La thèse propose trois questions critiques du rôle politique et de mouvement des associations. Premièrement le fonctionnement associatif : mobiliser l’engagement (des salariés, des usagers et leurs proches, des bénévoles) en sortant d’une forme d’impensé suppose de réarticuler une conception alternative en sciences de gestion (pour avoir prise sur le managérialisme) et les apports de la sociologie des associations. Deuxièmement la culture politique : la capacité à contribuer à la reconstruction de références collectives et de médiations instituées, à promouvoir une culture alternative au référentiel économiste et marchand dominant, suppose d’analyser et de concevoir, de se situer dans l’histoire longue des idées, de revisiter le socle humaniste. Troisièmement l’action collective au niveau méso : pour peser dans les mécanismes institutionnels et à avoir prise sur la réalité, la remobilisation des travaux sur l’action collective et les mouvements sociaux, avec leur extension récente aux liens avec l’économie solidaire, est essentielle. / The research opens to three central criteria for an effective role on policy and social movement. The first one covers the operating mechanisms, which are deeply influenced by the managerial trend: it seems determinant to link an alternative design in management science and researches about sociology of associations (with, for instance, the ideal type of a « solidary enterprise »). The second one has to do with political culture as a kind of nodus, from which a possible role oncommon sense (about society, public policies, economy and market, actors capabilities, citizenship), and a possible process rebuilding collective references and positive experience of a link to institutions, seem to depend. Such a perspective requires to refer to a long-term history of ideas, which is necessary to study how the humanist foundations of occidental democracies are questioned. The third one covers collective mobilization at the meso level, as documented by the researches about collective mobilizations and social movements, including the recent researches about social movements and solidary economy.

Foresight has been increasingly acknowledged as a valuable policy-making process. It has evolved from informing policies about key technological fields that would be of outmost importance in the future to (re)orienting and opening up policies towards societal needs. The wide application of foresight would benefit from a common evaluation and assessment framework that hardly exists today. This would facilitate the identification of good practices irrespective of case-specific objectives while it would also allow for benchmarking and coordination of policies for socio-economic development. Such a common assessment framework would require a higher level of reference, i.e. the attainment of generic goals, beyond the specific objectives of each case. This higher level of reference is offered by the commonly agreed goal of the EU to become 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world' by also promoting participatory governance in ensuring sustainable development. Apart from their case-specific impacts, foresight exercises have wider impacts in terms of networks creation, actors' alignment, knowledge diffusion and creation, or promoting public engagement in policy-making. Thus, the two 'pillars' of the 'knowledge society' and 'participatory governance', are both relevant and feasible to become the generic level of goals where a common foresight impact assessment framework can be based. The thesis argues that such an assessment framework can be built based on the main features and pre-conditions of more participatory, 'knowledge societies' and the broader impacts of foresight systems. To this end, it starts with exploring the main features of modern societies and the pre-conditions of what may be called in future 'more participatory knowledge societies'. Then follows the examination of foresight literature to better understand the main functions and impacts of foresight systems and identify relevant areas of contribution in relation to more participatory, 'knowledge societies'. The foresight impact assessment framework is eventually built inspired by relevant frameworks and concepts of socio-economic and research programme evaluation in order to adequately address the challenges faced in foresight evaluation. Its validity is then tested through case studies. The case study analysis demonstrates the comprehensiveness of the framework and further refines the main hypotheses and associated success factors, leading to certain foresight principles to be taken on board for foresight exercises to contribute to more participatory, 'knowledge societies'.

