The unintended consequences of emergency food aid: neutrality,sovereignty and politics in the Syrian civil war, 2012–15

This article dissects the role of emergency food aid during the current Syrian conflict. Drawing on Séverine Autesserre's concept of frames and Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty, we argue that the neutrality frame, which undergirds the majority of humanitarian relief efforts in Syria, obfuscates the impact of emergency food aid, both on sovereign power relations and local political dynamics. While neutrality appears benign, it has had a tangible impact on the Syrian civil war. Through close scrutiny of various case‐studies, the article traces how humanitarian efforts reinforce the bases of sovereign politics while contributing to a host of what Mariella Pandolfi (1998) terms ‘mobile sovereignties’. In the process, humanitarian organizations reaffirm sovereign power while also engaging in similar activities. We then analyse how and why ostensibly neutral emergency food aid has unintentionally assisted the Assad regime by facilitating its control over food, which it uses to buttress support and foster compliance. By bringing external resources into life‐or‐death situations characterized by scarcity, aid agencies have become implicated in the conflict's inner workings. The article concludes by examining the political and military impact of emergency food assistance during the Syrian conflict, before discussing possible implications for the humanitarian enterprise more broadly.     

AN ANALYTICAL STUDY OF IBERIAN IRON AGE STONE SCULPTURES AND THEIR SURFACE MARKS

The Archaeological Museum of Jaén's sizeable collection of Iron Age sculptures, dating from the fifth century bce , were all found at Cerrillo Blanco de Porcuna, a site in the Spanish province of Jaén. The collection comprises over 40 statues and hundreds of fragments. Incisions recently identified on some of these sculptures have been interpreted as sculptors' marks. The present archaeometric study, conducted with a 3D roughness meter, showed that the marks on several of the sculptures analysed were made with the same type of tool and the same engraving technique. While the graphological differences denote different authorship, they would appear to have been made in the same workshop. The morphological differences observed in the lines analysed on other sculptures are interpreted to indicate the use of other types of tools and engraving techniques.     

A NEW DATE FOR THE NEANDERTHALS FROM EL SIDRÓN CAVE (ASTURIAS,NORTHERN SPAIN)*

Torres et al. (2010 ) published a series of radiocarbon, AAR, ESR and OSL dates from the site of El Sidrón, northern Spain, which is notable for the discovery of the partial remains of 12 Neanderthals. Whilst the non‐radiocarbon methods suggested an age beyond 32 600–46 300 years, direct radiocarbon dates on the human fossils were inconsistent, ranging between 10 000 and 50 000 bp . This study uses the ultrafiltration pre‐treatment protocol to obtain a date of 48 400 ± 3200 bp (OxA‐21 776) on a bone fragment and confirm the antiquity of the Neanderthal assemblage. Moreover, it demonstrates the comparability of the ultrafiltration and ninhydrin bone radiocarbon pre‐treatment protocols, and highlights the need for appropriate screening methods where valuable collections with poor biomolecular preservation are sampled for collagen extraction.     

The Mousterian bone retouchers of Noisetier Cave: experimentation and identification of marks

Retouchers are fragments of bone used during the Paleolithic to strike stone flakes in order to transform them into retouched tools. Our experiments show that the mark produced on retouchers differs depending on whether they were used to strike flint or quartzite. Our results suggest that numerous pits, most often with an ovoid form, characterize the retouching of quartzite flakes. Most of the scores produced with this material have a sinuous morphology with rough interior faces. The areas with superposed traces have a pitted appearance. On the other hand, the retouching of flint flakes, produces pits that are most often triangular in form. Most of the scores have a rectilinear morphology with smooth interior faces and their superposition results in the formation of hatch marks. There is also a relationship between the characteristics of the mark and the relative state of freshness of the retouchers. The validity of the criteria identified was confirmed by a blind test. These diagnostic criteria were applied to archaeological retouchers from the Mousterian site of Noisetier Cave. The results obtained improve our knowledge of the technical behaviors of Neanderthals and allow us to address questions concerning their techno-economic implications.     

SOIL-STRUCTURE AND SOIL-STRUCTURE-SOIL INTERACTION: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE AT THE VOLVI TEST SITE

This paper shows the results of two passive experiments carried out at the European Volvi test site where a scaled building has been constructed. The first experiment was performed to study the motion of the structure excited by two small earthquakes. For one month, six strong-motion recorders were installed within the structure, at the top and at the basement. The analysis of the deformation of the structure has been assessed by computing the spectral ratio between the top and the bottom, with a special focus on soil-structure interaction. An analytical model was then proposed to reproduce the structure and soil-structure system behaviour. The soil-structure interaction was accounted for by using impedance functions. During the second experiment, we concentrated our efforts on the effect of the building vibration on the surface ground motion. An explosive shot was fired and several strong-motion recorders were installed on the ground close to the structure that allowed us to clearly identify a monochromatic wave coming from the building, in the time and frequency domains. This experiment allows us to demonstrate the non-negligible effect of the soil-structure-soil interaction that may disturb the surrounding ground motion.     

ATTENUATION RELATION FOR WEST EURASIA DETERMINED WITH RECENT NEAR-FAULT RECORDS FROM CALIFORNIA,JAPAN AND TURKEY

Strong ground motion close to a fault can be expected to be very large, so its estimation is essential for human safetv. Although a few strong-motion data exist for the west Eurasian region, we proposed in a previous work [Berge-Thierry et al., 2003] an attenuation relation for spectral acceleration using strong-motion data recorded in west Eurasia (mainly in Europe) and some in the western United States: this relationship was derived for the French Safety Rule, which is applied for seismic hazard assessment at nuclear power plants. In this study, we propose a constraining of the amplitude saturation term related to the proximity of the fault, and an adding of an amplitude saturation term in the regression model. We add, to the data-set previously used to derive the west Eurasian attenuation relationship strong-motions recorded during recent large earth-quakes: the 1995 Hyogo-ken Nanbu (Kobe) event in Japan and the 1999 Kocaeli (Izmit) event in Turkey. The regression analysis, adopted from Fukushima and Tanaka [1990], is non-linear, so an iterative procedure is applied. The determined regression coefficients lead to a prediction of a peak ground acceleration of about 0.7 g for soil site conditions at a fault distance of 0.5 km. The Q coefficient deduced, from the distance coefficient is in agreement with scattering Q models. The introduction of the saturation term leads to significantly lower predictions of average spectral accelerations at short distances as compared with using the Berge-Thierry et al. [2003] empirical model.     

Jeux D’échelles. Une Histoire Internationale

The book Jeux d’échelles. La microanalyse à l’expérience, which appeard in 1996 under the direction of Jacques Revel, was translated in Italy in 2006 by the Viella editions under the title Giochi di scala. La microstoria alla prova dell’esperienza. This occasion seemed propicious for a historiographic and epistemological return to the microhistorical experience between France and Italy. It had to do with cross reperencing the reflections of a french historian and those of an italian philosopher to seek to place in evidence, from a distance, the theoretical presuppositions of microhistory, and to measure the displacements undergone.     

Présentation

Sans résumé Président du Comité d'organisation du colloquePensée et science, ancien professeur invité de l'EPF, Lausanne.