Home-based service jobs have developed considerably across Western societies. In fact, chances are high that a working-class woman in France today will, at some point in her life, be a house cleaner, home-based child care provider, or home aide for the elderly. Going against political, scholarly, and everyday discourses that, saturated with the double prejudices of gender and class, treat all these home service occupations, which require little prior training, the same, this article illuminates the variability of the forms of (...) subordination experienced by women practicing these occupations in France. Comparing these jobs with the ensemble of low-skill jobs and with each other exposes what is specific to the particular form of subordination each job type entails, in terms of the extent of job supervision and the nature of the home where it is practiced, the presence or absence of relations with coworkers and/or a “public,” and the nature of this “public.” It mobilizes nationwide statistical data in a new way to shift attention to these numerous ordinary work situations, which are much less studied than those of the domestic workers of the wealthiest cities of the Western world. (shrink)

Labor unions are key stakeholders in the field of corporate social responsibility but researchers have paid surprisingly little attention to their CSR strategies. This article extends stakeholder theory by treating unions as having stakeholders that influence their CSR strategies. Drawing on qualitative data from a longitudinal study on selected unions in France between 2006 and 2013, this paper analyzes the underlying reasons for the differences in their approaches. It finds connections between the unions’ CSR strategy, and the perception of and (...) cooperation with stakeholders. (shrink)

Il faut saluer d’emblée l’ambition et la réussite du dernier livre d’Anna Jaubert, professeure émérite à l’université de Nice-Côte d’Azur et stylisticienne reconnue, qui parvient à proposer sous une forme relativement concise une élégante synthèse d’un itinéraire personnel de recherche et de pensée, prolongeant et approfondissant ainsi les perspectives théoriques énoncées dans _La Lecture pragmatique_ (Hachette, 1990). Un défi d’ailleurs rarement relevé, l’idée même de style demeurant un impensé dans la plupart des publications stylistiques. La démarche d’A. Jaubert est donc (...) résolument théorique, au prix d’un pas de côté tactique : la substitution de la catégorie dynamique de stylisation (dans une référence au « temps opératif » défini par les travaux de Gustave Guillaume) à celle, plus statique, de style. Dans cette optique, c’est « la diagonale du style » qui figure, selon un trajet « en zig-zag » (schématisé p. 25), les grandes étapes de l’actualisation du style, mobilisant « trait... (shrink)

This paper presents a review of studies that were aimed at determining which brain regions are recruited during visual self-recognition, with a particular focus on self-face recognition. A complex bilateral network, involving frontal, parietal and occipital areas, appears to be associated with self-face recognition, with a particularly high implication of the right hemisphere. Results indicate that it remains difficult to determine which specific cognitive operation is reflected by each recruited brain area, in part due to the variability of used control (...) stimuli and experimental tasks. A synthesis of the interpretations provided by previous studies is presented. The relevance of using self-recognition as an indicator of self-awareness is discussed. We argue that a major aim of future research in the field should be to identify more clearly the cognitive operations induced by the perception of the self-face, and search for dissociations between neural correlates and cognitive components. (shrink)

