Compte Rendu of Hamid’s Story Series: Disappearing Responsibility

Compte rendu in French refers to a detailed report or summary of events, discussions, decisions, or observations. For Bruno Latour, “Un bon compte rendu, dans notre optique, est un récit, une description ou une proposition dans lesquels tous les acteurs font quelque chose au lieu... de rester assis à ne rien faire” (A good account, in our view, is a narrative or a description or a proposition where all the actors do something instead of... sitting there doing nothing). I use it here somewhat deliberately—and perhaps unnecessarily—as a rare chance to show off my French, which I hardly use in Germany despite having invested a great deal of effort in learning it as a teenager. Thank you for your understanding :) .
Changer de société, refaire de la sociologie, Paris, La Découverte, 2006, p. 183. (English ed.: Reassembling the Social, 2005, p. 128)

This series begins with an analysis of a short story about an immigrant in Germany found in a German language textbook, focusing on issues of representation. It then continues with a documentation of what happened after I raised a complaint about this story. What began as a classroom observation—a moment of discomfort with how migration was represented—turned into months of exchanges with publishers, schools, NGOs, and academics. The posts trace how each actor responded and how, in the end, responsibility dissipated.

Hamid’s Story and the Politics of Gratitude

It started with a lesson about “Hamid,” an immigrant whose success story is told as a moral tale of gratitude. The story avoids the realities of housing discrimination and structural racism, framing integration as a personal duty.

Hamid’s Glow-Up and Sloppy Terms: What the Publisher Said

When I wrote to the publisher, they kindly thanked me — then distanced themselves. Their message: “Textbooks aren’t sociological analyses; they’re input for discussion.” This post looks at how responsibility gets shifted from the producers of knowledge to teachers and learners.

Everyone Appreciates Your Feedback: How the School Handled My Complaint

At the language school, responses repeated the pattern.
The local branch: “We’ll forward this to the responsible department.”
The diversity office: “We’re not the right contact point because of our structure.”
A teacher in person: “You’re making too much of this — if you want change, do it yourself.”
This post explores how administrative politeness and decentralization effectively cancel accountability.

Dead Ends: What Happens After a Complaint Leaves the Language School

Outside the school, NGOs and academic experts appear — helpful in tone, but non‑committal in action. Promises of support fade into missing replies and outdated email addresses. This final post traces how institutional processes end, not with a response, but with disappearance.

Why I Wrote This

I wrote this series first of all to vent about it (see my ironic and sarcastic short comments that appear in the posts), but also to preserve a trace of what was said and how it was answered—to keep both the story and its afterlife visible. It is a small map of how institutions react to a discrimination-related complaint, which takes me back to my first and more general reflections on Discrimination Happens Everywhere: What Support Do States and Societies Really Offer?.

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