Conflicting uses of libraries: a sociological reading

This article is concerned with conflicts in libraries. While not ignoring interactions between adults, it is juvenile social habits that constitute the focal point of a sociological analysis relating to conflicts that reveal libraries "from the inside and the outside". Rejecting a substantialist and relativist reading of the young public, a schedule of the usages and practices of the book and of the library complex is presented. Observations in situ of five municipal libraries in Marseilles lead to a deconstruction of the supposedly irrational attitudes of young users in order to give them a sense of direction and to question the rules, formal, informal and implicit, that regulate these public spaces.
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