Roman B. J. Kwasniewski, a son of Polish immigrants, used his camera to document life in this neighborhood shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The photographs in this book are representative of the Polish American experience in Milwaukee prior to World War II. Kwasniewski's photographs document this critical time when the children and grandchildren of Milwaukee's Polish immigrants established themselves fully as American citizens. The photographs in this collection depict what life was like in Kwasniewski's Lincoln Avenue/Mitchell Street (...) neighborhood. Many images such as family portraits and wedding pictures are from the time when Kwasniewski operated Park Studio between 1913 and 1947. Kwasniewski also took his camera out into the community to capture scenes of life on the streets, local businesses, homes, classrooms, and cultural, social, and recreational activities. With an introduction by well-known Milwaukee historian John Gurda, this book provides a visual picture of the growth of Milwaukee's second largest ethnic group and the distinctive community that developed on Milwaukee's South Side. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of domestic employment in the South African context gives rise to the question as to why women not only enter into, but remain in, such an undervalued work situation, and whether they are ultimately able to exit this sector. Contextualising the sectoral engagement of domestic workers as a transitional work-life cycle characterised by impoverishment, limited alternatives, acceptance of the work context, and future directedness, with individual transition through these phases determined by a unique set of circumstances, female domestic (...) workers’ lived experience of their work-life cycle was explored within the framework of an interpretivist research design. Non-probability respondent-driven self-sampling was employed to select 20 participants, most of whom were representative of families with a long history of sectoral involvement, particularly along the female line. Dense, non-numerical data was generated through in-depth interviewing. Inductive data explication was conducted with the aid of MAXQDA. The findings confirmed the existence of an institutionalised culture of engagement within the sector perpetuated from one generation to the next. Hardship and an urgent need for survival leave many with little option but to enter and remain within the sector. Despite negative societal perceptions of the sector, those within it take pride in their work and view their engagement as an enabling tool to better their future prospects and those of their families. Attempts to exit the sector are unsuccessful due, in part, to a limited formal education and skills repertoire. Domestic workers are thus entrapped within a never-ending cycle of sectoral engagement, with the possibility of exiting the sector remaining merely a dream for many. (shrink)

This work introduces a causal explanation of the passage of time, and contrasts it with rival explanations. In the causal explanation, laws of physics are shown to entail that events are in causal succession, and the passage of time is defined as their causal succession. The causal explanation is coupled with phenomenology of the passage of time, and contrasted with the project of making sense of the idea that time does not pass.

In France, some institutions seem to call for the engineer’s sense of social responsibility. However, this call is scarcely heard. Still, engineering students have been given the opportunity to gain a general education through courses in literature, law, economics, since the nineteenth century. But, such courses have long been offered only in the top ranked engineering schools. In this paper, we intend to show that the wish to increase engineering students’ social responsibility is an old concern. We also aim at (...) highlighting some macro social factors which shaped the answer to the call for social responsibility in the French engineering “Grandes Ecoles”. In the first part, we provide an overview of the scarce attention given to the engineering curriculum in the scholarly literature in France. In the second part, we analyse one century of discourses about the definition of the “complete engineer” and the consequent role of non technical education. In the third part, we focus on the characteristics of the corpus which has been institutionalized. Our main finding is that despite the many changes which occurred in engineering education during one century, the “other formation” remains grounded on a non academic “way of knowing”, and aims at increasing the reputation of the schools, more than enhancing engineering students’ social awareness. (shrink)

The preparation of teachers in higher education is increasingly valued in institutions around the world. On the other hand, training models are not standardized and valorization varies. Considering that the initial or professional development of teachers passes, at least in part, by the development of a reflective practice supported on basis of scientific literature, we propose to the on think on one hand about a model of reflective practice, that of Kelchtermans, through four dimensions (instrumental, moral, political, and emotional), and (...) on the other hand about training of teachers in higher education from the perspective of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. This article, which is meant to be an open discussion on the development of reflective practice in Higher education Training, is based on a review of the scientific literature on the topic, but also in large part on our teaching practice. (shrink)

Philosophy in nature strips away the pomp of institutions and the ideal of athleticism while creating an opportunity for a basic human exchange that is all too rare – it sets people side by side on the land to talk things over and think things through. Like any endeavor, operating philosophy tours has distinctive challenges and rewards. Doing philosophy in nature is a tour of the land and of ideas. Taking this into account might make the idea of a “philosophy (...) tour guide” sound more plausible and less bizarre. These tours usually happen on public lands, and so it is grounded in the political realities in which we live. Doing philosophy in nature is a unique opportunity to allow the amazing natural environment to facilitate personal growth and insight. (shrink)