En mars 2008, l'État chilien ratifiait la Convention 169 de l'OIT, premier instrument juridique de droit international à protéger les droits fondamentaux des peuples autochtones. Un nouveau scénario politique et juridique s'ouvrait ainsi dans un pays où, comme ailleurs, ces peuples connaissent une histoire de domination, de marginalisation et d'exclusion. Cette ratification génère de nouveaux enjeux tant pour les peuples concernés que pour l'État et la société chilienne en plaçant la question de la participation aux décisions qui concernent les peuples autochtones au centre du débat. L'objet de cette thèse est de comprendre les tenants et les aboutissants de la mise en œuvre de la consultation libre, préalable et informée en explicitant le processus d'institutionnalisation de la participation des peuples autochtones au Chili ainsi que les ambivalences de cet espace participatif, censé produire un consentement aux politiques publiques mais qui se heurte à la contestation des autochtones. L'apport de cette recherche réside dans la capacité de montrer la complexité de ces dispositifs de consultation, dans lesquels s'entremêlent des processus de domination et de résistance. Cette thèse rend en effet manifeste leur ambivalence dans la mesure où, tout en reproduisant les asymétries du pouvoir, ces dispositifs participent au renforcement des acteurs dominés. Cette recherche a été réalisée à partir d'une enquête menée au sein et dans les« coulisses» de procédures de consultation mises en place au Chili où se rencontrent autochtones et fonctionnaires gouvernementaux. / In March of 2008, the Chilean State ratified the 169 ILO Convention, the first international instrument of international law to protect the fundamental rights of Indigenous Peoples. A new legal and political scenario was therefore opened in a country where the indigenous community were subject to a history of domination, marginalization and exclusion. This ratification creates new stakes for Indigenous Peoples and also for the Chilean state and society by raising the Indigenous Peoples' right to participate in matters that concern them. The research purpose is to understand the ins and outs of free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples by explaining the institutionalization of Indigenous participation in Chile and also to explain the ambivalences of this participatory space supposed to produce a consent on public policy but encountering the Indigenous Peoples contention. The contribution of this research lies in the capacity of showing the complexity of these participatory devices, in which domination and resistance processes are intermingled. This thesis demonstrates their ambivalence since they reproduce power asymmetries while reinforcing dominated actors. The research was carried out from a survey conducted within and in the "wings" of the consultancy procedure set up in Chile where Indigenous Peoples and Government officials come across. About sixty interviews were conducted and a large variety of situations was observed, from institutional consultancy devices to more informal social spaces relating to participative devices.

A travers l’analyse d’expériences citoyennes dans le champ culturel – un centre culturel de gestion communautaire, un centre socioculturel autogéré et une association de médiation artistique -, cette thèse interroge la capacité des initiatives citoyennes à constituer des espaces publics autonomes, en tant que foyers de créativité et de résistance, d’élaboration de discours critiques et de construction d’alternatives concrètes. Face aux limites de l’offre institutionnelle de participation, au formatage entrepreneurial des initiatives citoyennes et à la pénétration marchande du champ culturel, la recherche s’intéresse aux leviers de l’autonomie des espaces publics de la société civile, en combinant deux échelles d’analyse privilégiées : la fabrique des collectifs (institutionnelle, organisationnelle, économique mais aussi sociale et relationnelle) et le rapport aux institutions, à travers la tension entre institutionnalisation et contre-pouvoir, apprivoisement et innovation institutionnelle. S’inscrivant à la croisée de la sociologie économique et de la sociologie politique, les enjeux de cette thèse sont d’articuler les champs de la démocratie participative et de l’économie solidaire afin de saisir les conditions de l’autonomie citoyenne, d’enrichir l'approche habermasienne des « espaces publics autonomes » mais aussi de contribuer à une sociologie de l’émancipation qui, n’évacuant nullement l’attention aux processus de domination et de reproduction, soit apte à mettre en lumière les capacités critiques et instituantes d’espaces publics populaires. / Through the analysis of cultural citizens’ experiences – a cultural centre of comunity-based managment, a self-directed sociocultural centre and an association of artistic mediation – this thesis questions the capacity of citizens’ initiatives to constitute autonomous public spaces, as sources of creativity and resistance, of elaboration of critical discourses and construction of concrete alternatives. In front of the limits of institutional offer of participation, of entrepreneurial standardization of citizens’ initiatives and of commodification of the cultural field, this research investigates the various levers of the autonomy of public spaces of civil society, combining two main scales of analysis : the making of collective action (institutional, organizational, economic but also social and relational dimensions) and the relation to political institutions, through the tension between institutionalization and counter-power, domestication and institutional innovation. At the crossroads between economic and political sociology, the stakes of this thesis are to articulate participatory democracy and solidarity-based economy fields to understand the conditions of citizen autonomy, to enrich the Habermasian approach of « autonomous public spaces » but also to contribute to a sociology of emancipation that, without neglecting domination and reproduction processes, was able to enlighten critical and creative capacities of these popular public spaces.