Section 80

section

59 articles

Articles

59 articles

Article

Les institutions de la stupeur. Retour sur les sociologies de l’événement

Nagisa Mitsushima

Abstract

Este artículo sostiene que el evento, asociado habitualmente a la contingencia y lo inédito, se encuentra en realidad sostenido por una sólida armadura institucional que limita en gran medida qué y qué no es posible hacer. A partir de una recensión de la literatura, este artículo aboga por una mejora en la toma en consideración por parte de las ciencias sociales de las dimensiones históricas y convencionales del evento. A partir de propuestas para aprehender esta infraestructura de eventos, formularemos una modalidad complementaria de análisis del objeto “evento” desde la óptica de la sociología histórica y la sociología de las instituciones.

Published on May 19, 2017

Article

Les « villages d'insertion » : un événement territorial ? Quand la géographie sociale fait sienne la notion d'événement pour étudier les politiques urbaines

Elise Roche

Abstract

The event is a regular topic of history and sociology. Crossing historic field and social geography, we suggest the concept of « territorial event ». This article examines how the spatial approach could improve the concept of event, exceeding the time or media analysis approach. This study is focused on two specific housing projects for Roma, named « Village for social inclusion » and both located in Saint-Denis (93). Roma people live specific social difficulties, because of their migratory status. Characteristics of « territorial event » are in number of three: (1) the new territorial structure bring out surprise and a lack of comprehension; (2) the event is established as “event” for specific actors and specific scale: it depends of the context and it allows to detect several territorial and historical structures; (3) the shortage in the structure of territory: it will be different before and after the territorial event.

Published on May 19, 2017

Article

« En eschauguette en sa propre maison » Réflexions sur le terrorisme comme guerre civile - L’exemple des guerres de Religion (1562-1598)

Jérémie Foa

Abstract

This paper offers to think about the problems faced by a society confronted with the presence - real or fantasized - of the ”enemy within”. In this society, the identification of the other and the self-presentation do not only serve to protect the social honor but are matters of life and death. What are the skills mobilized for identifying the ”suspects”? The wars of Religion (1562-1598) can help to think of a society confronted with sudden violence and, just like the terrorism, from the inside of the community.

Published on May 19, 2017

Article

Musique, religion, appartenances multiples : une approche de l’événement

Monika Salzbrunn

Abstract

The first part of this article deals with a critical review of the notion of event. Instead of predefining social groups, the author uses events as entry points to the field. She shows how multiple belongings in the Lake Geneva region are celebrated during religious events: music is a central mode of expression of diversity in a translocal context. The research process starts with a focus on events and the analysis of actors who put on stage their multiple belonging. These festive events are situated in a political, geographic and social context.

Published on May 19, 2017

Article

Épistémologie de l’exception

Ivan Ermakoff

Abstract

Exceptional cases are at odds with the typical : they stand out as bizarre and rare. What then could justify their systematic analysis? Elaborating the analytical distinction between anomalies, exceptions and outliers, this paper outlines three potential epistemic contributions of exceptional cases. First, exceptional cases reveal the limits of standard classification categories. In so doing, they problematize usual classificatory grids. Their input is critical. Second, exceptional cases point to new classes of objects. They acquire paradigmatic status when they exemplify the characteristic features of these new classes with utmost clarity. Third, exceptional cases magnify relational patterns that in more mundane contexts lack visibility. Here their contribution is heuristic. These three contributions become possible when we put at bay normative expectations of what should happen, and specify cases by reference to an analytical space of constitutive dimensions. To underscore the general significance of these observations, I draw on examples borrowed from different quarters of the social sciences: the sociology of organizations, ethnomethodology, comparative historical sociology and the history of science

Published on May 19, 2017

Article

Face au non-événement : réflexions à partir d’une expérience de terrain à Alger

Thomas Serres

Abstract

This article studies the production and the reception of a "non-event" by drawing on the Algerian presidential elections of 2014. It argues that a non-event must be understood as the product of a publicization, of the expectations of the observers and actors who anticipate a revolutionary or catastrophic future, and of social and political routine activities that also contribute to its appearance. While the non-event is not a clear break, it can still be interrogated in order to reveal the social structures and imaginaries that lead to its production. In the meantime, a certain distance from the "non event" is necessary to grasp less spectacular phenomena that it tends to obscure.

Published on May 22, 2017

Article

Pour une approche cosmopolite de la globalisation

Vincenzo Cicchelli, Sylvie Octobre

Abstract

Cosmopolitanism has a long and cyclic history. Often referred to as “neo cosmopolitanism”, its use in the current context raises a number of difficulties, both conceptual and methodological. However, by rephrasing ancient philosophical frames in sociological terms, this perspective offers a new evaluation grid for specific globalization processes, that avoids mere economistic views, providing insights regarding changes in the political, ethical, cultural and aesthetical dimensions of the link to otherness in a global world. Taking part in the “cosmopolitan turn” – which supposes new concepts and methodological tools – we propose a theoretical frame based on three scales of analysis: the dynamics of cosmopolitan culture, the institutions of cosmopolitan governance, the processes of cosmopolitan socialization.

Published on February 1, 2018

Article

Une pensée de la relation : Franz Boas et le concept de « type »

Camille Joseph

Abstract

This article focuses on the concept of « type » in Franz Boas’ work. Based on a close examination of his main anthropometrical texts, it sheds light on the way Boas used statistical methods in order to criticize the taxonomic approach of physical anthropology. Instead, he developed a perspective where relations between types are put forward and emphasized the importance of variability and correlation phenomena. By using the plural “types”, Boas was able to consider human plasticity as a scene for borrowing and intermixture.

