Cet article décrit le processus de création des archives publiques locales en France et surtout en Angleterre où il a fallu attendre la seconde moitié du xxe siècle pour qu'un réseau cohérent de dépôts se mette en place dans les comtés. Il suggère ensuite que la manière dont les collections ont été constituées a influencé directement la fabrique de l'histoire sociale et qu'elle explique, en particulier, les fortes divergences entre les historiographies anglaise et française dans les années 1960 et 1970. (...) Il avance enfin que l'intérêt actuel pour une histoire des individus, auxquelles se prêtent mieux les sources anglaises et françaises, permet un rapprochement inattendu des historiographies. (shrink)

Applied general equilibrium models have received considerable attention and scrutiny in the public debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement. This collection brings together the leading AGE models that have been constructed to analyse NAFTA. A variety of approaches to modelling trade liberalization are taken in these studies, including multi-country and multi-sectoral models, models that focus on institutional features of particular sectors affecting multinational firms and rules of origin, and models with some inter-temporal structure. Further, by constructing stylized models, (...) theoretical linkages have been identified that drive numerical results in the larger AGE models. The volume also assesses what can be learned about the likely economic effects of NAFTA from the collection of studies taken as a whole. Areas in need of further study have been highlighted. (shrink)

In the early modern period, the European concept of “nobility” was rarely used to describe the upper classes of the societies born in the British or in the French Americas. The presence of French nobles in New France or in the French West Indies and the emergence of the native gentry in parts of the British Empire have been much studied. But the social impact of elites has not been fully recognized by Atlantic historians—due, perhaps, to a bias towards “authentically” (...) New World systems of social recognition based upon wealth, emphasizing supposedly greater possibilities of social mobility. This paper takes a comparative perspective to the social meanings of being a noble or being a gentleman in both empires. It concludes that there were few substantive differences between French nobles living in the metropolis and in the colonies because legal definitions of the French noblesse were strictly determined by the Crown. The essence of the French nobility was, in theory, the same in Versailles, in a remote rural parish of France or in Quebec. The story was very different for British colonial gentlemen who encountered countless difficulties to be socially accepted by their metropolitan counterparts. The paper explores the consequences of the chasm between British metropolitan and colonial upper classes and assesses solutions taken by colonial gentlemen to be fully integrated in the gentry of Great Britain. (shrink)

Main Response Topics ? Introduction ? Open display and public evaluation ? Publicity versus patient privacy ? Facial tissue donation ? Validity of Louisville Instrument for Risk Acceptance ? Patients' understanding of risk ? Face versus hand transplantation ? Rejection rates/risks ? Patient compliance ? Exit strategy ? Functional recovery ? Societietal implications ? Psychological implications ? Conclusion: Uncertainty likely to persist.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

In this volume, Simona Goi and Frederick M. Dolan gather stimulating arguments for the indispensability of fiction_including poetry, drama, and film_as irreplaceable sites for wrestling with nature, meaning, shortcomings, and the future of modern politics.

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements (...) usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase. (shrink)

The involvement of developing countries in international clinical trials is necessary for the development of appropriate medicines for local populations. However, the absence of appropriate structures for ethical review represents a barrier for certain countries. Currently there is very little information available on existing structures dedicated to ethics in western and central Africa. This article briefly describes historical milestones in the development of networks dedicated to capacity building in ethical review in these regions and outlines the major conclusions of two (...) workshops on this issue, which were held in September and October 2002 in Libreville, Gabon, and Paris, France. The workshops were the culmination of collaboration between the African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) and the Pan African Bioethics Initiative (PABIN). They produced an update on ethics organizations with regard to mission, function, activities, members, and contact people, in eight countries within the regions discussed. As a result of the commitment of mandated delegates, a further prominent outcome followed these workshops: the creation of national structures, where none existed before, dedicated to the ethical review of clinical trials. (shrink)

The involvement of developing countries in international clinical trials is necessary for the development of appropriate medicines fo.

