| This thesis illustrates the ways by which some tensions embody and expresses themselves in the daily activities of a humanitarian organization, Doctors without borders (MSF). To do so, we mobilize a "constitutive" approach to communication, an approach that allows us to show that organizational tensions faced by (humanitarian) actors can be analyzed from the figures that animate their conversations and activities on a daily basis. By tension, we mean every practices of inconsistency, contradiction or opposition experienced or perceived between two or more logics of action, while the notion of figure refers to what drives these logics of action, that is, any concern, value or interest on behalf of which an actor comes to speak or act. In this thesis, we thus identified and analyzed, through an ethnographic approach, five figures, three tensions and three "communicative scenes" that we believe illustrate quite faithfully the humanitarian activities of MSF.;This thesis is therefore an empirical demonstration, via the communication practices of actors, of these figures and tensions that have to be managed on a daily basis. Consequently, we were able to fill some “gaps” in the literature on organizational tensions and humanitarian aid. These gaps correspond with a lack of interest for the actual practices of organizational actors as such, and secondly, as well as for an approach to communication conceived as being constitutive of an organization, that is to say, an approach that reflects and expresses what drives or guides organizational actors on a daily basis.;As we show, what seem to animate or preoccupy MSF (and its actors) are, on one side, some principles and values such as independence of practice, neutrality or experience and scruples. Thus, these ideals that actors cultivate in their conversations and activities are constantly taken in account when missions are planned and carried out for this famous organization. On the other side, another source of animation lies in the complex environments in which medical care is provided to populations in distress. Through our constitutive approach to communication, we were thus able to draw a realistic picture of these practices - the "sources" of what animates humanitarian action - reflecting both the mode of being and acting of MSF, in all its intensities and tensions. |
