3-4 | 2019-2020 - Varia

This double issue contains 27 articles exploring the notion of the plural from a wide range of angles: sociology, anthropology, philosophy and history.


1. The Axial Age: New Thoughts on S. N. Eisenstadt’ Concept

Renée Koch Piettre.
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.
Section: Articles

2. A Place and a Link. The Socialist Intellectual Space

Thibaut Rioufreyt.
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.
Section: Articles

3. The Public Debate on the Port of Religious Signs by the Representatives of The State in Québec (2007‑2018). Between Agreement and Disagreement

Gilles Gauthier.
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.
Section: Articles

4. Beyond the Veil. A Comparative Study between France and India

Laurence Lécuyer.
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.
Section: Articles

5. The Impact of the Monegasque National Preference System on the Construction of the Identity of the Population of the Principality of Monaco

Jérôme Tourbeaux.
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.
Section: Articles

6. “Passing through” sociability or how encounters with moderate otherness allow intercultural sharing

Pauline Marie Neveu.
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.
Section: Articles

7. Ecologies of Integration: Palestinian Socio-Cultural Activism in Sweden

Fanny Christou.
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.
Section: Articles

8. The Resources of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism for Undocumented Exiles: a Study of Rohingyas’ Anchorage in Malaysia

Louise Perrodin.
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.
Section: Articles

9. Understanding the City through its Street Posters: The Meanings of Plural Urbanism in Yaounde

Salifou Ndam ; Hyacinthe Jean Abega.
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.
Section: Articles

10. The Plurality of Relationships with the Ecodistrict and Ecocitizenship: a Common Attachment to the Local and the Democratization of Ecology?

Karl Berthelot.
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 […]
Section: Articles

11. City-Shackles and Nature-Freedom: Autism Challenged by Social Norms

Anna-Livia Marchionni.
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.
Section: Articles

12. The Struggle Against the Ebola Epidemics in Guinea, and the Hardships Related With Professional and Community-Based Identities

Abdoulaye Wotem Somparé.
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.
Section: Articles

13. Does Virtual Reality Make More Room for the Patient? A Look Back at an Experimental Therapeutic Research System

Ivan Sainsaulieu ; Anne Vega.
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.
Section: Articles

14. Pejoska Frosa, 2018, L’Émigration, du fait social à la coutume, P.I.E. Peter Lang, Bern/Bruxelles, 188 p.

Corina Iosif-Sîrbu.
Section: Review

15. Cicchelli Vincenzo, 2019, Plural and Shared: The Sociology of a Cosmopolitan World, Brill, Leiden/Boston, 228 p.

Camil-Alexandru Parvu.
Section: Review

16. Demoule Jean-Paul , Garcia Dominique et Schnapp Alain (dir.), 2018, Une Histoire des civilisations. Comment l’archéologie bouleverse nos connaissances, La Découverte/INRAP, Paris, 605 p.

Christophe Darmangeat.
Section: Review

17. Garbati Giuseppe, Pedrazzi Tatiana (eds.), 2016, Transformations and Crisis in the Mediterranean: “Identity” and Interculturality in the Levant and Phoenician West during the 8th-5th Centuries BCE, Suppl. Rivista di studi fenici, xliv, CNR Edizioni, Roma, 300 p.

Anna Angelini.
Section: Review

18. Lucken Michael, 2017, Le Japon grec. Culture et possession, Bibliothèque des Histoires, Gallimard, Paris, 256 p.

Andrea Taddei.
Section: Review

19. Lewandowski Tadeusz (ed.), 2018, Zitkala-Ša, Letters, Speeches, and Unpublished Writings, 1898-1929, Brill, Leiden/Boston, 270 p.

Marine Le Puloch.
Section: Review

20. « Expat’ » à Abu Dhabi. Blanchité et construction du groupe national chez les migrant·e·s français·es

Claire Cosquer.
Section: Thesis Summaries

21. Vivre la révolution de 2011 à distance. Sociologie des migrations en France

Celia Lamblin.
Section: Thesis Summaries

22. La fabrique d’une communauté transnationale, les Jummas entre France et Bangladesh

Paul Nicolas.
Résumé de la thèse de doctorat en géographie, sous la direction de Virginie Baby‑Collin, soutenue le 1er juin 2017.
Section: Thesis Summaries

23. Les mobilisations familiales et/ou individuelles pour la réalisation de projets d’émigration clandestine de la Casamance vers l’Europe

Abdoulaye Ngom.
Section: Thesis Summaries

24. La puissance des genres fictionnels de l’imaginaire, sociologie d’une mouvance sociétale

Frédérique Réguant.
Section: Thesis Summaries

25. La farce verbale quechua. Une ethnographe en pays burlesque et érotique

Camille Riverti.
Section: Thesis Summaries

26. Les usagers des campus universitaires marseillais face à la délinquance et aux incivilités

Pierre Olivier Weiss.
Section: Thesis Summaries

27. The Integration of Mozabites into the Host Territories. Organization and Solidarity of the Mozabite Community Outside the M’Zab: the Example of Bordj Bou Arreridj’s Jma’a

Nora Gueliane.
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.
Section: Articles