"La consommation culturelle comme processus de construction identitaire : l'exemple du programme 20ans / 20 francs à Genève"

"We conducted an evaluative research on a sample of participants to a Geneva program aiming to increase the access of young people to culture. Once this research was done, we developed questions concerning how identity develops among these people. The model we chose relies essentially on elements taken from Charles Taylor, Tia De Nora, Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, and social psychology. What we are mostly interested in is to show how consuming activities, in this case, consuming culture, correspond in fact to a process of identity development. Based on the works of Fabien Ohl, we can say that we are what we consume. Interestingly enough, it seems that depending on age, we do not consume the same things with the same people. We move from the family to the peers as a reference group and, in doing so, what we chose to consume corresponds to the identity that we build for ourselves. We see how this process of identity construction relies on evaluations, on choices to keep or exclude some elements, in short, on the fragmentation of the world and, conversely, to the coherent ordering of the self."