7 | 2023 - Identity versus science? Science at the service of identity?
(10 articles)The appropriation of knowledge in terms of identity is a key phenomenon in human societies and is already part of the analytical agenda of the social sciences. For many years, it was associated with constituted powers or political currents of various backgrounds, but in recent decades it has been marked by a new phenomenon. In the name of the recognition of the rights or memory of minorities from populations that were victims of colonialism, there has emerged a demand for a degree of control over the conditions of scientific investigation or its results. This tension between science and identity has been particularly acute in the fields of archaeology and anthropology, and has been addressed in particular from the angle of how the past is used and of the status of museographic objects in the post-colonial context. The articles in this issue fall within the scope of these disciplines and present case studies ranging from casts of ancient art in France to the Venus de Milo in Japan.
5-6 | 2021-2022 - Self-expatriation
(21 articles)Expatriation is both a historical and a current theme, linked to mobility and migration, but distinguished from it by a specificity stemming from the notion of “homeland” and the voluntary nature of the reflexive verb. Among the issues addressed are the following: does the act of expatriation produce what are now commonly referred to as “expatriates”, or rather exiles, refugees and “transfuges”? Expatriation implies a sense of uprooting, as well as a sense of identity and belonging, whether chosen or forced. We can also reflect on the issue of statelessness and repatriation. Is expatriation for tax reasons a form of betrayal of one's homeland? The individual who expatriates should preferably be studied in relation to communities (companies, businesses, etc.). The idea of homeland is therefore at the heart of this issue. Does expatriation change homeland? Is it possible to have several homelands? Are there international forms of patriotism?
3-4 | 2019-2020 - Varia
(27 articles)This double issue contains 27 articles exploring the notion of the plural from a wide range of angles: sociology, anthropology, philosophy and history.
2 | 2018 - Epistemologies of the plural
(7 articles)For its second thematic issue, the review “Sociétés Plurielles” looks at the epistemologies of the plural, which vary from one discipline to another. Six articles have been selected, written by a range of sociologists, including a specialist in philosophy. More abstract social scientists have offered their reflections on the conditions for knowledge of a plural reality from a broad perspective, while a specialist in information and communication sciences deals with the rhetoric of diversity in the business world. A sociologist specialising in migration also makes a contribution focusing on the use of the notion of “diversity” in academic and political circles. Other sociologists examine the ways in which plurality is experienced in the context of globalisation. And other articles show that thinking about the plural can lead us to examine other concepts, such as “type” or “race”, and to reflect on a principle that was once considered intangible – that of the duality of the sexes – a norm that is now being called into question in favour of a more complex vision of the reality of gender. It is clear from these contributions that thinking about the concepts of plural or plurality requires an almost obligatory reflection on their antonym(s). The multiplicity of terms related or correlated either to the notion of plural or to that of its opposite, the singular, leads us to broaden the field of analysis.
1 | 2017 - Facing the challenge of the event in the Social Sciences and the Humanities
(8 articles)The wave of attacks that shook France in January 2015 and the multiple explanatory interpretations given to them by the media raised a question among the members of our program: how can we give an immediate scientific response to a factual phenomenon of such complexity? In other words, how can an event - that is, a temporal marker distinguishing a before and an after - call into question our scientific practice, which is based on duration, or even the long term? This issue contains both polemical texts to which it is not our place to respond directly, and theoretical and methodological articles focusing either on the notion of the ‘exceptional case’ or on the notion of the ‘event’ itself. Other, more empirical contributions illustrate the different ways of understanding the event, depending on the definition of the term and the working method specific to each discipline in the humanities and social sciences.