This article, based on a study of a group of overwhelmingly male junior workers - the bus drivers of ratp in the Paris region -, has for its starting point a set of observations about how these bus drivers talk about their work. Their words frequently refer to the theme of their “psychologically” difficult profession, and thus make evident their permeability to what Robert Castel has proposed to call “mass psychological culture.” This permeability was not self-evident. Indeed, one could wonder what relationship these men with subordinate jobs and close to the working class would be susceptible to have with that type of culture. Here, we propose to show evidence of this permeability, to account for it while showing its limits, and to highlight its implications for the sociology of the cultural worlds of today’s working-class groups.
Keywords
- culture of contemporary working-class milieux
- psychologization
- public services
- virility