I will demonstrate how religious change repeatedly confronts the sociology of religion with new problems of interpretation and explanation. In the first part (I), I will take a closer look at these problems at a macro sociological level. In doing so, I will provide a brief historical outline and link this to the respective problems of interpretation and explanation. This historical development allows us to discuss the various explanatory models. In the second part (II), I will take a different perspective (...) and switch to the micro sociological level. I will show how responding to the question of meaning is still possible in secular societies, where the answers handed down by religious traditions are no longer accepted as a matter of course. In this part, I will take up the problems of explanation previously outlined and trace in particular the transformation of church-based religion into subjective forms of religiosity. My paper focuses on the following questions: How are social developments and religious change interwoven? How do theories in the sociology of religion explain religious change? What does social modernization and functional differentiation mean for the individual? What effects does modernity have on religion and in particular on the religiosity of individuals? (shrink)

_Les philosophes face au vice, de Socrate à Augustin_ explore la manière dont les philosophes de l’Antiquité ont tracé une cartographie des vices, analysé leurs causes et leurs effets, et se sont interrogés sur leurs usages. _Les philosophes face au vice, de Socrate à Augustin_ explores how ancient philosophers described the vices, delineated their various kinds, accounted for their causes and effects, and reflected on how to use them.

This paper provides a summary of the symposium on the institutional and social construction of Responsible Investment (RI), held at the 22nd IABS conference. In the context of the symposium, we propose to move beyond the dominant focus on the financial impact of RI to consider the potential of emergent institutional and sociological perspectives to explain the practices and concepts related to RI. In doing so, our aim is to explore in greater detail the current changes in the RI infrastructure (...) and the impact of these changes on wider issues of corporate sustainability and social responsibility. (shrink)

This work aims to make tense logic a more robust tool for ontologists, philosophers, knowledge engineers and programmers by outlining a fusion of tense logic and ontology of time. In order to make tense logic better understandable, the central formal primitives of standard tense logic are derived as theorems from an informal and intuitive ontology of time. In order to make formulation of temporal propositions easier, temporal operators that were introduced by Georg Henrik von Wright are developed, and mapped to (...) the ontology of time. (shrink)

Contemporary theoretical physics is divided into diversified theories of different phenomena. These are characteristically frameworks for giving mathematical descriptions of perceptions, in the absence of understandable explanations or a unified worldview. This is not an optimal state of affairs, for people by nature desire to understand; this sets a major obstacle for an optimal progress rate of physics, for understandable explanations are more prolific of new predictions and applications than non-understandable explanations. Disunification in physics can be remedied only by discovering (...) an understandable ontology and applying it as the basis of unifying explanations of phenomena that were earlier explained by different theories. Due to disunified physics and the nature of traditional analysis in philosophy, there is no consensus about central concepts such as time, possibility and truth. It is suggested that philosophical analysis would be more prolific of understandable and applicable concepts, were it complemented by a method of unification. (shrink)

Dans cet article, Christelle Taraud revient sur trente ans d’histoire des femmes, du genre et des sexualités au Maghreb à l’époque coloniale. Mettant l’accent sur l’apport fondamental des gender, subaltern & colonial studies, l’article vise aussi à faire un bilan critique des avancées, et au contraire des absences et résistances dans un champ qui, au moins depuis les années 1970, est en voie de constitution. Au cœur de l’article, cinq grandes thématiques – colonisation, peuplement et femmes européennes ; femmes (...) européennes et femmes « indigènes » : une rencontre coloniale? ; l’orientalisme recontextualisé ; sexualités en situation coloniale ; et femmes, hommes et guerre en contexte colonial – permettent d’avoir une vision claire, quoique non exhaustive, de la production historiographique des années 1980-2010. (shrink)

In this paper, we compare and contrast institutional theory and convention theory on the concept of mimetism, suggesting how they can cross-pollinate each other and more specifically how the self-referential quality of collective beliefs improves the understanding of mimetic isomorphism. We test this proposition with the case of responsible investment’s mainstreaming.First level results decompose the history of RI into five successive periods. A content analysis of articles on RI in the financial press leads to second level results consisting in a (...) number of salient representations of RI, which we consider to be the dominant conventions. The data is structured using a bracketing strategy, which allows a longitudinal analysis of conventions and their evolution over the five RI periods. (shrink)

