Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Anthropologie du Contemporain

Schooling Passions explores an important, yet often overlooked dimension of nationalism—its embodied and emotional components. It does so by focusing on another oft-neglected area, that of elementary education in the modern state. Through an ethnographic study of schools in western India, Véronique Benei examines the idioms through which teachers, students, and parents make meaning of their political world. She articulates how urban middle- and lower-class citizens negotiate the processes of self-making through the minutiae of daily life at school and extracurricular activities, ranging from school trips to competitions and parent gatherings. To document how processes of identity formation are embodied, Benei draws upon cultural repertoires of emotionality. This book shifts the typical focus of attention away from communal violence onto everyday "banal nationalism." Paying due attention to the formulation of "senses of belonging," this book explores the sensory production and daily manufacture of nationhood and citizenship and how nationalism is nurtured in a nation's youth.

International audience

In a growing number of countries, governments and public agencies seek to systematically assess the scientific outputs of their universities and research institutions. Bibliometrics indicators and peer review are regularly used for this purpose, and their advantages and biases are discussed in a wide range of literature. This article examines how three different national organisations produce journal ratings as an alternative assessment tool, which is particularly targeted for social sciences and humanities. After setting out the organisational context in which these journal ratings emerged, the analysis highlights the main steps of their production, the criticism they received after publication, especially from journals, and the changes made during the ensuing revision process. The particular tensions of a tool designed as both a political instrument and a scientific apparatus are also discussed. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Une lecture cursive de Quand dire c’est faire fait apparaître qu’Austin donne aux actes écrits un statut paradoxal. Il les considère comme des actes modèles et en même temps les assimile à des actes oraux. De plus, les actes écrits qu’il considère sont toujours des actes juridiques ou réglementaires. Partant de ce constat nous proposons : – tout d’abord de comprendre le statut de l’acte écrit chez Austin et de faire apparaître l’ambiguïté de son modèle d’acte de langage ; – puis d’explorer l’hypothèse d’une performativité dont le modèle serait explicitement celui d’un acte écrit ; enfin, d’esquisser les conséquences d’un tel modèle sur la théorie de l’énonciation qui sous-tend la notion de performativité.

Dans les villes, sur les routes, au supermarché : les panneaux indicateurs sont partout. Si leur présence semble évidente, leur forme, leur contenu, leur emplacement ne vont pourtant pas de soi. Ils sont le résultat d'un travail complexe qui produit des espaces hybrides, où signes et architectures sont entrelacés. Ce livre explore les coulisses d'une signalétique aujourd'hui mondialement reconnue : celle du métro parisien. De l'organisation des services, jusqu'à l'activité des ouvriers qui installent et réparent les panneaux, en passant par les discours des concepteurs, il évoque les multiples facettes d'un dispositif ambitieux qui vise à transformer aussi bien les espaces du métro que le comportement de ses usagers. Complétant leur enquête d'un détour par le métro new-yorkais, les auteurs montrent que la signalétique parisienne instaure une véritable politique de l'attention où chacun peut s'attacher à la multitude des objets graphiques qui sont mis à sa disposition.

The term ‘artification’ springs from a simple idea: art is not a given and cannot be defined once and for all as the consecrated body of works of established institutions and disciplines. Rather, it is a construct and the result of social processes that are located in time and place. Although this last statement is so fundamental to the sociological outlook as to border on truism, it entails adopting a socio-historical perspective that is less common than one would expect. This introduction recalls some of the empirical findings on culture on which the concept is based, while placing the theory of artification within the framework of process sociology. The apparent simplicity of the idea of artification is deceptive; it leads to a materialistic and socio-genetic perspective the implications of which have yet to be fully discovered.

L’article enregistre, dans les sciences sociales, un retour à la notion de sujet, susceptible d’inspirer une nouvelle approche de la subjectivité dans le champ d’étude des représentations sociales. Après avoir parcouru les moments qui ont signifié la mort et la résurrection de la notion de sujet, il dégage les principaux thèmes marquant sa réintégration en histoire, en sociologie et en anthropologie. Ces thèmes permettent d’écarter le risque d’une vision solipsiste dans l’examen de la part subjective des représentations sociales. À cette fin, un schéma tripartite est proposé, rapportant la genèse et les fonctions des représentations sociales à trois sphères (subjective, intersubjective et transsubjective) et illustré par une analyse des débats relatifs à la célèbre affaire des caricatures de Mahomet. Les réflexions finales proposent d’orienter l’étude des représentations sociales vers les relations entre la pensée et le changement social.

