This paper makes a plea for more reflexive attempts to develop and anchor the emerging concept of responsible research and innovation. RRI has recently emerged as a buzzword in science policy, becoming a focus of concerted experimentation in many academic circles. Its performative capacity means that it is able to mobilise resources and spaces despite no common understanding of what it is or should be ‘made of’. In order to support reflection and practice amongst those who are interested in and (...) using the concept, this paper unpacks understandings of RRI across a multi-disciplinary body of peer-reviewed literature. Our analysis focuses on three key dimensions of RRI that remain particularly opaque. A total of 48 publications were selected through a systematic literature search and their content was qualitatively analysed. Across the literature, RRI is portrayed as a concept that embeds numerous features of existing approaches to govern and assess emerging technologies. Our analysis suggests that its greatest potential may be in its ability to unify and provide political momentum to a wide range of long-articulated ethical and policy issues. At the same time, RRI’s dynamism and resulting complexity may represent its greatest challenge. Further clarification on what RRI has to offer in practice—beyond what has been offered to date—is still needed, as well as more explicit engagement with research and institutional cultures of responsibility. Such work may help to realise the high political expectations that are attached to nascent RRI. (shrink)

This article considers how the figure of the ``user'' is deployed to imagine the assembling of location-based mobile phone technologies in the context of UK policy. Drawing on the sociology of expectations, we address the performativity of the ``user'' in the think tank Demos' publication Mobilisation. In the process, we analyze how discourses about users enact particular futures that feature arrangements of, for example, persons, mobile phone technologies, and political institutions. We present two narrative strategies operating in Mobilisation: first, the (...) purification of the social and technological in the portrayal of futures and their impediments; second, how existing, emergent, and future users serve as ``narrative joints'', reconnecting the social and technological in the enactment of preferred policy trajectories. In conclusion, we explore Mobilisation as a `catalogue of expectations' in which the representation of a multiplicity of users is itself performative, enacting a particular future policy terrain while bracketing off others. (shrink)

L’objet de cet article est de montrer comment au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, du côté de la France libre et de la Résistance, s’est réalisée la mobilisation des femmes, ce qui a conduit des milliers de Françaises à investir la sphère combattante. Même si ce phénomène est resté minoritaire, et a été perçu par beaucoup comme une transgression, il est significatif des brouillages du genre favorisés par les guerres totales, et témoigne d’une étape significative, pour la France, de (...) la construction de la citoyenneté féminine. (shrink)

Les luttes autour de l'écologie sont-elles des combats politiques comme les autres? Longtemps perçues comme expertes et sectorisées, elles sont souvent décrites comme dépolitisées. En s'intéressant aux mobilisations écologiques, plutôt qu'à celles qui seraient le fait des seuls écologistes, cet ouvrage rend compte de leurs évolutions récentes. Aux côtés des mouvements portés par des militants des classes supérieures, se (re)déploient aujourd'hui des luttes environnementales menées par d'autres groupes sociaux - les femmes, les minorités ou les plus modestes. Ces (...) class='Hi'>mobilisations contemporaines, cherchant à s'enraciner dans des revendications sociales plus larges - antiracisme, anticapitalisme renouent avec des modes d'action qui favorisent la relation avec d'autres mondes militants. Sans toutefois parvenir à les associer pleinement à ses luttes, la cause écologique apparaît, pour ces groupes qui la rejoignent, comme un moyen d'améliorer leur condition. Analyser ces mobilisations permet de montrer comment la question écologique peut se revendiquer comme question sociale."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Valorising the biocultural heritage of common goods could enable peasant farmers to achieve socially and economically inclusive sustainability. Increasingly appreciated by consumers, peasant heritage products offer small farmers promising opportunities for economic, social and territorial development. Identifying the obstacles and levers of this complex, multi-scale and multi-stakeholder objective requires an integrative framework. We applied the panarchy conceptual framework to two cases of participatory research with small quinoa producers: a local fair in Chile and quinoa export production in Bolivia. In both (...) cases, the “commoning” process was crucial both to bring stakeholders together inside their communities and to gain outside recognition for their production and thus achieve social and economic inclusion. Despite the differences in scale, the local fair and the export market shared a similar marketing strategy based on short value chains promoting quality products with high identity value. In these dynamics of biocultural heritage valorisation, the panarchical approach revealed the central place as well as the vulnerability of the community territory. As a place of both anchoring and opening, the community territory is the privileged space where autonomous and consensual control over the governance of common biocultural resources can be exercised. (shrink)