This article attempts to clarify and critically to discuss some variants of the sociological Interpretation of regularities in social action. The widely held view that the concept of norm yields the decisive approach to a specifically sociological understanding of behavioural regularities is placed in opposition to Weber’s reflections on the basic concepts of sociology. Weber from the start reserves room for an utility - and interestoriented component of explanation, apart from the concept of norm and in principle not less important. (...) In this connection the article also works out and criticises Parsons' attempt to ‘integrate’ Weber's sociology into a normativistic conception of the discipline. As o consequence of this criticism the author stresses the value of using the concept of norm - and also tho of rule - in o more differentiated fashion. In particular we should distinguish clearly between on the one hand norms, or rules with obligatory components, and on the other utility- or means -ends-oriented rules, followed in the process of furthering one’s own interests. If we neglect this distinction and, like Parsons, subsume o conflation of these concepts under the notion of norm, we run the risk of perceiving any moderately polished and strategically prudent pursuit of an agent’s own interests as a case of norm-governed action. (shrink)

This article presents the ethical issues of the professional practice of engineers.

Abstract:Knock ou Le Triomphe de la Médicine [Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine] (1923) is a satirical play by Jules Romains parodying the hierarchical power relationship between patient and doctor and the supposed infallibility of science in the early twentieth century. Drawing on the phenomenological work of German physician Herbert Plügge (1970), I argue that the play exploits the physical interconnections between the healthy body and the sick body to present health as a deceptive state of hidden or imminent illness. (...) By anticipating illness, the play shatters the illusion of health in ways that are ethically, psychosocially, and biomedically salient. (shrink)

More and more companies are developing corporate social responsibility -related programs which imply strategic and organizational changes. This article focuses on a public utility organization, the Groupe La Poste, in which CSR issues and practices are linked to its specific mission as a public service, thus defining and explicitly structuring its CSR programs. We explore the following research questions: Why did the Groupe La Poste formulate explicitly its CSR program? What is the content of this program and how it is (...) perceived by managers? To provide answers to these questions, we have developed a conceptual framework based on a literature review linking CSR to strategic and organizational change and we apply it to the Groupe La Poste. The analysis shows a progressive convergence between strategic and CSR trajectories and sheds light into how an organization can progressively integrate CSR as a central part of its strategic plan. It confirms the role of central dimensions that support the integration of CSR programs within the organization. CSR-related mission and vision aim at orienting the organization toward sustainability and responsibility. CSR-related principles and policies transpose vision and mission into commitments and guide the implementation and adoption of responsible behavior while CSR-related shared values underlie the whole program. (shrink)

This article introduces finitist set theory (FST) and shows how it can be applied in modeling finite nested structures. Mereology is a straightforward foundation for transitive chains of part-whole relations between individuals but is incapable of modeling antitransitive chains. Traditional set theories are capable of modeling transitive and antitransitive chains of relations, but due to their function as foundations of mathematics they come with features that make them unnecessarily difficult in modeling finite structures. FST has been designed to function as (...) a practical tool in modeling transitive and antitransitive chains of relations without suffering from difficulties of traditional set theories, and a major portion of the functionality of discrete mereology can be incorporated in FST. This makes FST a viable collection theory in ontological modeling. (shrink)

