Circulation, exchanges and stagings of foster children's stories
How do readers receive narratives ? This article sets out to look at this issue by analyzing the ways in which publications related to a sociological survey on child placement are received. The author reports on exchanges with readers and shows the continuum between sociological narration and enquiries made by the involved individuals : the advertised narratives give rise to other narratives. In the perspective of a reversible relation between knowledge and recognition, the article encourages the questioning of the power of narratives for readers and the power of reader feedback for sociological analysis. The readers’ forms of narrative mobilization show that sociological narration participates in the social dialogue by shedding light on unique situations in order to better include them in the social dialectic of “them and me” ; “them and us” ; “before and now” ; “here and there.” The narratives provide collective power when they make it possible to relate to others by showing the accompanying logic of the placement institution and in this way frame individual responsibilities within collective responsibilities. From a methodological point of view, the experiment-survey on receptions is part of an after-the-fact analysis of different types of interaction such as emails, phone calls, and virtual and face-to-face meetings.