Félicité Robert de La Mennais serait-il le précurseur de Karl Marx? Voici la question originale que pose ici Aimé Richardt à propos d'une personnalité complexe, qui va consacrer sa vie à la défense des pauvres, des humbles, des ouvriers. Celui qui avait tout d'abord défendu avec ferveur l'autorité spirituelle absolue du pape dans son Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, va, en quelques années, changer radicalement. Avec Montalembert et Lacordaire, il fonde le journal L'Avenir, lieu d'expression d'un christianisme libéral (...) en gestation. Par leurs articles et leurs prises de position tranchées, ils s'attirent les foudres de Rome et du pouvoir. Condamnés par le pape Grégoire XVI, les trois hommes se séparent. Les premiers se soumettent, mais Lamennais, dans une dérive inéluctable, se révolte et rompt avec l'Eglise catholique. Il publie alors un ouvrage qui fera date : Paroles d'un croyant. Ce livre connaît un succès immédiat, en appelant à la révolte contre l'injustice au nom de l'Evangile. Il contient en germe, plus de trente ans avant Le Capital, la plupart des idées qui y seront développées. Après des aventures politiques contrastées et décevantes - député de gauche à l'Assemblée nationale de 1848 -, Lamennais meurt dans la pauvreté, à Paris, hors de l'Eglise. Replongeant dans les écrits et la correspondance de Lamennais, Aimé Richardt le suit pas à pas dans ses combats et ses révoltes, jusqu'à la fosse commune du Père-Lachaise, où fut déposé son corps le 1er mars 1854. (shrink)

Estonia is a democratic, parliamentary republic with a health care system that is built on the principle of compulsory, solidarity-based insurance and the all-round availability of services of private service providers. Estonia has specific biobank legislation as well as oversight via data protection laws. Its population-based biobank, the Estonian Genome Center, established in 2001, is one of the largest biobanks in Europe, and its database may be used only for scientific research, public health research, and statistics. The EGCUT can issue (...) data to a third party, but only in coded form. This comprehensive database of genotypic, phenotypic, health, and genealogical information represents about 5% of Estonia's adult population, and is the largest cohort ever gathered in Estonia. Government approval is required for international data sharing, and sharing can be further limited by the requirement of ethics approval and permission from Estonian government. (shrink)

My lecture is concerned with a presentation of the method of Deleuzian thought, which - I would like to contend - well represent the change that has taken place in postmodernist thought. Deleuze is unique in calling himself a "classical metaphysicist," i.e. a restorer of classical thought, albeit via the screen - thought which has managed to survive and overcome the obstacle of modernity. The Deleuzian unification of pre-modern thought and modernist critique with Nietzsche's theory of eternal repetition gives rise (...) to a method, whose utter meaning is an attempt to provide thinkers with sharp tools for successfully opposing later capitalism and globalization, something that stands at the very heart of Deleuzian metaphysics. This opposition, which in effect is also a new doctrine of moral aesthetics, lies at the core of this present lecture. I would like to present the special combative nature of Deleuzian thought, and through him to present a different radical angle of the post-modern paradigm. (shrink)

One of the barrier of the Fashion, Textile and Clothing (FTC) domain is the multiplicity and the evolving vocabulary used by the industry players as well as stylists or common users. Some projects...

L'expérimentation de nouvelles formes de communication politique conduit souvent à regarder l'interner comme un lieu de parole et de dialogue. Mais les médias informatisés sont aussi, et avant tout, un lieu où se définissent les objets et les postures politiques. En particulier, la volonté de mettre à disposition les éléments d'un débat possible tourne souvent à la mise en visibilité, moins de la parole, que de sa possibilité. Car cette thématique de la parole libérée dissimule la réalité d'un ensemble de (...) formes écrites et documentaires, arrière-plan de la discussion qui va jusqu'à se substituer à elle.Experimenting with new forms of communication often leads to watching the intern as a place of speech and dialogue. But the media are also computerized and, above all, a place to define the objects and political posturing. In particular, the desire to provide the elements of a possible debate often turns to set visibility, less speech than of its possibility. For this theme speech released conceals the reality of a set of written forms and documentary background to the discussion that will take its place. (shrink)

This study is concerned with the placement of the secondary stress in Tiberian Biblical Aramaic. The challenging aspect of this placement is that, contrary to universal typology, both long-voweled CVVC, CVV and short-voweled CV syllables are stressed whereas short-voweled CVC syllables are not. This apparently abnormal distribution is rationalized by arguing that CV syllables became CVV due to a secondary lengthening of the short vowel. I claim that this lengthening is a late development and likely corresponds to the late orthographical (...) practice of regularly marking the secondary stress on open syllables. A similar lengthening in Eastern Syriac offers support for this interpretation. Finally, the common origin of Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic secondary stresses is briefly discussed. (shrink)

