La Mesure en psychologie de binet à Thurstone, 1900–1930

The French psychologist Alfred Binet is at the origin of the development of the mental test intended for diagnosing the intellectual level of children. Initially conceived as clinical tests their importation to the United States during the 1910's has considerably altered their use, significance and interpretation. Turned into political tools by eugenicists and hereditarists and used in large-scale selection operations, the tests have changed the psychologists' conception of intelligence: initially conceived as multifacted and qualitative, intelligence had become a single quantifiable entity. Within this context, the American psychologist Louis Leon Thurstone criticized the lack of exactness of the statistical tools used in the intelligence scale. Once objectivized, his method became a general law intended to account for all mental processes.     

Fashion and Consumption of Painted and Printed Calicoes in the Mediterranean during the later Seventeenth Century: The Case of Chintz Quilts and Banyans in Marseilles

This article focuses on research into fashion and consumption in the early modern Mediterranean with an emphasis on chintz quilts and banyans in Marseilles during the last third of the seventeenth century. The success of these two products is key to a better understanding of the roots and outcomes of Asian textile fashions in Europe during this period. In this analysis, we are principally interested in their manufacture, trade and marketing. This paper also highlights the importance of connections and intermediations between the two continents: sellers and purchasers, wholesalers and retailers, merchants and manufacturers and shopkeepers and their clients.     

The Importance of Context and Comparison in the Study of European Spatial Planning

The European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) was agreed in 1999 at Potsdam, Germany, as a non-binding framework intended to guide spatially significant policy-making at different spatial scales in order to achieve a more balanced and sustainable growth of the EU territory. This paper develops a conceptualization of the nature of transnational planning frameworks such as the ESDP and presents a framework for the investigation of the application of their policy orientations in the spatial planning systems of European states. It is argued that investigations of the application of transnational spatial development frameworks like the ESDP and the ‘Territorial Agenda of the European Union’ document adopted by EU member states in 2007, need to be sensitized to the diversity of territorial contexts in which these apply, and that a contextualized and comparative approach is therefore essential in evaluating their influence in Europe's varied territories.     

Le Pragmaticisme Comme épistémologie Sociale

Charles S. Peirce is neither known nor recognized as a social philosopher. Nevertheless, a careful reading of pragmaticist texts reveals that considerations of social and political theory are not absent from the American philosopher??s reasoning. This article highlights certain deliberations regarding the critique of the individual as well as the notion of community and social institutions. It thereby attempts to surmount the philological difficulties and provide a coherent interpretation.     

Unhelpful Fixer? Canada,the Euromissile Crisis,and Pierre Trudeau's Peace Initiative, 1983–1984*

ABSTRACT

This article provides the most rigorous international history to date of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's 1983 peace initiative, one of Canada's major foreign policy ventures of the Cold War, examining both Trudeau's motives and the reception of his initiative among Canada's allies. Drawing on newly declassified sources in Canada, it uncovers the two-track strategy behind this initiative, aiming to mobilise Western European leaders to exert pressure on the Reagan Administration on the one hand, while quietly urging European allies to call for a review of NATO strategy on the other. Based on previously unavailable archival materials from seven different countries, this article also reveals how the Canadian initiative was received by the world leaders Trudeau sought to win over. It reassesses the Canadian initiative, revealing that it borrowed heavily from existing proposals from other countries, and that NATO leaders viewed the initiative as a mere electoral ploy to help Trudeau win re-election rather than a serious project to ease East–West tensions. This article concludes that with this initiative Canada was not in fact playing the role of a ‘helpful fixer’ and that the initiative constituted part of a wider and understudied trend in government responses to the ‘Second Cold War’.