Published on February 1, 2018

Article

Pluralité des points de vue et connaissance d'une réalité plurielle. En suivant Jean-Pierre Darré

Claude Compagnone

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to report the way in which the plural understandings of reality are inherent to the process of knowledge production. It also aims to show what it means that actors’ point of view are socially and materially situated. Relying on J.-P. Darré’s approach, Putnam’s pragmatism, as well as on linguists’ and psychologists’ works, it highlights how the relationship between reality and knowledge may be understood. It underlines that truth depends on the adequacy of knowledge to reality and emphasizes the interactional features of things. Then, it focuses on the social nature of understanding and discusses the social characterization of points of view, drawing on A. Schütz’s works.

Published on February 1, 2018

Article

Paradigmes subversifs du sujet dans la photographie et les écrits de Nan Goldin : Pluralité humaine et révisions épistémologiques

Mélanie Grué

Abstract

This article associates discourses on the subject, the sociology of photography and Nan Goldin’s work, and argues that the photographer questions gender paradigms leading to the definition of « abject » identities. As she reinvests the snapshot aesthetic and family photography, Goldin reveals the plurality of gender identities. Her photography documents the dismantling of the heterosexual couple and claims the social viability of homosexuals, transgender people and drag queens, thus rising to the status of subaltern knowledge and counter-discourse on humanity.

Published on February 1, 2018

Article

Diversité et « super-diversité » dans les arènes académiques : pour une approche critique

Milena Doytcheva

Abstract

Focusing at its starting point at the emergence of the concept of (super-) diversity in policy and academia, the article challenges the alleged theoretical and epistemic changes introduced by this new paradigm (Vertovec 2007) in the studies of race and ethnicity, pluralistic democracies, and even « multiculture » (Back 1994 ; Hall 1999). First we critically examine the main innovations claimed by the model, replacing them in a broader context of a posited « return of assimilation » (Brubaker 2001). Second we examine other sources of criticism, based for instance on empirical scrutiny and evidence from public policies analysis. We consider in conclusion the hypothesis of « whitening » (Bilge 2013) diversity and question the possibility to invest the concept not normatively but critically, namely through a thorough articulation to the principle of nondiscrimination.

Published on February 1, 2018

Article

L’altérisation de la pluralité sociale via la rhétorique de « la diversité » dans le discours d’organisations françaises : une analyse sémio-communicationnelle

Emmanuelle Bruneel

Abstract

This article aims to report on the way «diversity’s contemporary rhetoric» is considering the issue of social plurality and, doing so, reconfiguresthe ins and outs. Its recurrent uses in different sorts of public discourses (the one about «corporate social and environmental responsibility») allows us to examine «diversity» in terms of what that concept intends to focus on. Our analysis is a political one and is situated within the field of information and communication sciences insofar as it aims to approach the mediations of «diversity» as a social concept.Thus, our intention is to seize the contemporary social sayings about «diversity» and to characterize the concept within its discursive and visual existence. Conveyed by several institutional discourses via expressions such as «promote», «respect» or even «include diversity», this formulation seems ambiguous. It appears as a desire to gather the plurality of all «differences» and it aims to represent the plurality ofsociety while trying not to separate different members who compose it. It includes several themes which are, moreover, equivocal: it is used in heterogeneous contexts to talk about anti-discrimination, tolerance, parity, anti-homophobia, or anti-sexism, anti-racism, disability, secularism, etc. Nevertheless, all these evocations crystallize the idea of variety, plurality, dissimilarities, and non-identity between all. We willquestion discourses which aim to reflect an enchanted «diversity» as rhetorical content according to a semiotic approach to discursive forms and editorial formats. We will be focusing on grasping what epistemology of the plural the French «diversity’s rhetoric» is dealing with. Wondering which kind of pluralities «diversity» is intended to represented, we will point out that it is a discursive modality supporting semantic positive themes such as «combating discrimination» and «promoting differences» and «otherness» and linked to a multicultural conception of society.Globally, we would like to show that the French «diversity’s rhetoric» qualifies the «plural being» of society in a way that renews social mechanisms stereotyping alterity.

Published on February 1, 2018

Article

L’âge axial : retour sur un concept mis en œuvre par S. N. Eisenstadt

Renée Koch Piettre

Abstract

We discuss the relevance of the axial age concept of Eisenstadt in its application to Ancient Greece. According to Eisenstadt, Greece, despite its philosophers, had remained not idealistic enough to enter fully into the axial age. Recalling the diffusionist theory of A. Hocart and Levi‑Strauss’ structuralism, we show that the Oriental influences, both in the Hellenistic era and since the Greeks adapted the Phoenician writing, have always been subordinated by the Greeks to their own traditions.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Un lieu et un lien. L’espace intellectuel socialiste: Un espace spécifique et hétéronome

Thibaut Rioufreyt

Abstract

The production of political ideas goes beyond the organizational boundaries of the political parties and takes place through the mediation of collective actors ( foundations, clubs, think tanks, magazines, publishers, grandes écoles, research centers, universities,...) and individuals (political leaders, intellectuals, experts, translators, editors,...) coming from logics and heterogeneous social spaces. In this perspective, this article proposes to interrogate the topological concepts available to the social scientist (network, social world, field, epistemic community,...) to analyze these hybrid spaces by applying them to an empirical case : the socialiste intellectual space.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Le débat public sur le port de signes religieux par les représentants de l’État au Québec (2007‑2018): Entre accord et désaccord

Gilles Gauthier

Abstract

The article examines the evolution of the debate held in Quebec for more than ten years on the port of religious symbols by the representatives of the State by highlighting how it oscillated between agreement and disagreement. The analysis shows that the movements of the debate are determined by the introduction within it of infra‑debates on underlying questions which modify it outlines and, for lack of completely clarified beings, confuse it.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Le ghunghat, ethnographie d’un voile comme langage social. Corps et société en Inde du Nord

