[Translation : EPALE France]

 

This article is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution. It will also be published in the magazine Multitude and on the platform Movilab.

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In his now famous book on what he named “third places”, i.e. meeting places such as “cafes, coffee shops, community centres, beauty parlors, general stores, bars and hangouts” to sit and spend the day, Ray Oldenburg comments at length on George Simmel's work on sociability¹, explaining how  in most human organisations, individuals are bound to each other for a specific purpose, which places people in roles that can inhibit the simple personalities and joys found in coming together without a specific purpose. What Simmel calls “sociability” is precisely the situation where people come together for no other purpose than the “joy” of being together. As Simmel repeats, this unique situation is the most democratic experience people can have, because it allows them to be fully themselves, shedding all uniforms and social distinctions.²

For Oldenburg - and this is what underpins his entire view - it is in third places that this experience of sociability can be experienced.

Getting together for no other purpose than the joy of being together, really?

This view of the third place as a place of "sociability" is far from the contemporary reality of third places. However, it is this vision that has popularised the concept globally to the point where it has become one of the most influential forms of marketing rhetoric of the last decade, particularly in North America.

First pushed in the 1990s by Starbucks and its CEO Howard Shultz, who made it the cornerstone of his strategy, many other competing brands gradually followed suit. This is the case, for example, of the North American bakery and coffee chain Panera Bread, which, as early as 2015, sought to transform its outlets into "social places", where people could have a cup of coffee, go online or hold a meeting with friends and associates - “while other patrons enjoy their soup and salad in the dining room”³. But this positioning is not limited to restaurants and bars⁴. A great many brands in different sectors openly state that they want to turn their outlets into third places. This is the case with the UPS Store, the LuluLemon brand of sportswear and yoga shops, the Harley Davidson motorbike company and even banks⁵. The ambition of these different outlets is to become the third place of their community.

But why? In 2017, the US retail industry went through a real crisis. Shops closed one after the other. Experts in the field at the time spoke of a "Retail Apocalypse"⁶. In 2019, over 9,000 shop closures were reported, up 59% from 2018, and this was particularly true for the large global chains. Massive shopping centres saw a 50% drop in footfall between 2010 and 2013, with successive declines reported in subsequent years⁷. As a symbol of this phenomenon, between 2019 and 2020, the Front Room Gallery in New York exhibited artist Phillip Buehler's series of photographs entitled: “Mall rat to Snapchat: The End of the Third Place”⁸, which showed the ruins of huge shopping centres. American consumers are changing their shopping habits due to a variety of factors, not least the inextricable rise of e-commerce. Therefore, the purchase of products can no longer be the only reason for people to enter shops. Marketers are exploring other motivations, such as brand experience and a sense of community.

This ambition by brands to create third places to reinvent the consumer experience through a sense of community goes beyond retail. Property developers see this concept as a way of renewing the field of hospitality⁹to revalue office spaces that have been neglected by changes in working patterns¹⁰ or to rethink public spaces in densely populated areas¹¹. Museums are also working on this concept to “build relationships of trust with people who are not used to coming to museums”¹². Even car manufacturers are getting involved, trying to answer the question: what will we do in our cars when we no longer have to drive them?¹³ In 2020, investment fund manager Jim Cramer jokingly began to answer the question on a major television station: “I love sitting in a Tesla. Tesla is the third place to be.¹⁴”

It's time to take back third places¹⁵

Following this review, the trend can be towards optimism. After all, if brands and companies see the concept of the 'third place' as a business opportunity, we could see the number of meeting places increase. It is therefore worth rereading Eric Klinenberg's book, which presents third places as social infrastructures¹⁶ capable of fighting against inequality, polarisation, the decline of citizenship and social atomisation. But the reality is more complex and the commodification of third places raises new questions.

In 2018, the American consulting firm Gartner published a report entitled “Consumer Insight: The Politicized Third Place”¹⁷. It says: "Brands can't stay on the sidelines. Public spaces and businesses are the last remaining defence against society’s divides. They need to demonstrate their value because consumers bring the tensions and divisions of society with them to the places where they spend their time and money. They feel that their beliefs about race, gender and ideology can lead to conflict with others. They prefer third places frequented by people with the same intentions and ideologies. Following this analysis, the authors propose a tactical toolkit for marketers to ensure that at every point of contact with customers, the brand’s values are understood and respected.

For Oldenburg, Klinenberg and many others,¹⁸ third places have always played a key role in social and political life by allowing people to meet, entertain, discuss, criticise, disagree, exchange or cooperate. From this report, it seems that brands have taken the concept on board. But in this scheme, it is not the people - relegated to the rank of consumers or customers - who express themselves, but the brands themselves, which create third places and use them to impose their values in the public space.

Faced with this situation, at a 2018 Starbucks round table on the status of minorities, sociologist Tressie McMillan Contom evoked the third place as a battleground: “They (Starbucks) commodified this idea of the “third place”. The thing is, this space is supposed to be made by the culture. (...) The Starbucks third place is a place where white people can consume an idea that they’re being in a diverse public”¹⁹.

Between commodification and politicisation of sociability

It would be wrong to think that this influence of the concept of the third place is specific to North America. In many countries around the world, the media, academia and institutional actors are advocating for the creation of third places.

