Publications

2025

• Réélaboration des règles de sécurité en contextes interpersonnels : le cas du toucher en temps de Covid‑19
  
  • Héron Robin
  • Safin Stéphane
  • Baker Michael J
  • Zhang Zhuoming
  • Alvina Jessalyn
  • Lecolinet Éric
  • Détienne Françoise
  Activités, Association Recherches et Pratiques sur les ACTivités, 2025, 22-1. In this article, we study how the health safety rules relating to social touching, established during the pandemic, have been redefined with regard to interpersonal interactions. According to the adaptative safety framework, rules are theorised as resources, which are adapted in context. To better understand the processes for the re-elaboration of safety rules in interpersonal contexts, we conducted a study consisting of an online questionnaire on social touching habits before and after the lockdown, followed by in-depth interviews with selected participants. Our results highlight (1) reduced touching practices, especially for semi-intimate relationships such as colleagues, casual friends, close friends, and extended family; (2) two processes of re-elaborating pandemic-related safety rules: explicit deliberation, behavioural alignment, as well as reflexive processes; and (3) two dimensions of justifications given for the re-elaboration of those rules, preserving physical health/vulnerability concerns and maintaining social relations, and their relative weight according to the relationships (family versus friends) between the interactants. While recommended health and safety rules were mostly followed leading to large decrease in touching behaviours, it appears that people re-elaborate the rule depending on the relationship they share with one another. Through the re-elaboration of the official health and safety rules people strike a balance between safety measures in order to preserve their wellbeing and/or the relationship. (10.4000/13ra9)
  DOI : 10.4000/13ra9