Interpreting collective action: Methodology and ideology in the analysis of social movements in France

The meaning of contentious collective action has itself always been open to contention. This is true not only of the historiography of revolutions, for example, but also of social science analyses of other, arguably less extreme, forms of contemporary 'contestation'. While up to the 1960s studies of collective action in Europe focused largely on the labour movement, since then much attention has also been paid to 'new' social movements. This article examines some of the methodological and ideological considerations which have shaped the analysis of social movements in France and influenced the debate in recent years as to their significance.     

Between clinical medicine and the laboratory: medical research funding in France from 1945 to the present

By focusing on funding methods, this paper considers the way in which medical research eventually led to the science-based medicine that is prevalent in France today. This process seems to have taken place in three stages during the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1940s and 1950s, two major events occurred. The first was the creation of a national health insurance fund in France, which opened up new reasons for, and ways of, funding medical research. The second was the development of antibiotics, which triggered a revival of clinical medicine. In the 1960s and 1970s, a proactive government science policy allowed the life sciences and medical research to come together in the wake of a burgeoning new science: molecular biology. Thus, in 1964, the creation of the National Health and Medical Research Institute (Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale or INSERM), destined to "molecularize" medical research, was seen as the fulfillment of the government's ambitious research policy. Today, with medicine irreversibly embedded in scientific and technical rationality, health has become a major issue in modern societies. This paper therefore touches on some of the key features of biomedical research, including the revival of funding systems for clinical research and the development of a system of research grants that was made possible by patient organizations and the creation of new funding agencies.     

Harvest Rites in Ireland

LES FONCTIONS MENTALES DANS LES SOCIÉTÉS INFÉRIEURES. Par L. LÉVY-BRUHL. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1910. 8vo, pp. 461. Reviewed by E. A. Hooton.

THE FOLK-LORE OF HEREFORDSHIRE. Collected from Oral and Printed Sources. By ELLA MARY LEATHER. Intro, by EDWIN SIDNEY HARTLAND. Sidgwick &; Jackson, 1912. Large 8vo, pp. xxviii + 288. Ill. Reviewed by Charlotte S. Burne.

JOURNAL OF THE FOLK-SONG SOCIETY. NO. 16 (Vol. IV., Part iii., December 1911). A Collection of one hundred and five Songs of Occupation from the Western Isles of Scotland. Compiled by Miss FRANCES TOLMIE. 19 Berners Street, W., 1911. 4to, xiv, 143–278 + ix. Reviewed by K. W. Grant.

LA RELIGIONE PRIMITIVA IN SARDEGNA. By RAFFAELE PETTAZZONI. Piacenza: Societá Editrice Pontremolese, 1912. 8vo, pp. xxiii + 253. Reviewed by R. R. Marett.

LA CHANSON POPULAIRE DE L'ILE DE CORSE. Par AUSTIN DE CROZE. Avec conclusion de M. PAUL FONTANA. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1911. 16mo, pp. xv + 188. Reviewed by A. M. Spoer.

LE LÉGENDAIRE DU MONT SAINT-MICHEL. Par ÉTIENNE DUPONT. Paris: Robert Duval, 1911. Sm. 8vo, pp. xlvii + 173.

THEMIS. A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. By JANE ELLEN HARRISON. With an Excursus on the Ritual Forms preserved in Greek Tragedy by Prof. GILBERT MURRAY, and a Chapter on the Origin of the Olympic Games by Mr. F. M. CORNFORD. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1912. 8vo, pp. xxxii + 559. Ill. Reviewed by W. Crooke.

LA SOCIÉTÉ MUSULMANE DU MAGHRIB. MAGIE ET RELIGION DANS L'AFRIQUE DU NORD. Par EDMOND DOUTTÉ. Alger: Typographie Adolphe Jourdan, 1909. 8vo, pp. vi + 617. Reviewed by E. Sidney Hartland.

THE SUK : THEIR LANGUAGE AND FOLKLORE. By MERVYN W. H. BEECH. With Intro, by Sir Charles Eliot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911. 8vo, pp. xxiv + 152. Maps and ill. Reviewed by A. R. Wright.

THE LAND OF UZ. By ABDULLAH MANSÛR (G. Wyman Bury). Macmillan, 1911. 8vo, pp. xxvii + 354. Ill. Reviewed by Hans H. Spoer.

MATERINSKAYA FILIACIYA v VOSTOCHNOY 1 CENTRALNOY AZII. [Mother-right in Eastern and Central Asia]. V?p. 1. Materinskaya Filiaciya u Kitaycev, Koreycev i Yaponcev [Mother-right in China, Korea, and Japan]. V?p. 2. Materinskaya Filiaciya u Tibetcev, Mongolov, Myaocz?, Lolo i Tai [Mother-right among the Tibetans, Mongols, Miaotzu, Lolos, and Tai]. By NICHOLAS MATSOKIN. Vladivostock, 1910–11. 8vo, pp. 40, iv + 147. Reviewed by M. Trophimoff.     

Masculinity, ‘race’, and family in the colonies: protecting Aborigines in the early nineteenth century

Much of British imperial society in the early nineteenth century was characterised by a reformulated sensibility of manliness and family. Integral to this sensibility was the notion of men's responsibility for dependants. However, the story of Charles Wightman Sievwright, appointed as Assistant Protector of Aborigines in colonial New South Wales, serves to demonstrate that a man's duty of care for very different, racialised kinds of dependants could be emphasised in conflicting ways by British settlers on the one side and by humanitarians on the other, under conditions of colonial expansion. Sievwright's story also encourages more explicit attention to both the tensions and the mutual intrusions between men's public and private roles within colonial society. Sievwright's own efforts as an active, humanitarian man in the political life of the New South Wales frontier were scandalously undermined by his failure to perform the role expected of him in his domestic, familial relations.