Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales

The Anthropocene, in which humankind has become a geological force, is a major scientific proposal; but it also means that the conceptions of the natural and social worlds on which sociology, political science, history, law, economics and philosophy rest are called into question.
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\nThe Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, the ‘Age of Humans’. Drawing on the expertise of world-recognised scholars and thought-provoking intellectuals, the book explores the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history to the foundational ideas of modern social science.
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\nIf in the Anthropocene humans have become a force of nature, changing the functioning of the Earth system as volcanism and glacial cycles do, then it means the end of the idea of nature as no more than the inert backdrop to the drama of human affairs. It means the end of the ‘social-only’ understanding of human history and agency. These pillars of modernity are now destabilised. The scale and pace of the shifts occurring on Earth are beyond human experience and expose the anachronisms of ‘Holocene thinking’. The book explores what kinds of narratives are emerging around the scientific idea of the new geological epoch, and what it means for the ‘politics of unsustainability’.

The establishment of policy is key to the implementation of actions for health. We review the nature of policy and the definition and directions of health policy. In doing so, we explicitly cast a health political science gaze on setting parameters for researching policy change for health. A brief overview of core theories of the policy process for health promotion is presented, and illustrated with empirical evidence. The key arguments are that (a) policy is not an intervention, but drives intervention development and implementation; (b) understanding policy processes and their pertinent theories is pivotal for the potential to influence policy change; (c) those theories and associated empirical work need to recognise the wicked, multi-level, and incremental nature of elements in the process; and, therefore, (d) the public health, health promotion, and education research toolbox should more explicitly embrace health political science insights. The rigorous application of insights from and theories of the policy process will enhance our understanding of not just how, but also why health policy is structured and implemented the way it is.

"The volume will be of specific interest to scholars, researchers and policy makers in migration, citizenship and multiculturalism, as well as a more general audience of sociologists, political sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and social geographers."--BOOK JACKET.

BACKGROUND: The aims of the present study were to assess changes in lifestyles in the general population in response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and the influence of COVID-19 perceptions, as assessed by the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM), on these changes. METHODS: Data were collected from 4005 individuals through an online survey conducted 3-4 weeks after the nationwide lockdown implementation in France. Participants were asked whether they practiced five behaviors (i.e., screen watching, snacking, eating fruits and vegetables, exercising, and walking) less often, as often as, or more often than prior to the lockdown. Beliefs and expectations toward the COVID-19 epidemic were also assessed using an adapted version of Witte's EPPM, together with sociodemographic and environmental variables. Among the respondents consuming regularly alcohol and tobacco, logistic regressions were performed to estimate the Odds ratios (ORs) of increase (yes/no) and decrease (yes/no) in drinking and smoking since the lockdown. RESULTS: More than 8 in 10 respondents reported unhealthy changes in lifestyle since the lockdown, mostly in relation to physical activity. The unhealthy changes were positively associated with male sex (RR = 1.17; confidence interval [95% CI] = 1.10-1.24), living urban density, having a garden (RR = 1.16 [1.07-1.26]), financial difficulties because of COVID-19 (RR = 1.09 [1.02-1.18]), and lack of fear control (RR = 1.04 [1.01-1.09]) and negatively with cognitive avoidance (RR = 0.92 [0.89-0.95]). Less than 4 in 10 respondents reported healthy changes over the same period, mostly in relation to better eating habits. They were positively associated with living with more than two persons (RR = 1.22 [1.02-1.45]), having a terrace (RR = 1.14 [1.02-1.29], and perceived efficacy (RR = 1.11 [1.04-1.08]) and negatively with being aged 40 or higher. Alcohol consumption overall declined in regular drinkers, while a slight increase in tobacco use was observed in regular smokers. DISCUSSION: The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown resulted in frequent and mostly unhealthy changes in lifestyle among the general population. These changes were related to individual and environmental characteristics but also to EPPM appraisals in the wake of fear appeal from COVID-19 campaigns. Communication and preventive measures should include messages and initiatives toward the maintenance of healthy lifestyles during pandemics such as the adaptation of physical activity and eating guidelines to the particular contexts of mobility restriction and infection control.

