has been invited to the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) on March 21
, 2017
, to receive the Jean Widmer International Prize, awarded every two years to a young researcher for an article that makes a remarkable contribution to the analysis of public issues:
https://www.myscience.ch/events/id65594-remise_du_prix_jean_widmer_2016-university_of_fribourg
The award ceremony will be followed by a conference during which he will discuss the article in question, as well as his postdoctoral work at LATTS.
A slogan perfectly sums up the road safety campaigns of the 1950s in the United States: "Bring the problem to the people." It refers to the stated objective of getting the public to take ownership of prevention recommendations, inviting every driver to show civic-mindedness and discipline behind the wheel. However, a more detailed analysis reveals another underlying goal. It aims to organize not individual but collective mobilization in favor of a form of grassroots lobbying against elected officials who advocate for priorities other than education or enforcement. Under these conditions, "bringing the problem to the people" does not refer solely to the primary goal of road safety. It also calls for essentially political mobilization in favor of a single program of action. Highlighting this invites us to take a critical look at calls for popular appropriation of public issues, even beyond the case of road safety, to question how they implicitly contribute to a form of obscuring or euphemizing partisan debate.