Laurence Lécuyer

Abstract

The ghunghat is a veiling practice of North India. Its peculiarity holds in the fact that it is not linked to a religion. It reveals the social and family organisation in India, is tightly linked with marriage practices and mirrors the representations of the self and of the body. An anthropological analysis of this practice reveals its multiple dimensions, especially a social, aesthetic and sacred dimension. A comparative study between the way the veil is conceived both in India and in France will allow to rethink the veil beyond the religious and political dimensions in which it is crystalized in the French context.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

L’incidence du système de préférence nationale monégasque sur la construction de l’identité de la population de la principauté de Monaco

Jérôme Tourbeaux

Abstract

The Principality of Monaco has the particularity of having instituted a system of hierarchical national preference favoring Monegasques first, then individuals who share more or less close ties with the Principality, particularly in the fields of employment and housing. The objective of the principality is to maintain the national citizens in the territory given its attractiveness and the pressure on the cost of real estate that results. This article proposes to discuss this system of national preference which, from a conceptual point of view certainly influences the identity-building process of the different categories of individuals residing in Monaco, thus shaping the relations between the different groups present in the country.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

La « sociabilité du passage » ou la rencontre avec une altérité modérée comme partage interculturel

Pauline Marie Neveu

Abstract

Sociability is a central concept in sociology. Applying it to new ways of creating social bounds questions the mere definition of the concept, particularly in its relationship with otherness. We suggest using the “passing through” sociability in order to better understand the tensions between likeness and otherness at the core of social relationships between strangers. Specifically, this paper aims to illustrate moments of intercultural openness between members of a hospitality exchange network.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Ecologies of Integration: Palestinian Socio-Cultural Activism in Sweden

Fanny Christou

Abstract

This article aims to critically analyse established integration models and look into how migrants/diasporas actively create practices of encounter, dialogue and mutual learning within host societies. This paper is based on fieldwork in a Swedish local space (Malmö) and explores the diversity of artistic activism of the Palestinians in Sweden in order to analyse its consequences on the concept of integration.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Les ressources du cosmopolitisme ordinaire pour les exilés Rohingyas, sans papiers en Malaisie

Louise Perrodin

Abstract

Since the 1990s, Rohingya have been seeking refuge in Malaysia. Once there, they do not hold any formal status as Malaysia does not recognize the status of refugees. Despite this non‑recognition, the imported category is omnipresent in the discourse of Rohingyas. This article shall analyze Rohingyas’ approach of this international status. It argues that cosmopolitanism, interiorized and routinized into an ordinary cosmopolitanism, constitutes a resource for the anchorage of undocumented exiles.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Comprendre la ville à travers ses affiches de rue : les significations d’un urbanisme pluriel à Yaoundé

Salifou Ndam, Hyacinthe Jean Abega

Abstract

In Yaounde, street posters carry hierarchical social dynamics and rivalries that characterize the struggle for the expression of rights to the city. As the city is divided into separate display areas, the street posters are then intended to reproduce the social hierarchies. At the same time, some posters fight against these logics through what are known as “counter-power” and “counter-space” strategies, synonymous of plural urbanism.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

La pluralité des rapports à l’écoquartier et à l’écocitoyenneté : un attachement commun au local et à la démocratisation de l’écologie ?

Karl Berthelot

Abstract

This article is the result of empirical research focused on the socio‑spatial drivers of the greening of ways of life and the diffusion‑reappropriation of ecocitizenship. It is based on a dozen semi‑directive interviews and 93 interviews by survey with residents of ecodistricts in Ile‑de‑France (Clichy‑Batignolles, Bel Air‑Grands Pêchers and Chandon‑République). The analysis of ways of life reveals the plurality of relationships with the ecodistrict, a pleasant place to live but also a catalyst for daily inconveniences that hinder the integration of residents into their local environment. Feedback from the inhabitants shows that ecogests are widespread in all representations related to ecology. However, they testify to the richness of subjective relationships to ecocitizenship, oscillating between defence and opposition to the standards of sustainable development. These vernacular discourses are at the origin of a semantic and pragmatic reappropriation of ecocitizenship, which will thus be shaped according to life constraints and personal values, all variables likely to have an effective influence on environmental awareness and sensitivity. The research results reveal plural expectations regarding the democratization of ecology, fluctuant according to personal social (dis)positions. The recognition of these determinants, which also explains the phenomena of inertia‑strengthening of pro‑environmental behaviour, renews the framework related to ecocitizenship. The latter one seems to be affiliated with an ethic close to social ecology, which makes sense at the local level and lifts the veil of the alienating effects of capitalism on the individual, particularly from its institutional and urban materialization.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

L’autisme à l’épreuve des normes sociales : ville‑carcan et nature‑liberté

Anna-Livia Marchionni

Abstract

I met people with Asperger syndrome to explore their relationship to nature by collecting their testimony and conducting ethnographic surveys at the homes of two of them. From these testimonies and observations, I articulate my remarks around two central axes: if the importance of the sensoriality in their relationship with nature and environment is highlighted, a second axis emerges: that of stigmatization and experience of rejection, which would lead the people I met to turn to nature as a space freed from social norms.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

La lutte contre l’épidémie d’Ebola en Guinée et les difficultés liées aux identités professionnelles et communautaires

Abdoulaye Wotem Somparé

Abstract

This article describes the interactions among different social actors involved in the fight against the Ebola epidemic in Guinea, focusing on their professional and community identities. It shows how the epidemic has contributed to create new identities, grouped into two different semantic fields: the “Ebola people” and the “communities”, but also new professional identities. In the theoretical framework of Olivier de Sardan’s socio-anthropology of development, the article tries to provide a better knowledge about the experts of the “Riposte,” belonging to different disciplinary fields and on their representations of local people.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

La réalité virtuelle fait-elle plus de place au patient ? Retour sur un dispositif expérimental de recherche thérapeutique