The evolution of mobile communication devices and services has taken up a dynamic that makes any prognosis in the field almost impossible. Whereas part of this dynamic may remain inscrutable, we believe that a much higher degree of explanation can be achieved by systematically paying closer attention to the process of appropriation. To seize upon this potential, we present an integrative model to analyze mobile phone appropriation (the “MPA model”). The model is based on existing theoretical approaches of the quantitative “adoption” paradigm (namely, Innovation Diffusion Theory and Theory of Planned Behavior) as well as the mostly qualitative research paradigm devoted to “appropriation” (Cultural studies and Frame Analysis), with the Uses-and-Gratifications approach playing a role on both sides. The model has been developed, operationalized and empirically applied in the context of mobile phone appropriation; however, with certain modifications it can be adapted to other information and communications technology (ICT) innovations.

This empirical application investigates the eventual presence of credit constraints using a panel of French farmers. The credit‐constrained profit maximization model proposed by Färe, Grosskopf, and Lee is extended in three ways. First, we rephrase the model in terms of directional distance functions to allow duality with the profit function. Second, we model credit constraints in the short‐run and investment constraints in the long‐run using short‐ and long‐run profit functions. Third, we lag the expenditure constraint one year to account for the separation between planning and production. We find empirical evidence of credit and investment constraints. Financially unconstrained farmers are larger, perform better, and seem to benefit from a virtuous circle where access to financial markets allows better productive choices.

Personal protection equipment (PPE) holds a privileged position in safety interventions in many countries, despite the fact that they should only be used as a last resort. This is even more paradoxical because many concerns have arisen as to their actual effectiveness under working conditions and their ability to provide the protection attributed to them by certain occupational safety strategies and marketing authorisation procedures. Are these concerns justified? This article is intended to provide an update on what we know of the issue based on a critical analysis of the literature to date. Analysis focuses on the assessment of the effectiveness of coveralls used to protect from plant protection products in OECD countries. All forms of assessment were retained: discussion of the observed effectiveness of PPE in relation to the underlying assumptions of marketing authorisation procedures, laboratory tests of equipment, practical field tests in which PPE-wearing practices were controlled and uncontrolled, analyses of the efficiency of preventive instructions based on wearing such coveralls. Findings show that recommending the use of PPE is key to the granting of marketing authorisation. Some dangerous products only get marketing authorisation because it is assumed that wearing PPE will considerably limit exposure. They would be banned if it were not for this assumption of protection. However the actual effectiveness of PPE in working conditions may be over-estimated. In addition many factors (cost, availability, thermic and mechanical discomfort) may make instructions to wear PPE inapplicable. Advising the use of PPE does not always mean effective protection.

BACKGROUND: In 1982, the Annals of Virology published a paper showing how Liberia has a highly endemic potential of Ebola warning health authorities of the risk for potential outbreaks; this journal is only available by subscription. Limiting the accessibility of such knowledge may have reduced information propagation toward public health actors who were indeed surprised by and unprepared for the 2014 epidemic. Open access (OA) publication can allow for increased access to global health research (GHR). Our study aims to assess the use, cost and impact of OA diffusion in the context of GHR. METHOD: A total of 3366 research articles indexed under the Medical Heading Subject Heading "Global Health" published between 2010 and 2014 were retrieved using PubMed to (1) quantify the uptake of various types of OA, (2) estimate the article processing charges (APCs) of OA, and (3) analyse the relationship between different types of OA, their scholarly impact and gross national income per capita of citing countries. RESULTS: Most GHR publications are not available directly on the journal's website (69%). Further, 60.8% of researchers do not self-archive their work even when it is free and in keeping with journal policy. The total amount paid for APCs was estimated at US$1.7 million for 627 papers, with authors paying on average US$2732 per publication; 94% of APCs were paid to journals owned by the ten most prominent publication houses from high-income countries. Researchers from low- and middle-income countries are generally citing less expensive types of OA, while researchers in high-income countries are citing the most expensive OA. CONCLUSIONS: Although OA may help in building global research capacity in GHR, the majority of publications remain subscription only. It is logical and cost-efficient for institutions and researchers to promote OA by self-archiving publications of restricted access, as it not only allows research to be cited by a broader audience, it also augments citation rates. Although OA does not ensure full knowledge transfer from research to practice, limiting public access can negatively impact implementation and outcomes of health policy and reduce public understanding of health issues.