Mobilising International Law for 'Global Justice' provides new insights into the dynamics between politics and international law and the roles played by state and civic actors in pursuing human rights, development, security and justice through mobilising international law at local and international levels. This includes attempts to hold states, corporations or individuals accountable for violations of international law. Second, this book examines how enforcing international law creates particular challenges for intergovernmental regulators seeking to manage tensions between incompatible legal systems and (...) bringing an end to harmful practices, such as foreign corruption and child abduction. Finally, it explores how international law has local resonance, whereby, for example, cities have taken it upon themselves to give effect to the spirit of international treaties that national governments fail to implement, or even may have refused to ratify. (shrink)

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a landscape review of PNG humanities teaching and research relating to biodiversity conservation and customary land rights. We conducted a systematic literature review, a PNG teaching programme (...) review, and a series of online workshops between the authors (10 PNG-based, 7 UK-based). We found a small but notable amount of PNG research and teaching focused on biodiversity conservation or customary land rights. This included explicit discussion of these topics in 8 of 156 PNG-authored humanities texts published 2010-2020 and related teaching content in the curricula of several different humanities-based programmes. We discuss current barriers to PNG academic development. The growth of fully fledged in-country conservation humanities will require a joint collaborative effort by PNG researchers, who are best placed to carry out such work, and researchers from abroad who can access resources to support the process. (shrink)

John Kelly has replied to my assessment of his Rethinking Industrial Relations published earlier in this journal in a fraternal and constructive manner. Here, I wish to undertake two tasks. The first is to assess the response of other academics and writers to his book, in terms of reviews and the use of his work by others. The second is to engage with the points he makes to take the debate further forward.

This article analyzes the links between state and society in the Arab world, before and after the 2011 uprisings. It sheds light on the impacts that these revolts have had both at the individual and collective levels, generating a renewed sense of citizenship. Two concepts, presentism and intersectionality, are used to stress and explain new constellations that were present in all initial revolts of 2011 and which generated new horizontal links among usually segmented portions of the population and vertical linkages (...) between citizens and the state. The article concludes with an inscription of these revolutionary practices in a longer perspective: By pointing to references made in 2011 to literary and political innovations of the Nahda period (Arab Renaissance in the early 20th century), the article suggests a re-reading of contemporary Arab history that breaks with the view of distinct cultural areas, reconnecting the “West” with the Middle East. (shrink)

Realist evaluation and Q Methodology are established approaches in social science. However, integration of Q methodology within a realist evaluation is scarce. This paper attempts to illustrate how Q methodology can support a realist evaluation. The paper attempts to capture the philosophical compatibility of the two approaches creating an argument for Q’s integration within realist evaluation. Through the case study selected the iterative methodological process is presented, capturing a snapshot of the findings from the evaluation. This illuminates how Q met (...) the philosophical aims of a realist evaluation to make sense of how and why and under what circumstances a programme or intervention works. It is argued that Q methodology is entirely suitable for capturing the three key stages in a realist evaluation of developing, testing, and refining programme theory. It is intended that this paper can contribute to inspire other realist evaluators and methodologists to make use of Q as a tool in their evaluation. (shrink)