Ivan Sainsaulieu, Anne Vega

Abstract

We follow from a socio-anthropological point of view the ins and outs of an experiment in neuroscience, showing a desire to increase the therapeutic effectiveness of a virtual reality device (VR) in the treatment of phobias. Patient participation, which is at the heart of therapeutic promise and the use of virtual reality technology, is partial and relatively unthinking. The actors prioritize research on the clinic and share the classic representation of the “good patient” (actionable, without social constraints, available), or even of a heroic patient, capable of an unusual endurance and adaptability. This representation goes hand in hand with the underestimation of the therapeutic tests inherent in the use of virtual reality and with the underestimation of the patient’s analytical capacities during the experiment itself.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

L’insertion des Mozabites d’Algérie dans les territoires d’accueil. Organisation et solidarité de la communauté mozabite hors du M’Zab : l’exemple de la jma’a de Bordj Bou Arreridj

Nora Gueliane

Abstract

Migration is a characteristic feature of Mozabites, a minority with strong identity values and a particular institutional organization. Wherever Mozabites settle, in Algeria or abroad, a traditional assembly is created [the jma’a] and real estate is acquired: community house, free school, mosque, cemetery, cultural centre, library, etc.—this at the scale of a city. At the country level, each region is managed by a Coordination [tansiqiyat] and the whole is headed by a Confederal Council located in Ghardaïa—the ‘Ammi Said Council. This article therefore aims to explain this institutional organization and to elucidate the mechanisms adopted by Mozabites in order to facilitate their organization and integration in a migratory context. At the end of this paper, we will be able to highlight the mobilization of the group’s solidarity as a driving force in this integration process. For our demonstration, in addition to the documentary research, we used a field survey (qualitative). Open, semi-directive and group interviews were conducted, mainly with the mozabite community living in a medium-sized city in eastern Algeria, the city of Bordj Bou Arreridj, during the years 2015 and 2016.

Published on April 1, 2020

Article

Du déracinement à l'exclusion. Les réfugiés de la Première Guerre mondiale dans l'Ouest rural français

Ronan Richard

Abstract

During the First World War, between 2 and 3 million people choose exile, chased away by the fights. In West of France, 150 000 evacuees, refugees or repatriates are in this way welcomed. From autumn 1914, their integration causes difficulties, minor at the beginning but which become more important from 1915. In a context of prolonged war which nobody has predicted, their sociocultural profile is quickly considered as incompatible with the expectations of native populations, mainly rural and unaccustomed to this “discovery of the difference.”

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

Un étranger inventeur de nation : le cas du docteur Wilhelm Molly à Moresnet-Neutre

Cyril Robelin

Abstract

Le cas étudié est celui du Dr Molly qui transforma le Territoire neutre de Moresnet, espace mal défini lors des Traités de Vienne, attribué à la fois à la Prusse et aux Pays Bas. Il reste indivis en raison d’une mine de zinc. C’est un laboratoire géopolitique. Molly s’installe dans la partie prussienne et est nommé médecin de la Vieille Montagne. Il s’emploie à donner plus d’autonomie à Moresnet en tentant d’introduire des timbres, d’imposer l’espéranto. Il devient un des notables les plus respectés.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

Naissance d'un peuple européen nomade. Histoire et actualité des territoires trasnmigrants de la mondialisation par le bas en Europe méridionale

Alain Tarrius

Abstract

1980s: Algerian immigrants since 1962, little visible on the public scene, developed transnational commercial initiatives to supply vast underground markets emerging in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, then in Spain, while strengthening their ties with the Maghreb. After 1990, the Algerians of Europe, who were suffering the aftershocks of the civil war in Algeria, withdrew to local micro markets at the same time as the great Moroccan migration was unfolding: more than a million people in the decade created all sorts of European networks for housing, work, ... took over the cross‑border commercial activities of the Algerians, with more flexible and diversified logistics. It was in the early 2000s that they met the Afghan, Georgian, Russian and Ukrainian cohorts of East Asian transmigrants working for Southeast Asian firms, negotiating “poor to poor”, i.e. “by the poor for the poor”, duty and quota‑free, electronic products. Goods sent from Hong Kong to the Persian Gulf Emirates, where they escape the control of the WTO in order to invade, through sales at half price, the huge market of the poor in Europe, who are solvent under these conditions. Taking the trans‑Balkan route, they merged in 2003 in Italy with the Moroccans: a major route of Globalization from below, or among the poor, was thus born from the Black Sea to Andalusia via Bulgaria, Albania, Italy, Southern France and the Spanish Levant. Informal notaries» ensure the ethics of exchanges along this “circulatory territory”. Bypassing the survival markets of the big metropolises, Istanbul, Sofia, Naples, Marseilles, Barcelona, the capitals of the territories of the transmigrants of the “poor among the poor” are medium‑sized cities. In France, Perpignan is one of them. Little by little, Balkan women are joining the sex work movement in Spain, with psychotropic drug traffickers linked to the Italian ‘ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and the Russian‑Ukrainian Dnieper mafia, who are particularly active in the border areas of the Adriatic Sea, from Albania to Italian Puglia, and in the Catalan area, from Perpignan, Andorra, La Junquère, Sitges.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

L'expatriation comme forme d'émancipation. Vers un autre regard sur les migrations internationales ?

Sylvain Beck

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze expatriation in a phenomenological perspective. It aims to question the usual analytical tools of human displacements. The deconstruction of social class, racial and national identities, allows us to highlight the emancipation of the individual from the patria. Expatriation appears like a heuristic existential notion to look differently at international migrations. This perspective unifies migratory situations beyond the implicit cleavages between tradition and modernity.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

Les politiques d’asile en Russie : entre migration de retour et rapatriement

Stepan Vasilenko

Abstract

This article aims to highlight the way in which, in the Russian national context, public authorities erase the boundaries between return migration and asylum in order to support the repatriation of former Soviet citizens to Russia. This political phenomenon has its roots in the fall of the USSR when Russia has rapidly become a country of immigration. This resulted in the adoption of the Geneva Convention and the creation of the two socio‑legal categories of refugees in Russia: « forced migrants » and « refugees ».