In absence of effective pharmaceutical treatments, the individual's compliance with a series of behavioral recommendations provided by the public health authorities play a critical role in the control and prevention of SARS-CoV2 infection. However, we still do not know much about the rate and determinants of adoption of the recommended health behaviors. This paper examines the compliance with the main behavioral recommendations, and compares sociocultural, psychosocial, and social cognitive explanations for its variation in the French population. Based on the current literature, these 3 categories of factors were identified as potential determinants of individual differences in the health preventive behaviors. The data used for these analyses are drawn from 2 cross-sectional studies ( N = 2,000 in survey 1 and 2,003 in survey 2) conducted after the lockdown and before the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic in France. The participants were drawn from a larger internet consumer panel where recruitment was stratified to generate a socio-demographically representative sample of the French adult population. Overall, the results show a very high rate of compliance with the behavioral recommendations among the participants. A hierarchical regression analysis was then performed to assess the potential explanatory power of these approaches in complying with these recommendations by successively entering sociocultural factors, psychosocial factors, social cognitive factors in the model. Only the inclusion of the cognitive variables substantially increased the explained variance of the self-reported adoption of preventive behaviors ( R 2 change = 23% in survey 1 and 2), providing better support for the social cognitive than the sociocultural and psychosocial explanations.

Mastication, the first step in food digestion, results in the breakdown of solid food and its lubrication with saliva. Although the rate and extent of starch digestion are closely dependent on the way food is chewed, this factor has not been adequately considered in the preparation of food for in vitro digestion experiments. The purpose of this study was to determine the size distribution of starchy food particles before swallowing and to use an in vitro mincing procedure to simulate how food is divided up during chewing. Foods differing in texture and size (bread, spaghetti and tortiglioni) were chewed by 12 healthy subjects and spat out before swallowing. Chewing time and saliva impregnation were measured for each mouthful. The particle sizes resulting from experiments with chewed and minced bread and pasta were analysed respectively by light laser diffraction and image analysis. Chewing time was longer for bread than pasta, resulting in higher saliva impregnation. Chewed bread showed a bimodal distribution of particle size (30 microns, 500 microns), whereas both kinds of pasta produced particles of similar size (0.5 to 30 mm2) after mastication. Mincing reproduced the division of bread and pasta as achieved by chewing in an acceptable way. From our results it seems that the size of particles resulting from mastication depends on food texture. We succeeded by wetting and mincing food to prepare food in a similar bolus-like form before swallowing. Mincing provides a simple means of simulating the reduction of food into particles for in vitro digestion studies.

This work presents some variational models for the cortical algorithms processing Kanizsa modal subjective contours . These models are based on the geometric concepts of fibration and contact structure. The retinoptic structure of the orientation hypercolumns in the visual area V1 is a functionnal architecture which can be mathematically idealized by the fibration having the retinian plane M as base and the projective line P1 as fiber F. The total space E of Pi p is isomorphic to the direct product M x F. The cortico-cortical horizontal connections implement what is called the local triviality of this fibration, and also a Cartan connection defining a parallel transport between neighboring fibers. Then the paper focuses on the geometrical interpretation of the results of Field, Hayes and Hess concerning the association field. It shows that the latter implements what is called the contact structure of the fibration. The association field expresses an integrability condition for the skew curves in E : they have to be a lifting of their projection on the retinian plane M. This model of fibration endowed with a contact structure is then applied to the modal subjective contours and provides a variant of the elastica model developped by B.K.P. Horn and D. Mumford. The key idea is that the lifting of subjective contours satisfy a "geodesic" condition in the cortical fibration E : they have to be of minimal lenght (for an appropriate metrics) among the class of curves satisfying the integrability condition. These "geodesic" models are then reformulated, according to R. Bryant and P. Griffiths, in the more fondamental geometric framework of Lie groups and Cartan's "repère mobile" (Vielbein). Finally, some experimental possibilities are suggested.