Between 1987 and 1997, Thailand experienced a bubble economy. When the bubble economy exploded in 1997, the country suddenly experienced an economic crisis: it was in heavy debt and became financially controlled by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The problem was caused by the country’s desire to rapidly change itself from an agricultural country to an industrial one, without considering its own comparative advantage in that its climate and resources are more suitable for agriculture. Thailand also wanted to become a (...) newly industrialized country and a inancial hub of Southeast Asia without considering its readiness. These ideas came to a halt after the bubble economy explosion. However, just after Thailand managed to solve its debt problem with the IMF, thegovernment once again declared its desire to turn the country into the ‘Detroit of Asia’, to develop the capital, Bangkok, into the region’s fashion hub and to launch a substantial number of mega-projects, albeit with the existence of a widening economic gap between the rural and urban areas. This economic trend became known as “Thaksinomics” with reference to the name of the Prime Minister at that time, Thaksin Shinawatra. On the other hand, there has been a great deal of criticism of such a trend, which has been seen as a capitalist move promoting the consumerist behaviour of Thai people. There is, therefore, a call for Thai society to review itself, especially in its social and economic development aspects, and a change to a new kind of development with an emphasis on self-reliance andmoderation. This call is based on a Buddhist belief which is reflected in the old Thai way of life. This kind of economy is called “Self-Sufficiency Economy” as opposed to a capitalist-consumerist economy. It is believed that this new direction will help lay a strong foundation for the Thai economy and provide it with a high level of immunity for progress towards a more stable and sustainable economy. (shrink)

The impact of smaller firm size on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is ambiguous. Some contend that small businesses are socially responsible by nature, while others argue that a smaller firm size imposes barriers on small firms that constrain their ability to take responsible action. This paper critically analyses recent theoretical and empirical contributions on the size–social responsibility relationship among small businesses. More specifically, it reviews the impact of firm size on four antecedents of business behaviour: issue characteristics, personal characteristics, organizational (...) characteristics and context characteristics. It concludes that the small business context does impose barriers on social responsibility taking, but that the impact of the smaller firm size on social responsibility should be nuanced depending on a number of conditions. From a critical analysis of these conditions, opportunities for small businesses and their constituents to overcome the constraining barriers are suggested. (shrink)

BackgroundEthics in biomedical research is still a fairly new concept in Africa. This work aims to assess the knowledge, attitude and experiences of Beninese researchers with regard to the national ethical regulatory framework of biomedical research in Benin.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional and descriptive study, involving all the researchers fulfilling the inclusion criteria. Data were collected through a face-to-face interview using a questionnaire and analysed. Proportions and means were calculated with their confidence intervals and standard deviations, respectively.ResultsOf the 110 participants included (...) in the study, 40.9% were medical lecturers and 71.1% had been involved in more than 10 biomedical research as researcher. Less than three quarters were able to correctly quote the basic principles from Belmont report. The quarter of them knew the attributions of the National Ethics Committee for Health Research and 38.2%, the content of the legislation on health research ethics in Benin. The common ethical rules were known by 69.1% of the participants. A quarter of participants said they always present the study’s briefing note to their study participants and 62.7% said they systematically request informed consent. For those who do not present the briefing note to participants, the main reasons provided were the researchers’ difficulties in writing the note in plain language and the participants’ limitation in understanding it.ConclusionsThe foundations of a good ethical framework for health research exist in Benin. However, the deployment and use of the various legal texts deserve to be improved. (shrink)

Rural electrification is now and will remain an essential element for rural development in China and other developing countries. With more than half of the world’s population living in rural communities, lessons for rural renewable energy applications and assessment from China can be very helpful in defining a global sustainable development strategy. This paper describes energy needs in rural China, examines the resource availability of three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Qinghai and Xinjiang in Western China), and evaluates rural energy options and (...) the economics of stand-alone off-grid renewable energy technologies for rural application in this region. An eight-year collaborative effort between several of China’s leading energy and environmental research institutes and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy demonstrates the existence of a viable renewable energy-based strategy to address rural electricity needs in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner. (shrink)

Este artículo se divide en una parte teórica, que examina las aportaciones de la ética ecológica, la pedagogía socrática –actualizada en la Filosofía para Niñas, Niños y Jóvenes– y el ecofeminismo a la educación ambiental; y una parte narrativa, donde se describe una propuesta de educación ecofeminista llevada a cabo con estudiantes de un bachillerato ubicado en Suchitlán, Colima, México. El objetivo de este trabajo es transitar desde los referentes conceptuales hacia la implementación de diálogos sobre feminismo y crisis ecológica (...) con jóvenes en el contexto de una comunidad en la que sobreviven algunas concepciones indígenas del mundo, pero también la pobreza, la desigualdad de género, los problemas socioambientales y el maltrato animal. La tesis defendida es que el ecofeminismo, en tanto que cuestionamiento del antropocentrismo, el androcentrismo y el colonialismo, representa un nuevo paradigma para la pedagogía ambiental. En las conclusiones se argumenta el valor positivo de las reflexiones dialógicas del estudiantado y la relevancia de sus voces para otra educación posible. (shrink)