Landscape as a Medium for Integration in Design Practice: The Case of Flanders,Belgium

The twenty-first century has seen a remarkable revival of interest in landscape by disciplines of spatial design, such as landscape architecture, urban design and architecture. Inspired by the principles of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), several authors have suggested extending the concept of landscape into a metaphor for inclusive multiplicity and pluralism in design and planning. However, the implementation of the ELC is rather complex as it deliberately contains no methodological or practical guidelines. In this paper, we explore whether or not the holistic approach towards landscape in the spirit of the ELC actually affects Flemish design in practice. To this end, we study interviewees' perspectives on the use of landscape in design and their experiences with it by means of a qualitative interpretive research design with multiple triangulation of data collection methods. First, we present the perspectives of the study on landscape as a medium to facilitate integration in design projects, by discussing four separate topics where this is the case. Second, we conceptualize the integration of landscape in spatial design as an expertise which can be obtained by spatial designers, regardless of their disciplinary background through awareness-raising, training and education.     

Des formes éditoriales composites : Les revues Françaises de chimie

This study of a corpus of French chemistry journals between 1800 and 2010 shows the relevance of the journal as the primary mode of communication, confirming the results of the general survey presented in this issue. However, a study of their contents is questioning the apparent unity of this phenomenon: the journal appears as a physical medium consisting in a common container including a wide range of information categories transferred over time to digital platforms in development since the end of the 20^th century.     

Living in an Egyptian Oasis: Reconstruction of the Holocene Archaeological Sequence in Kharga

Within the Egyptian Western Desert, the Kharga Oasis was a particularly favourable and highly frequented area during the Holocene thanks to a permanent ground water supply. The high concentration and accessibility of archaeological sites here allows the cultural and economic changes to be documented at a local scale, when northeastern Africa was experiencing strong climatic variations and the transition to a food production economy. An expansive program led by the Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) which included systematic survey, sampling collections, tests and stratigraphic excavations has dramatically increased the amount of data available concerning the prehistory of the Kharga Oasis. Typo-technological analyses focusing on the lithic industries, and other aspects of material culture, plus a series of ¹⁴C dates have led to the definition of four main successive cultural phases: Kharga A, B, C and D. This paper describes this proposal of a new archaeological sequence for human occupation in the Kharga Oasis and discusses its integration in the wider frame of Egypt and the Eastern Sahara.     

Christianity and Secularisation in the West and the Middle East: A Theological Stance

In this article I argue that Christianity is essentially secular. Hence, secularisation not only has a theological connotation concerning Christian faith but also it is the highest and most perfect realisation of Christian religion, since it signifies the cross that is in the centre of Christian faith. As Christians take upon themselves secularisation as an existential choice, namely the powerlessness of God and of the human being, they simultaneously take the worldly‐human existence as “here” and “now” upon themselves. I will argue that this is the culmination of Reformation. Further, I want to demonstrate that secular Christianity, in the sense given in this article, remains a challenge for both Western and Eastern worlds. In order to accomplish this I will reflect in the first part of this article — from a theological point of view — upon some sociological interpretations or theories concerning mainly secularisation in Western Europe and also the contemporary socio‐political scene in the Middle East. In the second part of the article I will present several Western and Eastern theological positions that defend secularisation, and through their contributions I will construct my own theological stance for secular Christianity.     

Crystallographic and structural transformations of sedimentary chalcedony in flint upon heat treatment

The early occurrence of intentional heat treatment of silica rocks has recently become a key element in the discussion about the cultural modernity of prehistoric populations. Lithic vestiges are the only sources that remain of this process and the understanding of the material’s properties and transformations are essential for reconstructing the conditions and parameters applied during heat treatment. Several models of the structural transformations upon heating have been proposed in the current literature. These models are often contradictory and do not account for the most recent structural and mineralogical data on chalcedony. In order to propose a new model, we elaborated an experimental procedure and applied different techniques involving infrared spectroscopy, solid state NMR, X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The results show that the major transformation to happen is the loss of silanole (SiOH) and the creation of new Si-O-Si bonds according to the reaction: Si?OH HO-Si → Si-O-Si + H₂O. This reaction starts between 200 °C and 300 °C and causes an increase in the hardness of the rocks. The maximal annealing temperature and the ramp rate are the functions of the ability of the structure to evacuate newly created H₂O and depend on the size of the specimen and the volume of its porosity. These results also show that the annealing duration at maximum temperature can be relatively short (<50 min) for a sufficiently large amount of transformation to be accomplished.     

On the Road and on their Own: Autonomy and giving in home health care in Quebec

The reorganization of health care in Quebec, as in the rest of Canada, has helped reinforce inequities based on gender, race, ethnic status, etc. in employment in this field. Home health care workers in Quebec, called auxiliaires, are mostly women, frequently immigrants, and often immigrant women of colour. Their jobs are low status and badly paid, yet auxiliaires express a high degree of attachment to the work and find it highly rewarding. We suggest this is largely due to the worker's mobility and physical distance from the institutions that employ them; this allows them considerable autonomy and gives them the freedom to provide service beyond the requirements of the job. Drawing on recent analyses of Mauss' notion of the gift, as well as Tronto and others, we look at ‘giving’ in home health care, and its implications for the workers.

En el camino y estar solo: Autonomía y Regalando en el cuidado de salud en casa en Quebec

La reorganización del sistema de salud en Québec, como en el resto de Canadá, ha ayudado reiterar las inigualdades de género, raíz, etnicidad, etcétera, en el empleo de salud. La mayoría de los trabajadores de salud en Québec—que se llaman ‘auxiliaires’—son mujeres y muchas veces inmigrantes y además, mujeres inmigrantes de color. Su trabajo se considera como estatus inferior y tiene salario bajo, sin embargo ‘auxiliaires’ declaran un apego significativo al trabajo y lo encuentran gratificante. Sugerimos que el apego y gratificación se resultan de la movilidad de las trabajadoras y sus distantes físicos de la institución; ésta situación las permite una autonomía considerable y como consecuencia tienen ellas la libertad para proveer asistencia por encima de los requisitos del trabajo. Usando unos análisis recientes de la noción del regalo de Gauss, además de Tronto y otros, examinamos ‘regalar’ en el cuidado de salud en casa y las implicaciones para las trabajadoras.     

First Obsidian in the Northern French Alps during the Early Neolithic

An exceptional discovery was made in 2013 in the northern French Alps, at the Grande Rivoire site in Sassenage (Isère department): an obsidian bladelet from Sardinia was found in a cultural horizon dated to about 5360–5210 cal b.c. The abundant arrowheads found with it are characteristic of the Early Neolithic in the South of France (Cardial/Epicardial). Yet there was no pottery or domestic fauna, and only discrete markers of farming. The typological, technological and micro-wear analysis of this bladelet, as well as the determination of the origin of the raw material, open new avenues of reflection for the neolithization of the northern Alps, in particular concerning the role played by the Early Neolithic cultures of northern Italy.