Community organising is subject to several interpretations, and community practises have spread worldwide over the last three decades. This paper understands community organising as a distinct methodology adopted by very different actors under very different objectives and uses it as a critical concept to analyse the role of the voluntary sector in social services. Through an account of the social service of Geneva, Switzerland focusing on community organising between 2002 and 2017, I offer a defence against the managerialist justification relied upon by the city's municipal council when it shut down the unit. The argument is premised on an appeal to a liberally conceived right to equality of opportunity for freedom of association. It supports an orthodox view of community organising as a bottom-up way of working for certain social services of public administrations, which justifies an exceptional and circumstantiated deviation from public management core principles.

option of smaller rural maternity units and units managed by midwives for low risk cases.'4 The Expert Maternity Group has also proposed comprehensive antenatal and natal care by small teams of midwives for women with uncomplicated pregnancies. '5 16 Caesarean Birth in Britain makes recommendations in line with these reports: more information on possible places of birth and packages of maternity care and smaller teams of midwives to look after identified caseloads of women throughout their pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period.' A more critical attitude by obstetricians may well help to avoid unnecessary interventions, though it may be just as important to have an organisation providing maternity care for low risk women by midwives dedicated to protecting physiology.A close cooperation between midwives, general practitioners, and obstetricians, with mutual respect for each other's special abilities, is a prerequisite for such a system to work.

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Résumé Cet article analyse la formulation et la mise en oeuvre d’une politique sociale visant à promouvoir la citoyenneté. En s’intéressant au cas de la Fondation pour l’animation socioculturelle genevoise mandatée par l’État de Genève pour « favoriser la citoyenneté active », l’article cherche à mettre en lumière la norme de citoyenneté véhiculée par l’État, mais aussi à rendre compte de sa mise en oeuvre par des animateurs socioculturels au bénéfice de dispositions individuelles et confrontés à la réalité des contextes.

This study focuses on the paradigmatic category of social association to question the general treatment of freedom of association in theories of justice. Social associations are organised, voluntary, and secondary associations that do not have any particular economic or political function and are not related to any external authority. This category is deployed to re-examine the relationship between freedom of association and the two moral powers. I support the argument that freedom of social association is not only an institutional condition for conscience, as stated by Rawls, but also has an evident direct connection with both moral powers, because they enable individuals to lead a life that they collectively affirm to be reasonable and valuable and develop a sense of value and confidence in their own abilities. This is the fundamental associative interest we have in self-respect, which has been rendered philosophically invisible in political liberalism by the category of non-political association.