This Traversal marks the official opening of a scientific partnership between EspacesTemps.net and the PostCarWorld interdisciplinary research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014-2016). As one can notice by browsing the contents of the already-published articles in this series, some papers were released before the start of the project, sometimes by authors that [...]
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 [...]
Penser et agir avec la nature consists in the last development of Catherine and Raphaël Larrère’s reflection on the relationship between humankind and nature, and the way we can share the same world. With this book, they call for a new political ecology, rebuilt thanks to the core concept of “biodiversity”. Acting as a synthesis of the path the authors have taken since their reference book, Du bon usage de la nature (1997), this work insists on the importance [...]
The thought that information and communications technology can lead to reducing spatial heterogeneity and therefore mobility demand is recurrent. It goes hand in hand with any major technological advance in this field. Faced with this attractive idea, scientists are sometimes invited to highlight empirical evidences that are much more counter-intuitive. [...]
This paper tries to understand and describe the place that nature occupies in sustainable city projects, and compare it with classical planning theory. We’ll see how natural elements have been constituted as a mechanical “environment”, that is to say as a frame influencing users, and a tool by prospective planning, before being considered a “model” by the green urbanism that took place in the “Grand Paris” consultation of 2009. [...]
Ritornellos reassure ; monolanguage frightens. Territories are incantatory references invoked by the manipulators of symbols who seek to mobilize arguments thanks to the idea of naturality. But what is a « territory » if not an act of power ? This paper, which is briefer than a manifesto, suggests we look closer at the making of a dangerous icon whose meaning has been lost because of the multiplication of its significations. [...]
Although the anthropological literature regarding politics in Maghreb in general and Morocco in particular focuses on dichotomies such as local versus central, Zakaria Rhani’s book questions religion and politics in Morocco through the topic of healing. Myths appear to be at the foundation of political power ; they connect the local to the central. The supernatural world seems to be invested by dynamics that mobilize both genealogy and initiation. By resorting to an anthropological analysis, the author presents the [...]
Against one-way comparisons, which are based on familiar categories and consist in deducing, from these categories, the quality of the studied objects ; for a comparison which avoids « false transparencies » that are produced by situated norms : thinking the tension between what is common and singular without limiting it or hiding it, and freeing ourselves from traditional models (patterns or ideals). Conceptualization is understood as openness, as a horizon, on the condition that we don’t confuse concepts [...]
Une grande partie des habitudes automobiles est autofragile. « Autofragile » signifie que l’habitude de conduire se renforce à mesure qu’elle rencontre des situations divergentes. Voici comment nous pouvons interpréter les résultats de Thomas Buhler, présentés dans son ouvrage Déplacements urbains : sortir de l’orthodoxie. Plaidoyer pour une prise en compte des habitudes. Critiquant les injonctions au changement fondées sur des visions d’acteurs calculateurs ou sans contradiction morale, Thomas Buhler décrit les propriétés complexes de l’habitude. Ainsi le jour [...]
It is in the classroom that children must fulfil their role as pupils. There, time management is an important issue. Outside the classroom, children walk through a plurality of transitional spaces such as corridors and playgrounds, or streets on the way to school. These areas are related to a particular time that is neither entirely free nor really supervised by adults and that children may appropriate as “their” time. Changing rhythms is therefore a way of expressing agreement and/or [...]
