La grève comme drame social

This paper is an ethnological analysis of the long strike that occurred in 1995-96 within the Public Transportation Society of the French city of Marseilles. The analysis grid is inspired from the social drama concept of Victor Turner. The analysis of the strike is being understood as a diachronic reading of modernization processes within the public utility sector. The research was conducted through an ethnographic field work which took the form of driving regular buses in a popular neighbourhood of Marseilles as the strike broke out. Through the detailed ethnography of the successive steps of this social drama – breach, crisis, adjustment, redressive action - the paper stresses the breach phenomenon which this social drama brought along as well as the outstanding communitas symbols. These symbols are markers for the crisis phase within the broader social drama of the strike. Thus, the long december 1995-january 96 strike was turned into an identity marker itself and was called among the bus drivers “the Great Strike” in reference to “the Great War”.