According to François Laruelle, French thought has been unduly influenced by corpuscular or atomist thinking, yet Laruelle has himself employed key atomist terms—in particular, that of the clinamen or swerve—in framing his own style of thought. This essay looks at this tension between atomism and anti-atomism in Laruelle’s thought, taking the measure of his contribution to a larger stream of postwar French thinking about the relevance and stakes of ancient atomism. Its contention is that Laruelle subtly but really outlines (...) a quantum theoretical resumption of ancient atomist philosophy—one that deserves closer attention and comparative study in the larger context of French philosophical interest in the atomists. A first section of the paper briefly describes Laruelle’s general project, along with his claim that he differs from his contemporaries because he uniquely escapes the dangers of what he calls corpuscular thought. A second section addresses the apparent tension between Laruelle’s claim to produce a non-corpuscular thinking and his consistent recent use of the atomist image of the clinamen, ultimately arguing that Laruelle sides with the clinamen against two forms of corpuscularity supposedly avoided by the clinamen itself but nonetheless usefully embodied in atomist thought. The final section of the paper draws up in preliminary terms a comparison between Laruelle’s understanding of his relationship to atomism and that of his contemporaries, focusing in particular on Alain Badiou. (shrink)

In October 1854, around 150 years ago therefore, François Cantagrel, a disciple of the well-known utopian visionary Charles Fourier, set sail for the New World. He was leader of the first group of French Fourierist settlers emigrating to North America, where they planned to emulate their American co-disciples in establishing new ‘phalansteries’ there and hence to lay the foundations for the ‘phalanx of harmony’ to come. The instigator of the expedition was Victor Considérant, a great propagandist for Fourier's doctrine, (...) under whose mandate Cantagrel was sent out. The region chosen for the founding of the utopian colony was Texas, at that time in the midst of a great surge of settlement. Cantagrel bought a block of land in Houston, then a mere straggling frontier town on the edge of a bayou infested with alligators and mosquitoes, to serve as a staging post. Of more significance was land purchased close to Dallas, then but a village of 400 souls, for it was here in the next few years that a Fourier colony, ‘La Réunion’, was established. It came to number more settlers than the village of Dallas itself. But it resulted in a total disaster. (shrink)

Nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive sciences (NBIC) have gradually gained traction in the United States of America (USA), subsequently expanding to Europe, and are now proliferating worldwide. Scientists are trying with more success to remove the causes of death by “repairing” humans, or even by “increasing” their physical and cognitive capacities. NBICs not only can help researchers promote “one health” by improving environmental conditions, human and animal health, but also, they can lead humanity towards transhumanism through eugenics. Thanks to (...) the principle of totality, the intentional modification of the human body for therapeutic purposes through surgery has always been seen as a source of medical progress. But how far can the living human body be modified at will? Gilbert Hottois and Jean-François Mattei have deciphered transhumanism to question its alleged “humanism” and study its impact on our humanity. Today, science has gone further thanks to the possibilities offered by converging NBIC technologies and especially with the advent of human genome editing! The objective of this article is to highlight the hopes and fears of Homo sapiens following the applications of NBICs, and to propose ethical reflections on the invading transhumanist and posthumanist doctrines that tend to become spiritual movements, even religions. A summary study, based on a scientific bibliography, linked to NBICs and including ethical aspects, will present the ethical issues of the convergence of nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, information technologies and cognitive sciences, which could become a springboard for transhumanism and posthumanism. (shrink)

The writings of François Jullien are an indispensable starting point for those hoping to eschew the provincialism hampering many forms of art theory today. In the first instance, his writings help identify the limitations of aesthetic theory fashioned according to the European model. These "limitations" refer to both the practical limits that prevent such theory from taking account of the different forms of artistic production in our world more generally, as well as to the constitutive limits that define European (...) thought in its specificity. Jullien allows us to approach our own thought as we might another culture, namely as a group of historically contexualized ideas deprived of their sense of self-evidence. In... (shrink)