To illustrate this global consideration of third places, let us note for example that in New Zealand, articles entitled: The “Why everyone needs a 'third place' in their life” were published in magazines distributed to passengers on Auckland's public transport system, and the national radio station RNZ broadcast programmes entitled: “New Zealand cities short on public 'third' places”²⁰ while in India major newspapers headlined: “India must revive or build third places in its cities”²¹. In Japan, the National Building Research Institute has included this topic in its list of priorities²². Research is being carried out in urban planning, of course, to address densification in large metropolises²³but also in anthropology, to analyse certain cultural specificities such as coffee culture²⁴ (although this can be analysed as being the result of Western influence).

It is probably in the field of public health that scientific research on third places is most prevalent in Japan. Several studies seek to demonstrate that third places are of major importance during adolescence. A recent scientific paper from the National Institute of Public Health²⁵ shows a direct correlation between visiting third places and a decrease in suicidal behaviour among adolescents. The study explains that in a third place, adolescents can relax by freeing themselves from the psychological distress accumulated in the family home or at school. They may talk or spend time with friends, or interact with other adults (role models). By spending time in a third place, adolescents develop a sense of being included in a community, or at least of not being excluded, which contributes to better self-esteem. In the same vein, Professor Fumiko Mega from the School of Health Sciences at Tokai University is studying how third places can create a sense of community and thus alleviate the psychological distress associated with feelings of loneliness²⁶.

But it is in France that the issue of third places is the most frequently discussed. So much so that, as a cultural bias, a specific public policy was created. In 2018, a national organisation for third places was inaugurated²⁷, supported and funded by the Ministry of Territorial Cohesion and the Ministry of Labour. This organisation seeks to structure the sector of third places in France, to provide support in their development, their emergence and their promotion in all territories.

At first glance, the creation of a public organisation to structure social spaces raises questions. And then we realise that this organisation provides a very particular definition of third places. It extends the understanding of the stated concept by adding a productivist dimension: "Third places are physical spaces for doing things together: coworking, connected campuses, shared workshops, fablabs, solidarity garages, social places, maker spaces, cultural spaces, public service centres, and more. Third places are the new places for social links, emancipation and collective initiatives. They have developed thanks to the deployment of digital technology throughout the country”^28.

The places of “the joy of being together” become the places of “doing together”. In France, third places are equipped with technical capacities and invite people to make, to create, whatever it may be. The notion that the public actor creates third places to impose its values in the public space - as in cases of commodification - is not far off, but is a step we will not take here.

Where what is impossible elsewhere becomes possible

It seems more useful to analyse the situation as a reflection of the development of our sociabilities and consequently, of the places of sociability. The consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic only reinforce this assessment. As expressed in many newspaper articles, the closure of social spaces was one of the hardest things to bear during the lockdowns²⁹. But in the first half of 2020, when the first wave was at its peak, public actors and economic operators seemed overwhelmed and were unable to deal with certain general interest missions directly. Third places then took on responsibilities that went far beyond the framework of Simmelian sociability.

Indeed, it was in third places that the inhabitants of urban centres, small towns or rural areas came together, as soon as they could, to ensure the conditions for their own subsistence. Associative cafés set up mutual aid networks, cultural spaces took action to distribute several thousand packed lunches every day, and café-libraries opened telephone channels to regularly contact isolated residents. Several hundred shared manufacturing sites produced emergency medical equipment, which they then sent to nursing homes, hospitals, shops, laboratories and pharmacies. They transformed diving masks into ventilation systems, made syringe pumps, emergency breathing devices, thousands of litres of hand sanitizer, etc.³⁰

It seems that in the face of the emergency, these local solidarity initiatives could not happen anywhere but in third places. Places where people are used to going regularly, to discuss and practice sociability. In these familiar, equipped and informal settings where discussions and recurring relationships allow people to be autonomous and to have a grip on the world.

At the end of the 19th century, the "Maisons du peuple" and the "Bourse du travail" organisations acted as third places and participated in the organisation of working class life in several French cities. They provided "joy", but also bread, medicine, unemployment and health insurance. Their low level of specialisation and the variety of activities that came together made them a place of solidarity. These places also played an important role in the development of new practices: political discussions, voting, activism. Some authors refer to a politicisation of sociability that led to the entrenchment of socialism in the regions³¹. Gradually, the influence of the “Bourse du travail” organisations was weakened by their competition with the local authorities (particularly on the issue of worker placement)³² and the proximity to political parties³³. The effects of the places of working-class sociability dissolved into political issues.

This declining trajectory can serve as a historical point of reference in the political path that third places are taking in France. The interest of the public sector in the subject is legitimate, but third places must be able to look to the long term. Keep their agendas in check despite desires and incentives. And if they trade a commodity purpose for a political purpose, it is to be hoped that this will not be reduced to an ideological anchoring.

Third places must continue to give control to inhabitants. They must be home to discussions and controversies. They must bring together the different (political) cultures of a territory, including the most radical, those that go against the current or which do not correspond to the predominant systems of representation, whether they formally address critical issues, catastrophes or simply the political issues of everyday life. They must create particular jurisprudence and configurations between the public, the private and the individual. Public action must be socialised in third places. Let the people of Saint-Etienne or Nice meet in their third places to discuss and prepare for technical devices and policies of vigilance. It must be possible for the third places of Marseille or Ajaccio to work on hospitality policies or in Chamonix, the consequences of pollution and melting glaciers, in Rouen, the ecological perils and the traces left by industries on their living environments etc. etc. etc.

This is the politicisation of third places.

 

 

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Notes : in French