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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Enquêter, écrire et publier en collectif

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Investigating, writing and publishing collectively. From a reflexive perspective, members of “Collectif Onze” question the conditions required for the successful achievement of the research they conducted in several French courts of law, which was subsequently published under the title of "Au tribunal des couples. Enquête sur des affaires familiales" (Odile Jacob, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to analyze three decisive stages of this project : the fieldwork, the writing and the publishing. The article begins by describing the context of the emergence of this collective research project, as a part of an educational setting, in a research workshop that began in 2008. The “Collectif Onze” recounts how some of the original investigators decided to also become the authors of a book and how they have continued their attempts to break with the hierarchical relationships between professors and students. The writing process was thus forged in an effort to make steps that are often undertaken individually into collective efforts, ranging from materials analysis to the writing of a book by eleven authors. Finally, the article discusses the challenges of a collective signature at the time of its publication, which raised far more basic questions among the peers in the academic world than among the journalists or on the part of the publishing house.