The General Theory of Relativity (GR) and the Dynamic Universe (DU) are evaluated in how they explain frequencies of atomic clocks. DU and GR predict the frequencies with equal accuracy, but their explanations, the postulates they apply in the explanations and the word-views that come along with them are entirely different. The central argument is that if unified and under- standable physics is appreciated, then DU deserves to be taken as a viable alternative to GR. In GR different frequencies of (...) identical atomic clocks are explained by letting rates of the flow of time in their frames of reference vary as functions of the clocks’ states of motion and gravitation. The GR- based world-view is nonunderstandable because GR violates absolute simultaneity, and disunified because quantum mechanics is built on different postulates than GR. In DU different frequencies of identical atomic clocks are explained by letting their frequencies vary as functions of their states of motion and gravitation. As DU commits to absolute simultaneity and as the postulates of DU suffice as the ontological ground of quantum mechanics at least partially, DU provides an under- standable and unified scientific world-view. -/- Résumé: La théorie de la relativité générale (RG) et de l’univers dynamique (UD) sont évalués sur la fac ̧on dont ils expliquent les fréquences des horloges atomiques. La RG et l’UD prédisent les fréquences avec une précision égale, mais leurs explications, les postulats qu’ils appliquent aux explications et les visions du monde qui les accompagnent sont entie`rement différents. L’argument central est que si l’on reconnaˆıt la physique unifiée et compréhensible, alors l’UD mérite d’ être considéré comme une alternative viable à la RG. En RG, différentes fréquences d’horloges atomiques identiques sont expliquées en faisant varier les vitesses de l’écoulement du temps dans leurs cadres de référence en fonction des états de mouvement et de la gravitation des horloges. La vue du monde basée sur la RG est incompréhensible parce que la RG viole la simultanéité absolue, et est désunifiée parce que la mécanique quantique est construite sur des postulats différents de ceux de la RG. Dans l’UD, différentes fréquences d’horloges atomiques identiques sont expliquées en laissant leurs fréquences varier en fonction de leurs états de mouvement et de gravitation. Comme l’UD s’engage à la simultanéité absolue et que les postulats de l’UD suffisent, au moins en partie, comme fondements ontologiques de la mécanique quantique, l’UD fournit une vision du monde scientifique compréhensible et unifiée. (shrink)

Lorsqu’il rédige son traité De officiis, Cicéron a sous les yeux le Peri kathekontos de Panétius, auquel il emprunte sa structure tripartite. Cette structure laisse pourtant perplexe, puisque le devoir (kathekon) y est envisagé sous l’angle du beau moral, puis sous l’angle de l’utile, pour en venir à une confrontation des deux. La perplexité naît de ce que le beau moral et l’utile sont interchangeables, si l’on s’en tient aux principes posés par Zénon et Chrysippe. Que signifie alors cette structure? (...) Notre hypothèse est la suivante : Panétius entend, par ce programme, résoudre le problème de l’indétermination inhérente à la définition même du devoir ; il s’efforce de refonder le devoir en remontant à son lieu d’origine, la vertu elle-même, comprise sous ses deux faces les plus claires : kalon et sympheron. (shrink)

Au centre de cet article, l’idée que les prostituées « indigènes », parce qu’elles se trouvent au croisement de l’ordre et du désordre, de la conformité et de la déviance, du permis et de l’interdit, sont des êtres de l’hybridation. Bien que sous contrôle d’un système réglementariste extrêmement répressif, les prostituées « indigènes » ne se contentent pas, en effet, de se situer dans un « entre deux » mais proposent une synthèse inédite qui touche l’ensemble de leur vie quotidienne (...) : leurs pratiques religieuses, médicales, corporelles, sexuelles, linguistiques… Ce faisant, elles donnent à voir leur extraordinaire capacité d’adaptation mais aussi la richesse et la complexité d’une société « en mouvement » qui se recompose au contact de la colonisation. (shrink)

The principle of economy favours the theory which gives the most accurate predictions; of two equally accurate theories, economy favours the one which incorporates least metaphysics. The intention is to show that were metaphysical commitments of theories openly acknowledged and simplicity and other virtues generally accepted as judges in theory choice, the progress rate of science would likely become more optimal.