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

La diversité des projets migratoires de Français qui s'expatrient au Québec : essai de typologie en quatre tableaux dynamiques

Danièle Bélanger, Cécile Lefèvre, Charles Fleury

Abstract

Based on a qualitative study conducted between 2016 and 2018 among thirty French people who migrated to Quebec, this article proposes to distinguish four types of migration projects: the exploration, settlement, circulation and return projects. The trajectories and narratives collected show that these projects are not mutually exclusive or fixed in time, but that there is a fluidity between them, which moreover do not always correspond to the administrative categories of migration statuses in Canadian immigration policy.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

Cap(s) de Bonne Espérance ? Entre fierté et culpabilité, transmission et déconstruction : les formes d'expatriations identitaires afrikaner post-apartheid

Valentin Heinrich, Clémence Snyman

Abstract

From 1994, the Afrikaner community members experience an ambiguous relationship with their cultural attributes, used as alibi by the Christian‑nationalist government to justify racial supremacy under apartheid time. Today, these characteristics are seen as deviant and lived as social stigmas. Some Afrikaners vividly criticize their past and try to recreate new patriotic frames which fit today liberal and democratic values, as shown in this article.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

« Where is home? » Les Médecins Sans Frontières, des médecins sans patrie ?

Ludovic Joxe

Abstract

Are “Doctors Without Borders” (MSF) doctors without a homeland? Based on fifty interviews, statistical data and a participatory observation, this article describes humanitarian mission conditions limiting local integration and suggests three forms of attachment: home (“break expatriates”), elsewhere (“multi‑homeland expatriates”) or nowhere (“duty‑free expatriates”). For the latter, MSF plays, until their departure from the organization, the role of substitute homeland.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

Pluralité d’échelles d’analyse et de temporalités dans l’étude de la relation avec la patrie : l’exemple du circuit migratoire saisonnier liant les Bouches‑du‑Rhône au Maghreb

Giulia Breda

Abstract

In this article I show how, on the field of seasonal migration between the Maghreb and the Bouches‑du‑Rhône, the evolution of the links maintained with the “homeland,” the territory and social network in the country of origin and the meaning that migrants themselves give to this relationship can be understood through the intersection of a plurality of analytic levels and temporalities: the political and socio‑economic structural context of the host and origin country; the possibilities provided by migrants’ network; the individual and family strategies of the latter.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

Les coûts de l'expatriation

Yacine Boukhris-Ferré

Abstract

This article aims at studying the concrete conditions of integration of an undocumented person living in Bordeaux. It is essentially based on an ethnographic survey, interviews and a budget survey carried out with a recipient of the Secours Populaire support in Bordeaux.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

L'adresse de référence, la citoyenneté des invisibles

Adèle Pierre

Abstract

In Belgium, registration in the Population Register is a prerequisite for access to social rights, as well as an indicator of integration and social recognition. For homeless people, an administrative system has been set up: the reference address. Among other things, this allows the person to be registered in the population register and to obtain a legal and administrative existence. However, today, its application differs from one social welfare organization (called CPAS) to another, the controls being most of the time driven by the fight against social fraud, itself defined by a specific policy of each CPAS.

Published on August 31, 2021

Article

L’archéologie au service des identités nationales : pourquoi faudrait-il détruire les collections de moulages d’art antique ?

Irene Avola

Abstract

Following the example of Germany and after 1870s, plaster casts of ancient art are subject to a “cultural transfer” in France and in Italy. This kind of process reflects the birth of archaeology as a science; it is aligned to a specific change in higher education and it allows a nation building / re-building (by referring to Italian and French examples). In addition, the consolidating nation process is based on a cultural mechanism caused by globalization, i.e. “inventing tradition”. The “myth of white Greece” or that of “Romanity” can be taken into account in order to justify the destruction of plaster casts of ancient art.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

De l’exhibition dans les expositions coloniales au nouveau Musée national aïnou: La voix des autochtones est-elle impénétrable dans l’espace muséal ?

Alice Berthon

Abstract

Has the inauguration of the first Ainu National Museum in Japan in 2020, which follows the recognition of their indigenous status in 2019, redefined the actors at play in discussing Ainu history? The study of this new museum will serve as a case study to analyse the elaboration of discourses defining Self and Other, as well as the relationship between those who produce knowledge about the Ainu and the Ainu themselves.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

Biais socio-centrés et constructions de l’altérité: Pour une approche anthropologique critique et raisonnée

Sophie Chave-Dartoen

Abstract

Considering the colonial heritage and the other forms of domination makes it necessary to take a critical approach to the positions of authority on which scientific discourse is based. What would be the conditions for the possibility of knowledge giving access to alternative forms of knowledge and discourse about the world? Does not every approach bring its own biases in the project of universal knowledge? The reflection is based on an ethnographic survey (Wallis) and the current debate on the restitution of African museum collections by former colonial countries.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

La Vénus de Milo est-elle japonaise ?