Coordinated and Edited by:
\nN De Genova, M Tazzioli
\n
\nCo-Authored by:
\nClaudia Aradau, Brenna Bhandar, Manuela Bojadzijev, Josue David Cisneros, N De Genova, Julia Eckert, Elena Fontanari, Tanya Golash-Boza, Jef Huysmans, Shahram Khosravi, Clara Lecadet, Patrisia Macías-Rojas, Federica Mazzara, Anne McNevin, Peter Nyers, Stephan Scheel, Nandita Sharma, Maurice Stierl, Vicki Squire, M Tazzioli, Huub van Baar and William Walters

L’article repose sur une enquête ethnographique conduite en 2008-2009 à Manhattan auprès de huit entrepreneurs devenus Chef et/ou managers de restaurant après avoir immigré à New York. Aucun d’entre eux n’a été formé dans une institution culinaire et tous proposent des cuisines de régions du monde (Afrique, Afrique du Nord) encore absentes, ou peu présentes à New York. A partir de deux études de cas plus détaillées, l’auteur s’interroge sur les stratégies marchandes autour de cette altérité et les limites du cosmopolitisme propre au « globalisme ». La trajectoire du restaurateur se transforme en héritage par le biais d’un ego-récit qui s’utilise comme une ressource commerciale. Les restaurateurs intériorisent les désirs des clients. Plus que la recherche de goûts inconnus ou d’une altérité radicale imaginée comme authentique, ceux-ci veulent avant tout identifier les ingrédients ingérés, avoir une idée de leur provenance, et respecter un ensemble (instable) de normes nutritionnelles subsumé aujourd’hui à Manhattan par la catégorie indigène healthy. Les restaurateurs anticipent ces désirs en opérant sur les plats un travail de retrait, de séparation et de substitution des ingrédients. L’exotisme s’est mis au régime.

When I read the definition of Intangible Cultural Heritage I thought, this was written for French gastronomy!" These were the words used by the director of the European Institute for the History and Cultures of Food, the main promoter of what would later be called the "Gastronomic meal of the French," to enthusiastically explain the idea of preparing a nomination to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity during the first "Meeting of Experts," charged with "defining the intellectual and scientific content of the file." 1 This reaction also more generally reflects how foodways are perceived by social actors as part and parcel of what, following the language introduced by the United Nations, we globally call intangible cultural heritage (ICH).

C’est à ouvrir le spectre conceptuel concernant les minorités urbaines issues de migrations que cet article s’intéresse. Réfléchissant sur les formations qu’elles multiplient de nos jours au sein des métropoles, il s’appuie sur la notion de « centralité minoritaire » élaborée antérieurement pour cadrer la description ethnographique du théâtre urbain qu’elles produisent, et envisage plus généralement celles d’« altérité minoritaire » et d’« aire transitionnelle » constitutives de l’économie symbolique des villes mondialisées. Il engage à reconsidérer la pertinence du concept de « coutume », classique en anthropologie mais quelque peu tombé en désuétude, pour appréhender les modes de coexistence culturelle qui se vivent de fait dans les espaces métropolitains, bien avant d’interroger les instances juridiques et politiques de la nation.

Les catastrophes semblent humainement absurdes, impossibles et impensables, mais elles surgissent, suscitant la stupeur et l’effroi. Et chaque fois, les individus touchés reconstruisent tant bien que mal un récit donnant sens à leur existence.En s’appuyant sur des cas précis (séisme d’Edo de 1855, éruption volcanique d’Ambrym en 1892, éruption de l’Etna en 1991, glissement de terrain de Vargas en 1999…), l’auteur réinvestit les milieux où survient l’événement, dans ses variations géographiques et sociales, pour mettre en lumière les processus de re-fabrication du sens qui, par des dispositifs de remédiation collective, sans étouffer la part d’absurde et d’inacceptable, permettent de « vivre avec » les catastrophes.Une magistrale étude, qui renouvelle notre compréhension des situations de crise.

This article examines the manner in which representatives of indigenous peoples use the platform of the United Nations and an international movement in ninety countries to construct the principles upon which they may be recognized as collective, rights bearing subjects. In 2007, this movement – largely unstructured but effective in terms of strategic alliances – successfully established a legal instrument at the level of the international community : the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In order to be moral and because they can have political, financial and legal consequences, these measures are capable of giving rise to significant transformations in the fields of politics, governance and autonomy. The need to participate in the activities of the United Nations allowed the formation of a collective native « us », structured a space for demands that went beyond the institution and related it to the field of human rights in other areas of public policy. By contributing to the fabrication of norms, this multi-headed policy actor furnished itself with a collective voice on the international scene capable of resolving the tensions inherent to spatial dispersion, linguistic fragmentation and political atomization. As an international entity, it raises a number of questions regarding locally observed discrepancies, modes of identification, state classifications and political and economic experiences.

