Prétopologie et espaces habités.

This text presents the contribution of mathematical pretopology to the understanding of the morphology of inhabited spaces, although it can be applied to any type of space. The use of pretopology explains the relative, and not absolute, character of topological dimensions of inhabited spaces, such as interior, exterior, edge, etc. These dimensions are defined using an exploration of space, based on a process of extension which associates to any part a bigger part including it. A change of process [...]

L’internationalisme du 19e siècle : un exemple interdisciplinaire de global studies.

The transnational turn has renewed both the history of anarchism and the sociology of social movements. The purpose of this article is, by considering the international anarchist congress of London (1881), to evoke new possibilities for the junction of sociological analysis and historical research. This interdisciplinary approach is not meant to be a mere dialogue between well-divided fields using specific methods, but to embrace a larger field of global studies. This perspective, open to all the social sciences, will [...]

Pour une approche pluridisciplinaire du langage.

Le cas du whitisage chez des migrants camerounais à Paris.

This article aims to show the need for a multidisciplinary approach to the study of language in its social context, from the analysis of the practice of whitisage among francophone Cameroonian immigrants in Paris. This practice consists in "talking like a white person", by imitating the standard pronunciation of the interlocutor. After defining language as a social practice inseparable from the others, I argue, through the analysis of the actors' discourses on their own language practices, that a multidisciplinary [...]

Alfred Métraux, ethnologue à l’UNESCO (1947-1963).

Alfred Métraux, Swiss-American ethnologist, worked for UNESCO from 1947 until his death in 1963. This article analyzes three UNESCO programs in which he was deeply involved : the « fundamental education » project in Marbial Valley (Haïti), at the end of the forties, aiming at educating Haitian peasants ; the program on the « race question » in the fifties, aiming at fighting racism, and the « andin program », also in the fifites, aiming at helping Latin American [...]

Évolutions des parcours migratoires et résidentiels des habitants de Bogotá (1993-2009).

At the end of the last century, Bogotá, like many other large Latin American cities, saw its population dynamics change as the country progressed in the demographic transition and the urban transition : its growth depended more on the natural growth of the population and the origin and distance of migrations to the capital evolved. This article shows how this new « stage of populating » - a concept whose interest in analysing urban change will be demonstrated - [...]

Mobilités Spatiales et Fluidité Sociale.

Le changement se cristallise, selon Robert Castel, autour de « ce que l’on pourrait appeler des configurations problématiques, c’est-à-dire des nœuds de questions sur lesquels se cristallisent la plupart des tensions, des conflits et des enjeux qui affectent les membres d’une société. Elles sont problématiques parce qu’elles [...]

La mobilité résidentielle, une nouvelle opportunité pour les territoires de tradition industrielle.

The industrial regions of the fordist era, which we call in this article “traditional industrial regions", are among the regions that have faced the most severe economic and social disruption during the past 40 years. Since the early 1970s, deindustrialization and outsourcing of service activities benefitting big cities led to a decline of employment, but also of living conditions of population in these regions. These mechanisms often go along with negative net migration which penalizes these spaces. However, this [...]

Cartographier le temps, l’espace d’un moment.

How can one represent time without resorting to animation ? Still images have inhabited cartography for a long time and it is only recently that the trend has changed in favour of dynamic representations. In the light of this development, we propose to revisit the use of a succession of still images to represent time. Continuing the research entitled Cosmographies, conducted at the Chôros laboratory (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, EPFL), we interrogate the techniques, tools and fictions [...]

Le nouvel avatar de l’ancestralité dans l’historiographie malgache.

Forte de ses avancées techniques récentes et mettant en avant son souci de la santé individuelle humaine, la génétique ne s’est jamais autant intéressée à la relation entre l’apparence physique ou le comportement et la singularité génétique. Dans une approche interdisciplinaire critique et réflexive de l’écriture de l’histoire du métissage à Madagascar par la génétique des populations, nous confrontons l’ordre biologique à l’ordre social, en replaçant les recherches récentes dans la réalité sociale malgache. En abordant la question des [...]

Les musées urbains de la Shoah comme objets d’enjeux géopolitiques et espace-temps de l’entre-deux.

This paper focuses on the cases of several museums and memorials located within major cities (Berlin, Jerusalem, Montreal, Washington, Budapest and Paris). Building upon these examples, it explores the connections between the construction of the cities’ museums and their geopolitical stakes. It also focuses on how time is spatially accounted for within them. [...]