Michael Lucken

Abstract

The Venus of Milo is seen as a unique masterpiece of Greek art. However, to the great displeasure of the Greek authorities who are demanding its return, it has belonged to the French public collections since 1821. More generally, it is widely considered a European and Western heritage. And it goes without saying, its beauty is universal. But can it be Japanese? Through the examination of the reception of the Venus de Milo in Japan, the aim is to reflect on the conditions of a utopian appropriation of art works, given that, unlike texts that can be quoted, cut and mounted, paintings and statues are strongly dependant on their materiality. Against the current discourse on the dematerialization of art works, which goes hand in hand with an increasing fetishization of the originals, this article explores the path of an incorporation through practice and repetition.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

La Polynésie française : dernier bastion de l’« invention de la tradition » ?: Quand le champ scientifique adresse une fin de non-recevoir aux renaissances culturelles

Florence Mury

Abstract

While the actors of cultural renaissances in French Polynesia do not hesitate to mobilize historical, archeological or anthropological research work as means of knowing the precolonial past, the scientific field, especially the French-speaking researchers, continue to overlook and discredit this cultural enunciation. The historicity of the practices and the aims pursued within the framework of these renaissances are thus questioned, revealing the still decisive influence of a theory that has nevertheless been undermined elsewhere in the Pacific: the invention of tradition.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

Science, identity and the law: Intersecting conceptualization and operationalization of race and ethnicity

Andras L. Pap, Eszter Kovacs Szitkay

Abstract

The comparative legal scholar authors, working a broad project mapping how law conceptualizes and operationalizes race, ethnicity and nationality, provide an assessment of the triadic relationship between law, identity (making and claims recognition) and science. The project focuses on race and ethnicity, excluding the discussion of gender identity, but the latter is used as a point of reference to demonstrate the transformative changes in the past years in how the meaning of the terms of identity are assigned and conceptualized in social sciences and humanities, and to a certain degree in politics and law. Yet, there is a debilitating lack of linguistic and conceptual resources, cultural tools, and a solid and proper vocabulary for thinking about racial identity, which is particularly stark in the field of law, especially international law, which habitually operates with the concepts of race, ethnicity, and nationality when setting forth standards for the recognition of collective rights or protection from discrimination, establishing criteria for asylum, labeling actions as genocide, or requiring a “genuine link” in citizenship law, without actually providing definitions for these groups or of membership criteria within these legal constructs. The paper provides an overview of the obstacles, challenges and controversies in the legal institutionalization. In technical terms, the operationalization of ethnic/racial/national group affiliation can follow several options: self-identification; authority given to elected or appointed members (representatives) of the group (leaving aside legitimacy-, or ontological questions regarding the authenticity or genuineness of these actors); classification by outsiders, through the perception of the majority; or by outsiders but using “objective” criteria, such as names, residence, et cetera. The paper also provides an assessment of how “objective” criteria, data and constructions provided by science translate into the legal discourse. Case studies will be used from anthropological/historical “scientific knowledge,” and the operationalization of (performative) whiteness and otherness in the US, to contemporary examples of requiring DNA-heritage certificates in naturalization and Diaspora-programs (for example for birthright schemes in Israel); race-focused forensic datasets; and race-based medicine and reproductive technologies – where the methodology and conceptualization of “scientific race” is analyzed in a comparative and critical framework.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

Agriculteurs ou chasseurs-cueilleurs ? Le débat autour de Dark Emu

Peter Sutton, Keryn Walshe, Christophe Darmangeat

Abstract

Dark Emu (2014), a book written by Bruce Pascoe, argues for a drastic revision of the vision of Aboriginal peoples at the time of the colonisation of Australia. Traditionally presented as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they were in fact for the most part villagers who applied some forms of agriculture and fish farming, all of which were concealed by those who wanted to appropriate their lands, thus forging a false version perpetuated by anthropological tradition. This provocative thesis has had a huge impact in Australia, where it has been the subject of much controversy. Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe’s book is the first rebuttal by academic specialists–who are also deeply involved in the defence of the rights of Aboriginal communities.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

« Voilà les anthropos » : à quoi sert un archéologue ?

John Whittaker, Christophe Darmangeat

Abstract

Starting with a song denouncing anthropologists and prehistorians as disrespectful of the cultures they study, the article reflects on the relationship between lost cultures and their scientific study, drawing on the author’s personal experience. It then examines NAGPRA, the federal “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act”, which in 1990 gave Native American communities extensive rights over various cultural properties and archaeological sites. He highlights the paradoxical, if not perverse, effects of such legislation, which has not necessarily contributed to a better knowledge (and recognition) of pre-colonial societies in North America.

Published on May 10, 2023

Article

Des théories de la modernisation au débat sur les valeurs asiatiques : l’invention d’une science sociale différentialiste à Singapour (années 1970-1990)

Thomas Brisson

Abstract

Singapore offers an interesting puzzle for the study of differentialist science policies.How can we understand that the city-state, which had long adopted a modernising and universalist scientific stance, came to reverse this agenda in the 1970s, in order to promote an endogenous and particularist conception of the social sciences? This reversal, which saw Singapore oppose the Euro-American scientific establishment, is particularly counterintuitive as it occurred precisely when the island was completing its integration into the circuits of the Western capitalist economy. To understand this, the article proposes to analyse in detail the relations between Singaporean political and scientific circles, in order to identify the configurations in which the differentialist hypothesis gained credibility. In doing so, it shows both the multiplicity of actors and scales involved in this transformation, as well as the still contested and unfinished nature of differential science policies.

Published on November 6, 2024

Article

Construire la nation avec les sciences sociales : le « projet russien » et ses protagonistes

Jules Fediunin

Abstract

This article examines the idea of the civic nation, known as rossiiskii project, and its intellectual roots in post-Soviet Russia. After exploring the intertwined careers of its leading theorists and promoters, the article analyzes the ways in which social science expertise has been deliberately placed at the service of a political cause, i.e., Russian nation-building. Finally, the article shows the lack of consensus around this project, as well as the reluctance of the Putin regime to impose it.