Résumé Après une mise en perspective historique du processus de financiarisation, l’article prête plus particulièrement attention au rôle de la finance dans le gouvernement des externalités, et cela à un double niveau. 1?) Le premier a trait à la revanche des externalités négatives. La surexploitation de la planète résultant de deux siècles d’une croissance hyper-productiviste fait désormais peser sur l’économie mondiale une incertitude structurelle, qui pèse tant sur les prix des ressources non renouvelables que, plus fondamentalement, « sur le prix (...) de l’avenir tout court ». Or c’est la finance qui, faute de mieux, va être « sollicitée pour donner un prix au futur ». Ce constat est d’autant plus fort que le développement des activités visant à solder les externalités négatives est destiné à jouer nécessairement un rôle majeur dans la dynamique du capitalisme. Après la convention boursière Internet et celle immobilière, il est ainsi fort probable que la prochaine convention boursière porte sur les énérgies alternatives et les activités liées à la réparation des dégâts de la croissance. 2?) Le deuxième niveau concerne le rôle croissant des externalités positives liées au processus de production et de circulation des connaissances. Plus précisément, la révolution des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC) et la montée de l’immatériel se traduisent par deux effets convergents et éminemment contradictoires, auxquelles la finance apporte une réponse. D’une part, les TIC permettent la numérisation et la codification de tout ce qui est répétitif dans l’activité mentale en dépréciant la valeur marchande de l’information. Or, et nous avons là une première contradiction, ces connaissances codifiées et numérisées (dites de niveau 1) présentent un problème majeur d’appropriation privative. Leur coût de production initial est certain. En revanche, leurs coûts marginaux sont très faibles ou nuls, ce qui rend de plus en plus difficile l’exécution des droits de propriété intellectuelle. D’autre part, ce même processus d’automatisation des activités mentales répétitives et de codification de la connaissance déplace le cœur de l’activité créatrice de valeur vers les connaissances tacites, difficilement codifiables : les connaissances dites de type 2, constituées par le triptyque créativité / intelligence / innovation. C’est le modèle paradigmatique du travail immatériel reposant « sur la coopération entre cerveaux travaillant sur ordinateur et reliés par le réseau (Internet). » Or l’assujettissement de cette forme de la coopération productive en réseau ne peut être qu’indirecte et formelle. Dans ce cadre, la finance est alors destinée à remplir toujours davantage deux fonctions structurelles. Elle seule permet de subsumer le travail immatériel, tout en actualisant l’évaluation à la juste valeur ( fair value ) des actifs immatériels, dans un contexte d’incertitude structurelle où la « valeur des biens connaissances oscille de rien à des valeurs incommensurables et à des prix de monopole qui sont des prix politiques ». (shrink)

Cet ouvrage de sociologie étudie le processus d'organisation et d'action collectives dans le monde des prostituées, milieu non homogène et dénué de traditions militantes. A l'aide d'une armature théorique sur la sociologie de l'action collective, des mouvements sociaux et des mobilisations, l'auteur traite la question à travers trois études empiriques de terrain : le mouvement d'occupation des églises par les prostituées en juin 1975 (à Lyon d'abord, puis le mouvement fait tâche d'huil...

Résumé L’article propose une analyse du phénomène de mobilisation des Lumières, c’est-à-dire de la réactivation récurrente de leurs notions (liberté, tolérance, progrès …) dans des moments d’affrontements idéologiques depuis le début du XXe siècle. L’étude s’appuie notamment sur les traductions de l’Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain de Condorcet (1795) dans le monde. Mais elle propose aussi l’analyse d’autres modes de convocation des idéaux des Lumières, par exemple dans le contexte d’actes terroristes qui visent précisément les valeurs (...) associées à la philosophie du XVIIIe siècle. En examinant la force mobilisatrice du « siècle de Voltaire » lors de crises aiguës, la présente contribution distingue et définit plusieurs formes de ces mobilisations. (shrink)

This article suggests a discourse analysis suitable for multi-dimensional processes. The exemplar in focus is a single narrative that travelled a long way through an English criminal pre-trial to the finalising Crown Court-hearing. The following case study asks how this story was mobilised by the defence to challenge the prosecution's case. The resulting sequential analysis of the story's career profits a good deal from Laboratory Studies. Like ethnographies in Science and Technology Studies, the analysis involves an extended production process—and the (...) productivities of the artefacts produced. It shows, furthermore, how the mobilisation of the alibi is at some points threatened by emerging potentialities to undermine it. All in all, the resulting micro-history on the story's career hinges on as well as exceeds common preferences in social constructivism: for collaborative and local accomplishments, for structural and antagonistic oppositions, and for success stories. (shrink)

Collective action to protect individuals from all forms of threatening causes, including the Covid-19 pandemic, is urgently needed. The Covid-19 pandemic urged religious practices and traditions to adapt to a situation where a series of health protocols must be observed. In order to prevent the spread, World Health Organisation (WHO) issued strict health protocol rules. Some of these rules seem to be contradicted to traditions and religious practices. This article tries to investigate the ways religious societies react and respond to (...) the health crisis caused by Covid-19. In this respect, this paper strives to answer the questions of how Indonesian Muslims respond to the pandemic of Covid-19, how religion contributes to the prevention of transmission and infection, and overcomes the social problems impacted by the pandemic, and to analyze obstacles faced by Indonesian Muslims to enhance collective awareness to the danger of the Covid-19 pandemic. This article argues that civil or non-governmental religious leaders and groups, in general, play an important role to prevent and overcome the pandemic and after because of their independency to make decisions and awareness to the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic. The involvement of religious leaders who have authority at the grassroots level strengthens the legitimacy of the obligation to comply with health protocols and has succeeded in reducing the rate of transmission and death and increasing healing. Religious authority owned by clergy at lower levels has also encouraged increased participation in social solidarity which is demanded instead to depart from diversity and not similarities, among others due to Covid-19. (shrink)

