Abstract

Research is generally deemed to end with the publication of its results. What happens afterwards is implicitly viewed as the usual after-sales service of science. Yet the encounter with various audiences, the debates it raises and the new perspectives it opens can be regarded as an object of inquiry in its own right. The lecture will be a tentative analysis of the public afterlife of works in the social science, with a special emphasis on ethnography. It will not promote public social science but will examine what it is, the operations it entails, the questions it poses, the challenges and limitations it faces. It will be grounded in particular in the experience of the reception of and engagement related to recent works on urban policing and on the carceral condition.