Published on November 6, 2024

Article

L’Indo-Pacifique comme objet d’études en relations internationales : lectures comparées sur la production scientifique aux États-Unis et en Chine

Gauthier Mouton

Abstract

This article consists of a comparative analysis of social science production on the Indo-Pacific as an object of study, specifically in the field of International Relations (IR), between two countries: the United States and China, central players in this region. The aim is therefore to identify and define the main thematic orientations in the American and Chinese national academies over the last fifteen years, with scientific production on the Indo-Pacific understood as a political narrative. Thus, by using data from academic work in these two countries, focusing on IR articles, the aim is to highlight the scientific frame of reference of the “national traditions”. At the end of this article, it appears that the distinctions between these 'traditions' remain blurred, with different approaches running through them. The relationship between the scientific community and the political world can vary considerably depending on the contexts studied. However, while there are fundamental differences in the way researchers analyse cross-cutting challenges in the Indo-Pacific, a comparison of the scientific literature and expertise produced in universities in the United States and China sheds relevant light on the mutual influences of national academies of social sciences, specifically in International Relations.

Published on November 6, 2024

Article

Une expérience française : À propos de Fei Xiaotong 费孝通 et de la publication en français de Xiangtu Zhongguo 乡土中国 (1948), sous le titre « Aux racines de la société chinoise » (2021)

Catherine Capdeville-Zeng

Abstract

Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005) is considered in China as one of the founding fathers of Chinese anthropology and sociology. His most important theoretical work, Xiangtu Zhongguo 乡土中国, published in 1948, was translated into English and published in 1992 as From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society. In 2021, to re-specify certain anthropological notions and put them within the reach of French-speaking readers, including in particular that of chaxu geju 差序格局 “(social) order based on status distinctions” which characterizes Chinese society according to the author, the work is published for the first time in French by Presses de l’Inalco under the title The Roots of Chinese Society.After a presentation of the author and his thinking anchored in the anthropological discipline, a reflection is proposed here on the academic debates between thinkers from different societies. A short biography of Fei Xiaotong precedes the exposition of the main concepts developed in his work, and the questions encountered regarding their translations. The old but complex links between Fei Xiaotong and French anthropology are then addressed, then his conceptions are compared to those of the French anthropologist Louis Dumont. The actual experience of publication and translation into French, involving Chinese and French collaborators, and the discussions about the preface written for this French edition are then recounted. A questioning concludes around the forms of censorship encountered in the human sciences in the light of different eras and distinct political horizons.

Published on November 6, 2024

Article

Sur l’effet réversif de l’évolution: Une brève réponse à Bernard Lahire

Patrick Tort

Abstract

The concept of the reversive effect of evolution, introduced by Patrick Tort into Darwinian studies in 1983, has profoundly unsettled a great many received ideas about Darwin and about his understanding of the civilizing process. In The Descent of Man (1871), Darwin explains with the utmost clarity that, in acting powerfully upon social instincts and rational capacities, natural selection selects civilization—an outcome that stands in opposition to the (now archaic) eliminatory dynamic of natural selection by seeking to transform the human environment into an aid to survival.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Matière, énergie, humanité: L’anthropologie contre l’entropie

Boris Lelong

Abstract

This article builds on Bernard Lahire’s recent call to refound the social sciences within a unified framework that incorporates the life sciences. This unification is approached from the standpoint of anthropology, defined as a general science of the human species and necessarily grounded in the natural sciences that elucidate the biological, cognitive, and social emergence of Homo sapiens.Drawing on the physics of complex systems, the argument emphasizes that life, as an open system, counteracts entropy by developing complex structures capable of processing information for self-organization—of which human societies constitute the most sophisticated expression to date. The systematic articulation of three levels of reality—matter-energy, information, and reflexivity—demonstrates that human uniqueness stems less from an ontological rupture than from an extreme amplification of the informational capacities inherent in living systems, culminating in scientific reflexivity.Anthropology thus emerges as a pivotal discipline, capable of linking the study of complex social systems with a naturalistic understanding of life, and of providing a conceptual framework for analyzing the interdependencies between the biosphere and the anthroposphere.Bernard Lahire’s proposed “social science of life” gains additional conceptual grounding when viewed through this broader lens: the unification of the social and natural sciences is not merely a programmatic ambition but an existential necessity arising from humanity’s position within the matter-energy-information continuum.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Lois d’évolution générales et lois d’évolution interne des sociétés: Une lecture croisée de Bernard Lahire et Alain Testart

Elie Aslanoff

Abstract

In his book Structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines (Fundamental Structures of Human Societies), Bernard Lahire returns to the original purpose of social sciences: discovering the laws that govern human societies. However, while the founders of social sciences sought above all to identify laws specific to a given type of society, Bernard Lahire prefers to focus on universally valid laws. This article examines the possibility of articulating these two research perspectives. It attempts to understand how the laws of internal evolution within societies relate to the general laws of evolution identified by Bernard Lahire. To this end, it compares the work of Bernard Lahire with that of Alain Testart, one of the most recent authors to have provided the most serious avenues for identifying laws specific to given societies. This dialogue shows that one of the keys to understanding the problem lies in the junction between the law of cumulative objectification (general law) and the laws of concentration of rights over men (which are specific to different types of society).

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Biologie et sciences humaines: Le point de vue d’un biologiste de l’évolution sur le livre de Bernard Lahire

Étienne Danchin

Abstract

Bernard Lahire’s book, Les Structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines (2023), is a magnificent plea for transdisciplinarity, an approach that I find absolutely essential to enable all sciences to continue to advance our understanding of the universe around us. That being said, I would like to share a few thoughts that came to mind while reading this magnificent work, in relation to my own approach to synthesis in the field of biology. The first thought I would like to address here is in support of the transdisciplinary approach adopted by Bernard Lahire. Next, I offer two thoughts on the importance of general interdisciplinary laws. My fourth thought follows on from the previous ones and concerns the necessity of developing a common vocabulary to promote synthesis between disciplines. Finally, I make the connection with an important topic in the humanities: the origin of inequalities, a subject that Bernard Lahire naturally addresses in his book. My ultimate goal is to remind readers how closely biology and the humanities are linked, in that they both deal with the understanding of living things, which leads them to share many concepts and principles.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Explorer les hiérarchies d’âge dans le vivant: La domination adulte chez les primates