The findings of an empirical study entitled ‘Meeting the challenge of poverty and inequality in the Cape Metropole: Factors impacting the mobilisation of congregations in their response to poverty and injustice’ reaffirm that the majority of congregations are still largely operating within a ‘relief and welfare’ paradigm with regard to poverty. In attempting to analyse the hindrances to churches’ mobilisation in addressing poverty from a holistic perspective, it became clear that, while there were common challenges, several other intersectional issues also (...) play a role with regard to engagement. This article, therefore, analyses and discusses how these factors have an impact on the mobilisation of local congregations in their response to the twin challenge of poverty and inequality. (shrink)

This article examines how place and place-basedness are essential to understanding the conflict dynamics of natural resource use. Based on a single case study and using an ethnographic approach to examine a place, the paper unearths how place is mobilised in corporate–community relations. This study defines place-basedness as having two relational elements: ecological and social embeddedness. It finds four positions with differing place identifications, meanings, and relationships with the ecological and social place. This article concludes that while ecological embeddedness enhances (...) the ability to resist natural resource use through knowledge attribution and actively mobilising a place, the social embeddedness of some positions constrains local people’s ability to resist. It also identifies attachment to and detachment from place as two aspects of a central mechanism whereby countering positions are mobilised in the hegemonic struggle. The findings contribute to our understanding of place as a constituting part of corporate–community relations and place-basedness both as a resource for and hindrance to resistance. (shrink)

Diaries and other materials in the Mass Observation Archive have been characterised as intersubjective and dialogic. They have been used to study top-down and bottom-up processes, including how ordinary people respond to sociological constructs and, more broadly, the footprint of social science in the 20th century. In this article, we use the Archive’s COVID-19 collections to study how attempts to govern the pandemic by mobilising ordinary people to see like an epidemiologist played out in the United Kingdom during 2020. People (...) were asked to think in terms of populations and groups; rates, trends, and distributions; the capacity of public services; and complex systems of causation. How did they respond? How did they use the statistics, charts, maps, concepts, identities, and roles they were given? We find evidence of engagement with science plural; confident and comfortable engagement with epidemiological terms and concepts; sceptical and reluctant engagement with epidemiological subject positions; use of both scientific and moral literacy to negotiate regulations and guidance; and use of scientific literacy to compare and judge government performance. Governing the pandemic through scientific literacy was partially successful, but in some unexpected ways. (shrink)

La Décennie des Nations unies pour les femmes (1975‑1985) a coïncidé avec une brève période d’ouverture au cours de la guerre froide, lorsque les nations nouvellement décolonisées semblèrent avoir le dessus, ayant pris le contrôle de l’Assemblée générale des Nations unies et de plusieurs agences de l’ONU, où elles promouvaient l’idée d’un nouvel ordre économique international. Cet article examine brièvement deux réseaux d’intellectuelles activistes basées dans le Sud qui ont émergé à la fin de cette décennie. L’Association des femmes africaines (...) pour la recherche et le développement (AFARD/ AAWORD), créée en 1977, a démontré qu’il était possible de réorienter radicalement les programmes de développement vers le bienêtre et la durabilité plutôt que vers la productivité et la croissance. L’association Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), fondée en 1984, partageait les objectifs de l’AFARD et en incluait quelques-unes des membres, mais elle reflétait un nouveau contexte de la guerre froide où le développement s’est réorienté vers des solutions néolibérales. (shrink)

Des mobilisations massives contre « l’idéologie du genre » ont marqué les années 2010. Elles sont le point de départ de ce livre. Le succès du mouvement a pris de court les chercheur.es et acteurs/trices de la lutte pour l’égalité des sexes et l’extension des libertés individuelles en matière d’orientation sexuelle : les résistances ne se réduisent pas à quelques reliquats du passé, mais se matérialisent partout, dans une nouvelle campagne transnationale, organisée et coordonnée à large échel...