This paper provides a qualitative overview of the state-of-the art on issues related to immigrants' political participation, mobilisation and
\nrepresentation, and also presents some research perspectives to be explored in the future. It is divided into seven parts. The first part addresses conceptual and defi nition issues. The second presents and discusses the thesis of political quiescence of immigrants. Part three
\npart focuses on the explanations of the various forms of immigrant political participation.
\nThe fourth part presents a typology of the various forms of immigrant political participation in the country of settlement. Part fi ve specifi cally discusses the issue of transnational political participation. The sixth identifi es gaps in the literature to which new research perspectives might correspond. The concluding policy-oriented part addresses the issue of how to evaluate and assess the political
\nparticipation of immigrants and their offspring in the country of residence.

BACKGROUND: Schools are key settings for health promotion (HP) but the development of suitable approaches for evaluating HP in schools is still a major topic of discussion. This article presents a research protocol of a program developed to evaluate HP. After reviewing HP evaluation issues, the various possible approaches are analyzed and the importance of a realistic evaluation framework and a mixed methods (MM) design are demonstrated. METHODS/DESIGN: The design is based on a systemic approach to evaluation, taking into account the mechanisms, context and outcomes, as defined in realistic evaluation, adjusted to our own French context using an MM approach. The characteristics of the design are illustrated through the evaluation of a nationwide HP program in French primary schools designed to enhance children's social, emotional and physical health by improving teachers' HP practices and promoting a healthy school environment. An embedded MM design is used in which a qualitative data set plays a supportive, secondary role in a study based primarily on a different quantitative data set. The way the qualitative and quantitative approaches are combined through the entire evaluation framework is detailed. DISCUSSION: This study is a contribution towards the development of suitable approaches for evaluating HP programs in schools. The systemic approach of the evaluation carried out in this research is appropriate since it takes account of the limitations of traditional evaluation approaches and considers suggestions made by the HP research community.

Calculation of costs and the Burden of Disease (BoD) is useful in developing resource allocation and prioritization strategies in public and environmental health. While useful, the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) metric disregards subclinical dysfunctions, adheres to stringent causal criteria, and is hampered by gaps in environmental exposure data, especially from industrializing countries. For these reasons, a recently calculated environmental BoD of 5.18% of the total DALYs is likely underestimated. We combined and extended cost calculations for exposures to environmental chemicals, including neurotoxicants, air pollution, and endocrine disrupting chemicals, where sufficient data were available to determine dose-dependent adverse effects. Environmental exposure information allowed cost estimates for the U.S. and the EU, for OECD countries, though less comprehensive for industrializing countries. As a complement to these health economic estimations, we used attributable risk valuations from expert elicitations to as a third approach to assessing the environmental BoD. For comparison of the different estimates, we used country-specific monetary values of each DALY. The main limitation of DALY calculations is that they are available for few environmental chemicals and primarily based on mortality and impact and duration of clinical morbidity, while less serious conditions are mostly disregarded. Our economic estimates based on available exposure information and dose-response data on environmental risk factors need to be seen in conjunction with other assessments of the total cost for these environmental risk factors, as our estimate overlaps only slightly with the previously estimated environmental DALY costs and crude calculations relying on attributable risks for environmental risk factors. The three approaches complement one another and suggest that environmental chemical exposures contribute costs that may exceed 10% of the global domestic product and that current DALY calculations substantially underestimate the economic costs associated with preventable environmental risk factors. By including toxicological and epidemiological information and data on exposure distributions, more representative results can be obtained from utilizing health economic analyses of the adverse effects associated with environmental chemicals.

