Alone or together in the neighbourhood? School choice and families’ access to local social networks

This study explores how the everyday geographies of city life and families’ access to social networks in the neighbourhood influence families’ school choices. The data consist of thematic interviews with parents of 8–14-year-old children (n?=?170) in three urban areas located in the cities of Paris (France), Milan (Italy) and Espoo (Finland) and are analysed via qualitative content analysis. The findings indicate that the families’ access to local social networks influences the reasoning behind school choice to the local school. The children’s relationships with other children and adults in the neighbourhood are considered important, but additionally, the parents’ networks with other parents in the area, mediated by the school, play their role. School choices as practices should therefore be analysed not merely as choices of an institution, as they comprise various aspects concerning the surrounding neighbourhood as a physical and social space.     

Social Reproduction,Ecological Dispossession and Dependency: Life Beside the Río Santiago in Mexico

This article uses an integrated social reproduction theory (SRT) framework to highlight the interrelation between all non-wage forms of survival, such as debt, community and the environment. The analysis demonstrates how Mexico's unregulated industrialization and social housing policies have created new forms of poverty and market dependency. The article relies on a comprehensive literature review and extensive fieldwork carried out in El Salto, one of Mexico's industrial peripheries, and shows how vulnerable populations become trapped, in this case on the banks of the Río Santiago, one of Mexico's most contaminated rivers. Parallel developments of industrial and housing policies contextualize the conditions unfolding throughout Mexico where populations are relocated to areas without adequate water and where drinking water is supplied by bottled water companies. This contribution highlights why an expanded SRT framework is valuable for understanding the relationship between ecological dispossession and the forced reliance on markets and debt.     

Multi-method (TL and OSL), multi-material (quartz and flint) dating of the Mousterian site of Roc de Marsal (Dordogne,France): correlating Neanderthal occupations with the climatic variability of MIS 5–3

Roc de Marsal has yielded numerous remains of Mousterian occupations, including lithics, fauna and combustion features. It was made famous by the discovery of the skeleton of a Neanderthal child. Given the need to date the sequence, TL and OSL were applied on heated flints and quartz, and OSL on unheated quartz. Chronological results combined with palaeoenvironmental data – faunal remains and micromorphological features in the sediments from the cave, pollen proxies and faunal remains from the region – allowed us to place climate variations in southwest France on a numerical time scale. Denticulate Mousterian occupations were dated to the middle of MIS 4 (65–70 ka) and Quina layers either to the very end of MIS 4 or to MIS 3. Interestingly, a faunal pattern showing a mix of red deer, roe deer and reindeer was found to have occurred during MIS 4, which was shown to be consistent with data from other similar sites in southwest France.     

Ménage et industrie

MORE WORK FOR MOTHER: THE IRONIES OF HOUSEHOLD TECHNOLOGY FROM THE OPEN HEART TO THE MICROWAVE by Ruth Schwarz‐Cowan. Basic Books, New York, 1983, xiv +249pp, planches.     

Europe’s mediation junction: technology and consumer society in the 20th century

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between consumption and technological development to understand the character of Europe’s 20th‐century trajectory, i.e. the hidden integration of Europe long before the formal process of unification started. Within the rich historiography, the paper focuses on the intersection between production and consumption, where a range of social actors and institutions sought to represent consumers and mediate consumption. It is at this juncture of mediation that social actors and institutions negotiated the mediated design and the appropriation of new products and technologies. The paper further historicizes the juncture of mediation by introducing the European politics of the state, marketplace, and civil society within the context of economic crises, world wars, revolutionary changes, post‐war reconstruction, and cold war. By looking at the mediation junction, a conceptual frame is offered to understand the connection, the disconnection, or the reconfiguration of technologies and consumer identities in 20th‐century Europe. In a final section, the article suggests new avenues for research to examine the hidden integration of Europe.     

Gymnastique Volontaire et pratiques d'entretien physique: fragments d'histoire culturelle d'une fédération sportive française (1970–1985)

Au cours de la deuxième moitié du XXème siècle, la Fédération Française d'Education Physique et de Gymnastique Volontaire (FFEPGV) se positionne comme l'interlocuteur privilégié en matière d'entretien physique du corps. Cependant, durant les décennies 1970 et 1980, émergent de nouvelles propositions qui viennent concurrencer les contenus qu'elles proposent: tandis qu'à partir de la fin des années 1960 apparaissent de multiples techniques « douces » prétendant rompre avec les gymnastiques traditionnelles telles que celles défendues par la fédération, la première moitié des années 1980 est marquée par la diffusion massive des gymnastiques aérobiques. Cet article s'intéresse aux réactions des sphères dirigeantes de la FFEPGV devant des évolutions sociales tendant à remettre en question les choix qu'elle a effectués. Au cours des années 1970, des nouvelles pratiques vont faire l'objet d'une appropriation active par certains cadres fédéraux. Par contre, dans la première moitié des années 1980, les dirigeants fédéraux vont vivement réagir contre les gymnastiques de forme et démontrer la distance qui les sépare des principes qui guident la fédération. Cependant, ces choix ne font pas l'unanimité, ce qui conduit la FFEPGV à nuancer son positionnement par rapport aux pratiques corporelles extérieures.     

Short notices

AGERON, C.‐R. and MICHEL, M. (eds), L'Ere des décolonisations, Karthala, 1996, 516 pp., 170F., ISBN 2 86537 579 X

BRIAN, E. and DEMEULENAERE‐DOUYERE, C. (eds), Histoire et mémoire de l'Académie des sciences. Guide de Recherches, TEC & DOC Lavoisier, 1996, 449 pp., no price indicated, ISBN 2 7430 0148

CORRÉARD, M.‐H. (ed.), The Pocket Oxford‐Hachette French Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1996, 784 pp., £7.99, ISBN 0 19 864534 1

CORRÉARD, M.‐H. and O'NEILL, M. (eds), Oxford Starter Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1997, 400 pp., £6.99, ISBN 0 19 864527 9

DURAND, P., Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé, Gallimard, 1998, 252 pp., 54F., ISBN 2 07 038939 1 (collection ‘Folio')

HAFEN, L. (ed.), French Fur Traders and Voyageurs in the American West, (Selected with an Introduction by Janet Lecompte) University of Nebraska Press, 1997, 333 pp., £13.95, ISBN 0 8032 7302 9

SOULEZ‐LARIVIÈRE,, D. Grand Soir pour la justice, Seuil, 1997, 175 pp., 110F., ISBN 2 02 032215 3

STEINBERG, P., Chroniques d'ailleurs, Ramsay, 1996, 190 pp., 92F., ISBN 2 84114 133 0