Le présent article propose d’étudier la « panique » suscitée par les « théories du complot » dans les semaines suivant les attentats de Paris des 7 et 9 janvier. L’expression « théorie du complot » fait très rapidement son apparition dans les médias pour rendre compte de la circulation de questionnements sur certains détails des événements et marque l’ouverture de deux semaines de « panique médiatique » autour du phénomène. Interroger cet épisode permet de rendre compte des évolutions et (...) des usages médiatiques, politiques et scientifiques face au conspirationnisme et de questionner la notion même de « théorie du complot », tant à un niveau définitionnel que dans une perspective heuristique. (shrink)

Research on mobile health (mHealth) applications has investigated how such technologies contribute to a responsibilisation of users/patients. This literature largely focuses on the individual responsibilities constructed by the apps and the neoliberal environments that enable the positioning of the user as responsible. With this focus, this scholarship is less attentive to the role of social relations in responsibilisation. In this article, I demonstrate how relational responsibilities are constructed in the communication of a North American self-testing app for “early changes in (...) cognition”. Through an analysis of qualitative expert interviews and images on the app’s web presence, I show how social relations are, in fact, mobilised in the construction of the responsibilities to support the user in the test situation, to take the test for the sake of others, and to make others take the test. Based on this analysis, I argue that the role of social relations should receive more attention in the literature on responsibilisation, because they lead to additional, sometimes gendered responsibilities that a focus on individual responsibilities would miss. (shrink)

The solidarity economy has been interpreted as being characterised by a political dimension: however, empirical and theoretical analysis supporting this statement is still embryonic. Drawing on a qualitative study in the city of Barcelona, this article analyses the political dimension of the solidarity economy and its transformative character with respect to neoliberalism by engaging with critical approaches related to the social movement studies. The main objectives were to investigate factors enabling the upsurge of solidarity economy organisations and how the opposition (...) of social movement participants to neoliberal rationalities impacts on the way the solidarity economy is conceived and implemented in practice. The results highlight three main dimensions in which the political dimension is reflected, and some general as well as context‐specific factors enabling the upsurge of solidarity economy organisations. Findings show how the compensative rationale that distinguishes most approaches in the field of social entrepreneurship studies is contested by the solidarity economy: its transformative character is reflected in discourses and practices that define the solidarity economy as a prefigurative socio‐economic project. (shrink)

During the nineties, Argentinian society has gone through a process of transformation and reduction of politics which can be summed up in four distinct ways: the succeeding regimes have shorted how far the enslavement of politics to the economy could extend; a transformation has occurred in the relationship between Peronism and the popular classes; politics has reduced itself to the proliferation of personal and leadership decisions, contributing to the foundation of a media-centered bond with the electors; and finally, the nineties (...) can be defined as the years in which politics became self-referential. In the end the achievements of the new movements are, in spite of all difficulties, unmistakably positive. (shrink)

This study presents the particular discursive strategies used by some Arabic newspapers to serve the Islamist fundamentalists’ goals and strengthen their hegemonic ideology in the Middle East. It also describes the move to create and sustain a new wave of Occidentalism, the doctrine of negatively representing the West, a counterpart to Edward Said’s Orientalism, the doctrine of negatively representing the East. Occidentalism is a retaliatory ideological strategy that rebuffs hegemonic Western ideas; it is used by some chauvinistic Arabs trying to (...) create a distorted image of the West in the minds of Middle Easterners. In this paper, I will investigate the negative side of the concept of Occidentalism, as exploited by today’s fanatics in their justification for attacking the West. Some Arabic newspapers contribute to fanaticism through antagonistic rhetoric that glorifies Pan-Arab brotherhood, chauvinistic Arab nationalism, and martyrdom. By glorifying these demagogic mottoes, such newspapers create an ideological polarisation against the West, in that they try to win their readers’ sympathy, control their emotions, and deepen their nostalgic feelings for the great Arab past. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage poursuit un objectif dont il convient de souligner d’emblée l’importance et l’actualité. Laure Bereni entend revenir à nouveaux frais sur le rapport des femmes à la politique, en retraçant la bataille de la parité politique et les mobilisations en faveur de la féminisation du pouvoir, depuis son irruption sur la scène publique, au début des années 1990, jusqu’au vote de la réforme constitutionnelle en 1999 et de la loi électorale en 2000. Le point de départ est un (...) constat paradox... (shrink)

