La technologie a l'Ecole du Louvre

Séminaires de l'Ecole du Louvre, Science, technique et industrie. Un patrimoine, des perspectives, La Documentation française, Paris 1983, 320 pages.     

Determinisme et liberte: Approche d'une histoire du conditionnement: La peur de souffrir

The article takes issue with W. G. Runciman's contention, in Great Books, Bad Arguments, that modern political development has moved beyond both theory and practice of governance by a sovereign power over subjects as expounded in Hobbes's Leviathan. Runciman's allegations that Hobbes overrates education, that he fails to recognise the potential for dissent and revolt in a polity under a sovereign, and that he ignores society's pre-political scope and its post-absolutist, eventually democratic prospects, are checked against the text and argument of Leviathan. Runciman's contention that government without subjection has been achieved in modern constitutions is confronted with Hobbes's resistance.     

La trame de la logique floue et l'usure du temps

Sans résumé à propos de: ClaudeRosental,La Trame de l'évidence. Sociologie de la démonstration en logique, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2003, 15×22, 367 p., index (Sciences, modernités, philosophies).     

La pêche du saumon en Normandie du XIè au XVè siècle

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the salmon was abundant in the rivers of Normandy and there are numerous documentary references to rents from the salmon fisheries. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the salmon became a delicacy much in demand, and the multiplication of watermills increased the number of fisheries to such an extent that over-exploitation occured. Because of this, as well as for other reasons, salmon stocks in the fifteenth century were seriously depleted and the species became virtually extinct in much of Normandy.     

La Publication Scientifique en Ligne Face aux Lacunes du Droit Français

While Internet seemed to be able to open new capacities to scientific publishing, the legislative hardening in favour of protecting the copyright complicated the use of multimedia documents. By excluding the application of any fair use in scientific or pedagogic publishing, the French law appears henceforth as an abnormality in an international context of reproduction of the on-line resources. As a symptom of the failure of the current regulation, wild practices multiply to remedy unsuitable conditions.     

The People's Climate March: Environmental populism as political genre

Contemporary political ecological research on populism has demonstrated how authoritarian and strongarm tactics come to be hitched to reductive symbolic representations of “the people,” often with disastrous environmental impacts. Advocates of “left-populism” argue that such research can give the erroneous impression that “populism” and “authoritarianism” are essentially synonymous. Skeptical of formalist arguments, Gramscians argue that populism, as a quite variegated and fundamentally spatial phenomenon, must be viewed historically, in situ. But all three arguments share a quick assessment of populism, without always attending to its embedded multiplicity. Bringing together insights from Stuart Hall and Lauren Berlant, this article seeks to expand geographical understandings of the dynamic forms and styles of environmental politics by proposing thinking of populism as a political genre. This theoretical schema helps to cut through formalist versus historicist debates while directing attention to the affective scenes through which populism is performed. In order to demonstrate the utility of examining populism's genre and scenes, I examine political essays written surrounding the 2014 People’s Climate March. Essays debated activist expectations concerning political subjectivity, tactics, scales of action, signifiers, and aesthetics for best confronting global inequality and the climate crisis alike. Through contesting the meaning of “the people” and “populism,” divergent leftist political interpretations both repeated and tweaked generic populist forms. By examining the performative construction and contestation of “the people” through languages and spaces of climate action, I advocate a humble yet still critical political ecological approach to understanding contemporary populism.     

Athapaskan kinship: Still an open question

Isidore Dyen and David F. Aberle. Lexical Reconstruction: The Case of the Proto‐Athapaskan Kinship System. New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1974. xx + 498 pp. Maps, tables, works cited, and indices. $27.50.     

Skiffle in the U.K.: the indigenization of a musical genre

ABSTRACT

This article examines the creation and diffusion of skiffle, and analyses how it emerged from the transatlantic flow of popular music from the United States to the United Kingdom, and the process by which it became “indigenized” in the U.K. I have also looked at the salience of race, the legacy of English music hall song traditions, and the idea of indigenization of music in post-WWII Britain. I have highlighted how skiffle eventually became “English,” its later impact on popular music in the U.K. in the 1960s and thereafter, and the complexities inherent in the idea of musical genre.