This paper describes the emergence of a controversy concerning pollution and environmental and health risks in two southern French towns, Viviez and Salindres, which are both known for their long industrial history. It explores some of the reasons why the majority of the local populations resented the fact that the; issues raised were addressed publicly. It also examines some of the coping strategies residents may have developed to avoid talking about risks and to distance themselves from them. It goes on (...) to discuss the differences and similarities in the development of concerns for environmental inequalities in the North American and French contexts, asking, in the manner of Werner Sombart on socialism in the USA at the end of the nineteenth century, why environmental justice is not a strong concern (either as a social movement or frame of analysis) this side of the Atlantic. (shrink)

In this paper we address the modelling of reasoning processes in natural agents. We focus on a very basic kind of non-monotonic inference for which we identify a simple and plausible underlying process, and we develop a family of logical models that allow to match this process. Partial worlds models, as we call them, are a variant of Kraus, Lehmann and Magidor’s cumulative models. We show that the inference relations they induce form a strict subclass of cumulative relations and tackle (...) the issue of providing sound and complete sets of rules to characterise them. Taking inspiration from the work of Gabbay and Schlechta, we analyse the question in terms of definable sets of partial worlds and conclude that completeness is probably unreachable using a standard propositional language. This brings us to enrich our language with an additional connective, which makes it possible to distinguish between two kinds of disjunction in the partial worlds context. Within this renewed framework, we provide two representation theorems: one for inference relations induced by precisification-free smooth models, and the other for inference relations induced by precisification-free ranked models. Finally we give an aperçu of how partial worlds models lend themselves to the modelling of learning. (shrink)

This article portrays unification of physics as a central tenet of ErnstMach’s thought, and organizes some of the focal issues in philosophy of science around the process of unification of science. Mach finds a natural place in the history. Newton’s Principia marked the beginning of the era of mathematical physics, which developed triumphantly in the eighteenth century, until new phenomena were discovered in the nineteenth century whose explanations went over and above Newtonian physics. Also Positivism emerged in the nineteenth century. (...) This was the setting where Mach entered. The notion that a central function of physics is to give mathematical descriptions of perceptions is all over Mach’s work, but in Mach’s thought mathematics comes together with hypothetical laws of nature and an overall world-view, similarly as in Newtonian physics where mathematics comes together with the laws of motion. Mach’s criticism of Newtonian absolute time and space was in line with positivism, and his suggestions about an overall holistic worldview were to function as an intuitive background for the new physics. Thus, as a physicist and a philosopher of physics, Mach should be seen primarily as a unifier, and his famous anti-metaphysics should be seen as derivative from this unificationist project: he did not intend to banish the metaphysical core that he himself proposed, but only metaphysics that is not needed in unified science. (shrink)

Depuis le début des années 2010 fleurissent les publications, les rencontres, les formations qui se placent sous le signe des Film Festival Studies. Depuis longtemps, pourtant, les festivals de films avaient rencontré l’intérêt de chercheurs, issus de diverses disciplines. Une dynamique nouvelle serait-elle donc à l’œuvre depuis la dernière décennie, une volonté explicite de se raccrocher à la perspective très anglo-saxonne des Studies? Ce texte se propose d’ouvrir quelques pistes de réflexion relatives à la spécificité des études portant sur cet (...) objet singulier que constituent les festivals de cinéma et audiovisuel, dans la perspective de poser des jalons propres à l’épistémologie d’un champ de recherche encore à construire. (shrink)

Depuis le début des années 2010 fleurissent les publications, les rencontres, les formations qui se placent sous le signe des Film Festival Studies. Depuis longtemps, pourtant, les festivals de films avaient rencontré l’intérêt de chercheurs, issus de diverses disciplines. Une dynamique nouvelle serait-elle donc à l’œuvre depuis la dernière décennie, une volonté explicite de se raccrocher à la perspective très anglo-saxonne des Studies? Ce texte se propose d’ouvrir quelques pistes de réflexion relatives à la spécificité des études portant sur cet (...) objet singulier que constituent les festivals de cinéma et audiovisuel, dans la perspective de poser des jalons propres à l’épistémologie d’un champ de recherche encore à construire. (shrink)