Résistance,moralité, identité nationale

Claudio PAVONE, Una guerra civile. Saggio storico sulla moralità nella Resistenza, Torino, Bollati Boringhieri, 1991, xiv + 825 p., ISBN 8833906299.     

L'arrivée des premiers métallurgistes sur l'Ogooué, Gabon

Résumé Au Gabonca 2400–2300 BP, les dernières cultures néolithiques des savanes de la moyenne vallée de l'Ogooué, succombent face à une rapide expansion de populations porteuses de fer. Cet événement, identifié sur des critères céramologiques et des mesures radiométriques, paraît situer l'arrivée des premiers métallurgistes — probablement Bantu — sur les berges de l'Ogooué.

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In the savannas of the middle stretches of the Ogooué valley in Gabon,ca 2400–2300 bp, the last neolithic cultures succombed to the rapid expansion of ironworking populations. This event, identified on ceramic criteria and radiocarbon dates, may represent the arrival of the first Bantu ironworkers on the banks of the Ogooué.

     

Le médiéviste,le lignage et l'effet de réel

This paper tries to understand how «lineage» became a key-notion by medievalists when dealing with the field of kinship about the medieval aristocracy, although it is quite an unsuitable notion. Beside the role given to medieval kinship by the social and scientific imagination which prevailed when the historical sciences were formed in the XIX^th century, an important part is played by the creation of a discourse on «lineage» in late medieval aristocracy, linked to a redefinition of the modes of reproduction of seigniorial power, a vector of which must be found by means of representation portraying a durable kin-group, especially through the formation and transmission of «family archives». Historians submitted to the reality-effect of documentary bodies, which were transmitted and were but a historical social construction, did not pay enough attention to the genuine meaning of the archivistic structure. They believed they had found the «reality» of a social organization while they had merely perceived its ideational aspect- and thus, they contributed to the social construction of «lineage».     

Voyages,mobilités,lumières

For a very long time and still today, travel stories have fascinated a vast public. It is important to debate their role and the model for intellectual and sensitive construction they propose. An essential link for the European elite's acculturation, they cannot for as much be separated from a much wider circulation which concerns society as a whole. In relation to the social morals of our past, the concept of mobility allows us to appreciate the totality of social practices and to confront the notions of movement and localization. The main cultural categories of space, time, sociability, social constraints and freedoms, are thus creating a structure for our understanding of change.     

Activity Areas,Form, and Social Inequality in Residences at Late Postclassic Zacpetén,Petén,Guatemala

Abstract

Zacpetén, Petén, Guatemala was densely settled front the Late Postclassic to Contact periods. During initial contact with the Spaniards and after the conquest of Petén in A.D. 1697, a group called the Kowoj occupied the area where the site is located. Excavations in domestic contexts at Zacpetén revealed that occupants of larger residences had greater access to resources. Many common trade artifacts such as greenstone, serpentine, and obsidian strongly correlate with residence size, indicating that inequality in spatial resources was associated with access to trade. The scarcest non-local items, including copper alloy artifacts, were limited to public ceremonial areas and the residences of the highest Kowoj elite. Instead of corresponding with access to trade, the possession of these items was related to high-level participation in the religious hierarchy. There are a variety of activity areas that were structured by a dualistic division in domestic space that was not overtly related to gender.     

Leibniz, Wolff et la Métaphysique Traitée Selon la Méthode Scientifique

Wolff’s philosophy is often defined by commentators as « dogmatic leibnizism ». However, if we try to read the expression in a positive light, we discover what exactly distinguishes Wolff’s metaphysics from that of Leibniz, thereby establishing Wolff’s real contribution to the history of thought. First of all, the notion of « dogma » presented in Wolff’s philosophy is analyzed. This notion recalls the demonstrative model provided by mathematics and especially, Euclid’s Elements. According to axiomatic patterns, ontology is thought of as the « first philosophy ». This aspect cannot be separated from the function of a posteriori knowledge in Wolff’s thinking. This permits us to comprehend the function of ontology, Wolff’s cosmology, and his invention of the notion of « teleology ».     

Déni,connaissance, responsabilité: le régime stalinien et la grande famine ukrainienne de 1932–3

The great 1932–3 famine in Ukraine and Kuban, considered a major disaster in twentieth-century European history, is starting to be recognised as the opening act of a terrible cycle of violence against the populations of a vast area in the heart of Europe, perpetrated by the two great totalitarian regimes that were Nazism and Stalinism. As James Mace, the pioneer in studying this famine, has written, the Ukrainian famine was a ‘man-made famine’. It was the consequence of an extreme political violence – the forced collectivisation of rural areas. The Stalinist regime exhibited a total indifference to human suffering. Famine was just ‘collateral damage’ of modernisation introduced by collectivisation. Beyond the total denial of famine by Stalinist authorities, this article raises the double question of its knowledge and its responsibility, using new sources. How far can the chain of decision-making that led to the famine and its aggravation be reconstructed? What did the executives of the Party know about what was happening in starving rural areas? Which argumentation and which explanatory strategy were they developing in their correspondence to deal with the reality they were denying?     

Livres, Pouvoir et Théorie

This article tries to understand what kind of theories is produced in books and only in books, without any institutional or scientific guarantee. Two cases are successively studied: a method for accountants and a treatise on nobility. Both contain theoretical proposals, although neither accounting nor knowledge of genealogies or aristocratic habits was considered more than mere practical competence at the time (the end of the xvii ^th century in France). The aim of this inquiry is to suggest that identifying material and social conditions of some evolution of thought (context of composition of an important book, circulation of printed materials or of information, literary market, relationships of the authors with powerful patrons) does not differ that much from a « Zeitgeist » analysis, as long as a book is viewed as a result or a product and its own action is not taken into account. This action consists here in an elevation of accounting and genealogical techniques to theory or even to quasi-political philosophy. Both case-studies then try to show that the adaptation of a book to political action is not an available explanation for historians; rather, it is nothing other than the fact of an interpretation of theoretical needs aroused by this action.