Après plusieurs décennies de désertification, certaines campagnes bénéficient aujourd’hui d’un réinvestissement croissant par des populations urbaines. Aussi, la restructuration des sociétés rurales interroge. Le paysage social change, transformant ainsi le rural en un monde social avant tout. Le village fait-il encore sens pour ses habitants ? La thématique de ce travail s’intéresse alors à l’évolution et à la transformation relationnelle de l’espace rural français, avec un intérêt tout particulier pour les communes de moins de 500 habitants et leur identité communale singulière. Le village de Gigouzac dans le Lot, 239 habitants, est mon terrain d’étude depuis plus de 10 ans. Ce choix n’est pas sans raisons et sans conséquences puisque j’habite mon terrain et mon objet d’étude, familialement, personnellement, et scientifiquement.La propriété essentielle de cette recherche est son caractère longitudinal, impliquant une mise à distance et une observation constante et participante. Ces différentes postures « du dedans » mêlent la sociologie et l’audiovisuel à une approche psychosociale. Le concept d’identité doit être défini en le signifiant. Cette thèse tente de saisir l’identité communale. Afin d’observer les effets que peut avoir l’arrivée de nouveaux habitants de culture urbaine sur cette identité, j’ai choisi de la considérer du point de vue de la psychologie sociale et de la dynamique de ses représentations. Les différentes méthodes de recueil de données employées, tour à tour quantitatives, comparatives, qualitatives, et audiovisuelles, montrent les permanences et les dynamiques de la ruralité. Le village évolue, se modernise, se réinvente, mais reste un territoire pertinent et cohérent, une réponse à l’individualisme grandissant de la société moderne. / After several decades of desertification, some countryside areas benefit today from an increasing reinvestment by urban populations. The restructuration of rural societies is also questioning. The social landscape is changing, turning above all the rural into a social world. Does the village make still sense for its inhabitants ? The field of this research deals with evolution and the relational transformation of the French rural space, with a special emphasis on townships (in the north-american sense) of less than 500 inhabitants and their singular identity. The village of Gigouzac (Lot), of 239 inhabitants, is my fieldwork since more than 10 years. This choice is not without reasons and without consequences, as I live my fieldwork and my research topic, personally, with my family, and scientifically.The essential property of this research lies in its longitudinal character, implying a distance to take as well as constant and participating observation. These various « in situ » postures are combining sociology and audiovisual techniques with a psychosocial approach. The concept of identity have to be defined by its meaning. This Ph-D thesis is trying to understand the township identity. In order to observe the effects the new inhabitants of urban culture could have on the township identity, I choiced to consider it under an angle of social psychology and its representation dynamics. The different methods used in the data collection, being quantitative, comparative, qualitative and audiovisual, show the permanencies and the dynamics of the rurality. The village is evolving, is modernizing, is reinventing itself, but it remains a pertinent and a coherent territory, a reply to the increasing individualism of the modern society.

The dissertation is a biographical ethnography of an individual, ordinary musician and Mamelodi township dweller, Lesiba Samuel Kadiaka (*1962) in South Africa. It is based largely on fieldwork totalling more than 12 months conducted in five periods over six years between 2006 and 2011. It examines the possibilities of studying an average (rather than 'leading') musician ethnographically and their implications and consequences for wider ethnomusicological and South African music research. It makes a practical contribution to the wider debate about the relationship between individual, social, and cultural structures, and breaks new ground in its focus on the previously little known music and practices of Mr. Kadiaka's church, the Zion Christian Church. The research consisted mainly of ethnographic observations of various kinds of musical activities in which Mr. L. S. Kadiaka was involved in as a solo musician (songwriter and song singer) and as a member of the ZCC, on the one hand, and of deep interviews over the time span of six years, on the other. It consists of a biographical part dealing with his narratives about childhood in rural Ga-Mphahlele and his later life in Mamelodi township. Iconographic historical sources of a private nature are use too. The second part describes in three large...