Public problems, how they are experienced, and who experiences them
The question of experience is central to understanding how public problems emerge, drive new policies, lead to the transformation of lived environments, and in turn shape life stories. It is here resituated in relation to the history of the progressive movement in the United States, the birth of sociological inquiry and the pragmatist philosophy of democracy at the beginning of the 20th century (represented here by John Dewey, but also George H. Mead, Jane Addams, Mary P. Follett and Robert E. Park). But what does experience mean ? The objective is here to reactivate pragmatist categories and hypotheses to describe the troubles, disruptions, or disturbances of experience, their conversion into problematic situations, the role of emotion and evaluation in focusing and channeling public attention, and its reorientation through processes of attribution of causes and imputation of responsibilities. Through the lens of a pragmatist ecology of public experience, this paper emphasizes the central role of inquiry and experimentation, in all their aesthetic dimensions, in the formation of public problems.