Chile and Colombia have undergone very different postconflict processes. Whereas in Chile there was an elite-based negotiated transition from a state terror regime, Colombia presents a gradual exit from an armed conflict involving multiple actors and taking place in one of Latin America’s most stable democracies. A strong common feature nevertheless exists in these two countries: important social movements—notably, student, afro-descendant, Indigenous, and peasant movements—that put forward memory, but which reach beyond the circle of direct victims. These “memory from below” (...) movements in both countries cannot be understood from their institutional contexts, since these are so different: while Chile’s democratic governments strengthened the amnesty law and led only to timid commemorative initiatives twenty years after the end of the dictatorship, Colombia adopted numerous laws that allowed an institutional presence of memory—notably, through the creation of the National Center for Historic Memory—while the armed conflict was still fully fledged. From a comparative politics perspective, these institutional differences lead one to investigate other causes for the presence of “memory from below” movements in both countries: interviews of participants show that these movements stem from a common understanding of the political role of memory, as well as from a common social imaginary of “shared suffering” that seeks to uncover state violence and that understands past human rights violations as being part of a historic continuum of structural and colonial violence aimed at criminalizing and crushing social movements in democracy. (shrink)

Through the analysis of practices of a primary school teacher-in-training during her practicum, the author aims to better understand professional and personal experience. A concrete case issued from a clinical, longitudinal and comparative study led between 2008 and 2009 in comparison with two teachers-in-training reports the interiorization process and the capitalized experience. The comparative study is issued of an innovative practicum project in operation during three years from 2007 to 2009 in the University of Montpellier, and called ‘moderated writing workshop’. (...) The exploratory study leans on notions like experience and professional culture suited to the classroom. The methodology is that of a clinical analysis of one case, followed by the analysis of the verbal and behavioral elements included in the interviews in order to set stabilized long-running categories. The skills and knowledge undertaken by the teacher-in-training examining her own practice are carefully analyzed all along, thus creating an innovative system. The results show that an important evolution occurs concerning practical rules, which seems relevant for the professionals. Those rules give to formative people information about professionalism. Results are discussed before concluding. (shrink)

In September 2013, images of bruised, bleeding and battered Hindu goddesses went viral on social media networks. Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge), Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) and Durga (the goddess of strength and power) appear as victims of domestic abuse in the Abused Goddesses advertising campaign against domestic violence. In this article, I analyse the Abused Goddesses campaign and the conversations it generated. I argue that it reiterates both a form of Hindu nationalistic discourse as well as longstanding patriarchal, (...) orientalist and neocolonialist perspectives about sexual violence in India. I examine the discourse generated by the Abused Goddesses campaign on social and mainstream media in order to trace how these images were circulated, perceived and engaged with by Indian and international audiences. While the campaign went viral on social media, I argue that its virality offers insufficient conditions for substantial social change around gender violence, including consciousness raising. Through analysis of the campaign and the ways in which it has been commented on, I demonstrate how the representation of domestic violence through the calendar art imagery of abused goddesses ultimately reaffirms classist, casteist, racist, sexist and orientalist discourses about Indian women and the violence they face. (shrink)

The terms Jacobin and Jacobinism in political discourse never exclusively refer to the members of the French revolutionary club, or to the often contradictory and changing ideas that were debated there. They have been used over time to designate, often in a derogatory way, some political figures and intellectual currents that sometimes bear only a vague relationship to French revolutionary thought. The political events that marked Switzerland in the years 1847-1848 offer a perfect illustration of the way such terms were (...) constituted as political categories and transposed in the Swiss context as remote echoes of the French Revolution. Still today, the events of the years 1847-1848 are often analysed by scholars or by the public using such categories. This tendency fuels a historiography often tainted with ideological preconceptions. Now, this historiography takes up again, sometimes without hindsight, the terms used by the staunchest contemporary opponents to a Helvetic federal construction who did not hesitate to draw a parallel with the bloodiest episodes of the French Revolution, of which the Jacobins were supposed to be the main protagonists. The use of the terms Jacobin and Jacobinism therefore pertains to a mechanistic and repetitive conception of history and serves to disqualify political actors and currents that stand poles apart from the French revolutionary ideals. (shrink)

Over the past few years, much has been written about Germany’s Nazis and about ideology, but not too much has been published on Nazi ideology. Norwegian author Carl Müller Frøland has divided his s...

This article presents a collaborative research based on the cooperation of teachers, students and searchers gathered around a narrative workshop project in an experimental school, the Micro-Lycée de Sénart, near Paris. Searchers and practitioners built together this workshop dedicated to drop out students to analyse how it can help them to develop themselves, their social skills and their creativity to face life issues. The research team also wants to see if this kind of professional activity can change the teachers’ representations, (...) behaviours and practical experience. The research team used the frame of biographical research in education as theoretic background and methodology. The purpose of this article is to point out interests and limits of such an approach in the collaborative research field. (shrink)