Gabriel Allegret

Abstract

This article proposes to extend the study of the “hierarchical succession law” proposed by sociologist Bernard Lahire beyond the human species to include non-human primates. It argues for the need to extend the investigation of the nomological architecture defined in Structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines (Fundamental Structures of Human Societies) to other animal species and suggests the use of an “inductive taxonomy” method to identify laws and invariants applicable at different taxonomic levels (species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, and kingdom). Based on a synthesis of the literature in primatology and ethology, this contribution shows that the current state of research suggests that this law of “hierarchical succession” and adult domination are trans-species invariants that apply to all species of the Hominidae family and possibly all those of the primate order (and even mammals). Future research could further explore 1) the study of age-related dominance between juveniles on the one hand and between adults on the other; 2) the distinction between dominance based on age and dominance based on seniority (in a given territory); and 3) the differences between adult dominance and dominance based on seniority (taking into account the dominance experienced by older individuals). Finally, future work on the cultural dimensions and forms of resistance of young primates against adult dominance is also necessary.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Les structures fondamentales des sociétés préhistoriques: À propos des Structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines de Bernard Lahire et de leur utilité en préhistoire

Anne Augereau

Abstract

In Les structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines, Bernard Lahire shows that two biological constraints– sexual procreation and prolonged altriciality–permanently shape human social organisations. They generate relationships of dependence and domination, complemented by social invariants (kinship, division of labour, age hierarchies, cultural transmission) that structure all societies while leaving room for significant cultural variation. For prehistory, this framework provides an essential tool: in the face of incomplete data, it enables us to narrow down our hypotheses and anchor our analyses in the continuities of life. The book also sheds light on the structural origins of male domination, without denying the ability of human societies to modulate or overcome its effects. By offering a “map” of social invariants, Lahire provides major theoretical support for prehistoric research.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Sortir de la grotte pour mieux y rentrer : à la recherche d’invariants

Romain Pigeaud

Abstract

Bernard Lahire’s thinking is extremely motivating because it allows us to connect the social with the living, to identify “lines of force” and “laws” that permit the creation of a scientific language that transcends mere descriptions and protects us from general discourses too disconnected from reality. Is it possible to make a considerable leap forward in time and apply these ideas to periods without written records, about which we know practically nothing? This is a new path to explore, and we present here the first, undoubtedly still clumsy, strokes of the pruning knife.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Ambiguïté du rire pour faire une société humaine

Kiyonobu Date

Abstract

This article explores the ambivalent social functions of laughter through an interdisciplinary approach combining sociology, ethology, anthropology, developmental psychology, and, to some extent, gender studies and technology. It analyzes the evolutionary, normative, critical, and cultural dimensions of human laughter. It thus shows that laughter constitutes a fundamental social practice – at once a vector of inclusion and sanction, and potentially of subversion and relational creativity.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

Quand les mots disent les choses: Une archéologie linguistique de la dyade mère-enfant

Julien d'Huy

Abstract

This paper tests the hypothesis that certain sound–meaning patterns associated with “mother” and “breast” may reflect a very ancient codiffusion, inherited from the earliest migrations of Homo sapiens and from the centrality of the mother–infant dyad. Within a framework of “linguistic archaeology,” four phonotactic traits are examined across 2,959 languages (“mother”) and 7,322 languages (“breast”) from the Lexibank and ASJP databases: [n]/[ŋ] and [na]/[ŋa] in initial position for “mother,” and [mu] and [amu] for “breast.” Their distribution is assessed through spatial analyses (Moran’s I, binomial z-scores on 2°×2° grids, random permutations, great-circle distances). The results reveal a non-random structuring for [n]/[ŋ] and [mu], with hotspots in Africa, South Asia, Island Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Australia, regions that align with the southern routes of early Homo sapiens dispersal. The forms [na] and [amu], more geographically restricted, appear as regional archaisms. The strong geographic co-occurrence between [n]/[na] and [mu], contrasting with the limited spread of [amu], suggests an ancient lexical core linking “mother” and “breast,” not reducible to articulatory biases alone. Without positing a single protolanguage, the study shows that linguistic areology can reveal fossil traces of an early cultural structuring around the mother–infant dyad, providing partial support for the hypothesis of an initial cultural unity disseminated during the first out-of-Africa dispersals of Homo sapiens.

Published on January 16, 2026

Article

L’apport des invariants sociaux à l’apprentissage du travail social: Une analyse des perceptions étudiantes en première année de formation en assistant social

Vincent La Paglia

Abstract

This research examines the place and function of sociological knowledge in social work training, particularly through the teaching of social invariants proposed by Bernard Lahire (2023). These concepts, which can shed light on the fundamental structures of society, are studied here in terms of their reception and perceived usefulness by first-year students in the bachelor’s degree program in social work at Hénallux (Namur, Belgium). The study adopts a mixed approach: a questionnaire administered to 77 students, analyzed using descriptive statistics and correlation tests, is supplemented by eight interviews with students and two interviews with teachers, which are subjected to thematic analysis with a double coding cycle. The results highlight three major functions of invariants: (1) deciphering situations involving users, (2) a more complex understanding, and (3) capitalizing on solutions to address the vulnerabilities of the public. In addition, two specific advantages emerge from social invariants: their explanatory power as general concepts that can be used to elucidate social phenomena while promoting, through their contextual variation, a nuanced interpretation of situations encountered in social intervention, and the inter/transdisciplinary scope of invariants. While a minority of students remain skeptical of theoretical knowledge, the relational and pedagogical quality of teaching appears to be a decisive lever for appropriation. Despite some limitations mentioned, the study concludes that invariants are relevant as integrative tools, articulating sociological intelligibility, reflexivity, and professional intervention.

Published on January 16, 2026