This article contributes to the burgeoning literature on transnational politics by bringing tools used by scholars of cultural diffusion and circulation into these debates. We build on research on social remittances and their potential to yield broader and deeper effects or to ‘scale up’ and ‘scale out.’ Based on a variety of empirical examples, we propose that processes such as circulation, portability, and contact, viewed through a transnational optic, help to nuance recent research on political transnationalism and its empirical indicators -- including, most notably, external voting.

Many patients suffering from asthma are not fully controlled by currently available treatments, and some of them display an airway remodeling leading to exaggerated lung function decline. The aim of the present study was to unveil new mediators in asthma to better understand pathophysiology and propose or validate new potential therapeutic targets. A mouse model of asthma mimicking acute or chronic asthma disease was used to select genes undergoing a modulation in both acute and chronic conditions. Mice were exposed to ovalbumin or PBS for 1, 5, and 10 wk [short-, intermediate-, and long-term model (ST, IT, and LT)], and gene expression in the lung was studied using an Affymetrix 430 2.0 genome-wide microarray and further confirmed by RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry for selected targets. We report that 598, 1,406, and 117 genes were upregulated and 490, 153, 321 downregulated at ST, IT, and LT, respectively. Genes related to mucous secretion displayed a progressively amplified expression during the allergen exposure protocol, whereas genes corresponding to growth and differentiation factors, matrix metalloproteinases, and collagens were mainly upregulated at IT. By contrast, genes related to cell division were upregulated at ST and IT and were downregulated at LT. In this study, besides confirming that Arg1, Slc26a4, Ear11, and Mmp12 genes are highly modulated throughout the asthma pathology, we show for the first time that Agr2, Scin, and Cd209e genes are overexpressed throughout the allergen exposure and might therefore be considered as suitable new potential targets for the treatment of asthma.

This paper discusses a statistical modeling strategy based on extreme value theory to describe the behavior of an insurance portfolio, with particular emphasis on large claims. The strategy is illustrated using the 1991–92 group medical claims database maintained by the Society of Actuaries. Using extreme value theory, the modeling strategy focuses on the “excesses over threshold” approach to fit generalized Pareto distributions. The proposed strategy is compared to standard parametric modeling based on gamma, lognormal, and log-gamma distributions. Extreme value theory outperforms classical parametric fits and allows the actuary to easily estimate high quantiles and the probable maximum loss from the data.

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Today, a large majority of states allow at least some of their emigrants to take part in home country elections from abroad. This article first looks at the diffusion of external voting laws and shows that over the past 25 years they have become widely-adopted and are no longer limited to specific professional categories of citizens. Second, the article explains the international diffusion of external voting by discussing the “norm-internationalization hypothesis” and the “electoral-competition hypothesis.” Third, the article attempts to demonstrate that these hypotheses cannot explain why, in a democratic context, states continue to implement a series of hurdles that deter emigrants from using their newly gained rights. Looking at recent developments in Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa, it concludes that the diffusion and variations of external voting laws result from transnational negotiation processes in a context of democratic transformation among various actors whose interests are strongly affected by the inclusion or exclusion of these new voters.

Looking at the current state of the literature, political scientists and sociologists have neglected the political relevance of ethnic and migrant minorities’ popular cultural and artistic productions to concentrate on more conventional forms of political participation. In the first section of this paper, we provide a theoretical framework to this special issue by examining the links between music and politics. We underline several elements related to music which potentially have political significance. We discuss how music can provide/ascribe identities and a sense of place. In the second part of the paper, we attempt to explain why ethnic minorities choose music as a means of political expression. To this end, we present and subsequently critique a typology of political action in popular music developed by the American political scientist Mark Mattern. The paper concludes by stressing the urgent need to develop research on the topic and how this special issue makes its own contribution to this agenda.