
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Védrine, C. (2018). From the Ban on Enjoyment to the Injunction to Enjoy: The Post-Industrial City and Its New Spaces of Control. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64289-5_14
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