Thèses de sociologie et romans à thèse

Are the rhetorical markers in sociological discourse specific and of a «scientific» nature? To tackle this delicate question, let us start by drawing up the generic characteristics of sociological texts. Let us compare these characteristics with those of a literary genre: the French «roman à thèse» from the beginning of the XX^th century. This old-fashioned and decried literature will serve as a driving bolt in order to demonstrate that a formalism sometimes asserted as scientific, does not guarantee scientific character, but just conformity to editorial requirement. To conclude, if the difference between sociological these and novel is not embedded in the text itself then, what eventually make its «scientific nature»? May be just the fragile conditions of its production and reception: debate and criticism of the sources if effectively implemented. But is this always the case?     

Yogīndu. Lumièere de l'Absolu

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

L’enfance comme figure compassionnelle: étude transversale de l’iconographie de la famine aux dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles

Despite the growing interest in the use of child images in humanitarian contexts in the last few years, there has been no transverse study of the iconography of famines in contemporary times. On the contrary, this iconography has been analysed in a scattered way, in disciplinary boundaries that prevent a more global understanding of the birth and use of these images. By comparing the approaches of the history of humanitarianism and childhood, as well as of social photography and media analysis, the purpose of this article is to show that visuals of starving children eventually find their roots at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when charitable organisations are using photography as a tool to mobilise civil society and governments as well as to internationalise the humanitarian response. This analysis of Western visual strategies and media mobilisations throughout the twentieth century helps to put into perspective the so-called rupture between a first and a second age of humanitarianism. It shows first how young generations have become a privileged form of representation since the nineteenth century, using an aesthetic universe that is morally compelling; then, later, how the depoliticisation of the victim’s figure engages a political message.     

Le prieuré de Saint-Zacharie en i403 d'après le Livre de raison de son prieur

Saint-Zacharie is a small township northeast of Marseille, some kilometers from the main Aix-en-Provence-Nice road. In the middle ages it possessed a priory of Benedictine nuns of St Zacharias which was a dependency of the abbey of St Victor at Marseille. This abbey appointed a monk with the title of prior to administer the nunnery at Saint-Zacharie, while the nuns themselves elected a prioress. The Livre de raison drawn up by Jean de Assana, prior in 1402, allows us to establish the convent's budget. It reveals the efforts undertaken to restore a situation which had been severely shaken by the troubles of the fourteenth century, and in particular to develop the domain, which furnished the greater part of the convent's revenues from the production of corn and wine. Only corn provided a cash surplus. The economy of the priory was thus fragile because insufficiently diversified. The house faced other problems too. The development of its spiritual life was no longer a prime aim: the abbey of St Victor on several occasions arbitrarily limited the number of its nuns. There were ninety-eight of them in 1322; twenty-four in 1402; five in 1461. What is more, they were reduced to an income which provided only a bare living so that the convent's possessions appeared to be being exploited mainly as a source of profit for the prior and for the financial benefit of the mother house of St Victor, the archbishop of Aix, and the papal court.     

Le scepticisme et les hypothèses de la physique

The History of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza is often called upon to support three theses: first, that Descartes had a dogmatic notion of systematic knowledge, and therefore of physics; second, that the hypothetical epistemology of physics which spread during the xviith century was the result of a general sceptical crisis; third, that this epistemology was more successful in England than in France. I reject these three theses: I point first to the tension in Descartes’ works between the ideal of a completely certain science and a physics replete with hypotheses; further, I argue that the use of hypotheses by mechanical philosophers cannot be separated from their conception of physics; finally I show that, at the end of the xviith century, physicists in France as well as in England spoke through hypotheses and I examine different ways of explaining this shared practice. Richard H. Popkin’s book serves therefore as a starting point for insights into the general problem: to what extent and for what reasons some propositions in physics have been presented as hypotheses in the xviith century?     

Travail de Synthèse et Diversité des Langues

Sans résumé

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Synthesis work and diversity of languages

     

Le Métier de Juriste Entre Règle de Droit et Expérience de l’Histoire

The activities of jurists, they may be judges, lawyers or university teachers, occupy a central role in the maintenance of the political and social order of modern societies. In Germany the confrontation of the recent past provoked in the early 1960’s a large debate about the real foundations of the modern state and his role in the crisis of the modernity which have been pursuit in the course of the eighties issuing in the beginning of the century in the discussions about integration and a general order of values to be recognized by everybody.     

France,Patrie, Nation: figures de lutte et discours national (XVIème–XIXème siècles)

This article explores the conceptual changes and semantic shifts of ‘patrie’ and of nation from the Renaissance up to the French Revolution and the First Empire. It emphasises the causes and consequences of both concepts' occurrence and tries to discover their fundamental differences synchronically and diachronically. A brief comparison with other European countries allows us to understand that both concepts are not typically French and highlights the very fact that they are interactive, discontinuous, and at the same time evolutionary, since they are successively inserted in a specific historical context. Above all, ‘patrie’ and nation turn out to be used more often during national and international political conflicts, even though they did not have the same connotation and register. It is therefore interesting to consider precisely what characterises both concepts, and to reflect upon the origins of the modern meaning of nation.     

L’autobiographie allemande du XVIIIe siècle,interprétée à la lumière de la sociologie de niklas Luhmann

With the help of Luhmann’s theory, this essay tries to define the connection between the boom of autobiographical writing in the late 18th century and the rise of the middle classes. Central to this, is his definition of “career”, with which he describes the individuals’ behaviour in the new functional bourgeois society. Strictly speaking, the individual gains personal and social identity, through his or her spoken or written autobiography as can be seen clearly in Jung-Stilling’s autobiography, which was published bit by bit. The individual hereby improves its prospects of social advancement. On the other hand, K. P. Moritz in hisAnton Reiser describes his hero’s life as the “career” of a failure whose hyperactive imagination interferes with the formation of his identity. Thus autobiographical writing in the 18th century shows itself as the literary autopoiesis of the authors’ concrete individuality.     

Les critères de la radicalité en question : Le cas Poulain de la Barre

Early modern radicalism and its criteria are described and defined by Jonathan Israel in various works. Poulain de la Barre, one of the first modern feminist thinkers, first is used by Israel as an example of the so-called radical Enlightenment and finally is rejected as such. This case study exhibed the necessity of questionning the coherence of the required criteria for defining a « radical » thinker, especially when examinating carefully the last paragraph of Spinoza’s Political Treatise.