Résumé L’analyse sociologique des objets graphiques qui ordonnent l’environnement se concentre généralement sur les ajustements effectués pour les constituer en ressources pour l’action, faisant des usages le principal ressort de leur performativité. À partir du cas de la signalétique du métro, cet article renverse cette perspective et se focalise sur l’activité d’aménagement des lieux. Il cherche ainsi à éviter de considérer les artefacts graphiques comme des objets inertes, et de faire de l’immuabilité une propriété intrinsèque de l’écrit. Il montre au contraire l’importance cruciale du travail de maintenance qui entretient au jour le jour les qualités spatiales et matérielles des objets et leur assure une force performative sans cesse réactualisée.

Summary 1. In many European countries, private companies are in charge of livestock carcass disposal. In agro‐pastoral systems, however, scavengers such as vultures provide an alternative ecological service for disposing of carcasses. 2. By combining interviews with farmers and ecological data from the Grands Causses region (southern France), we developed an agent‐based model to assess the environmental and economic consequences of various farmers’ carcass disposal strategies, involving private companies and/or vultures. The model includes ‘offering’ vulture feeding behaviour, as an ecological service, and farmer choices of carcass disposal system, representing the ‘demand’ for this service. 3. This ecological service can provide benefits through reducing monetary costs and carbon emissions associated with carcass disposal, but also represent a sanitary risk if vultures fail to remove carrion efficiently. Benefits and risks strongly depend on carcass disposal techniques and the wider strategy. 4. The most sustainable strategy to match the ‘demand’ and ‘offer’ for carcass disposal involves the adaptive use by farmers of both the ecological and the industrial services. This strategy enables the optimization of the ecological service benefits while minimizing sanitary risks by using a private company service, when carcass disposal by vultures is uncertain. 5. Synthesis and applications . In cases where there is a mismatch between the demand and the offer, negative feedback can occur for both humans and vultures. Preserving vulture populations and enhancing benefits from the sustainable service, they provide might henceforth be explicitly accounted for in legislation and carcass management guidance, in accordance with vulture food requirements. The agent‐based modelling approach described here offers a tool that can guide management strategies and policies and support coordination among stakeholders.

La question de l’autorité religieuse dans l’islam classique a été au centre d’une élaboration doctrinale visant à asseoir la légitimité d’un corps de spécialistes, celui des « gens du savoir ». Ces derniers étaient les transmetteurs et commentateurs d’une tradition prophétique qui imposait la conformité absolue de ce qui est (dans ce monde-ci) au dessein divin (dans l’au-delà). Dans le même temps, les gens du savoir recouvraient de leur enseignement une autre voie qui avait été ouverte dans l’islam naissant. La voie d’un islam proprement de salut, soumis à l’autorité inspirée d’un calife qui disait le vrai et le juste pour la communauté des croyants. Cet article tente de reconstituer les implications et les moments de ce débat fondateur.

Consumption has become a central focus in South African politics, one that hinges especially on
\nevaluation of the behaviour of the new black middle class. Based on an ongoing ethnographic study
\nof Durban, mainly among the lower middle or ‘professional’ class across a range of racial
\ncategories, the article addresses three aspects of this question: food provisioning and
\nconsumption across and within the various communities; interaction in shared social spaces
\nthat were previously segregated, especially shopping malls; and moral discourses in the media
\nconcerning this new class. The so-called ’black diamonds’ are a South African urban type of
\nthe sort labelled by Benjamin as a phantasmagoria. South Africans are willing to experiment
\nbeyond the boundaries of their native communities and there is an emergent national
\nmiddle-class culture, but there are marked regional differences and nothing yet that would
\namount to ‘creolisation’.

In aligning its priorities around the Sustainable Development Goals, UNESCO officially acknowledges the need to reconcile the market and heritage. Yet inscriptions of commercial practices on the Intangible Cultural Heritage lists are qualified as ‘traumatic’ by actors that design normative principles for ‘good’ heritage governance. Based on ethnographic observations of the meetings of the governing bodies of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, I analyse the controversies generated by the ‘risks of over-commercialization’, shedding light on the disputed entanglements between ICH and the market. In exploring the notion of ‘commercialization without over-commercialization’ meant to resolve the tension between heritage and the market, I highlight how ‘over-commercialization’ refers to notions of ‘misappropriation’ and ‘decontextualization’ and the ways it, therefore, intersects with the logics of Intellectual Property. This allows to elucidate a constitutive ambiguity in the implementation of the Convention, torn between the rationalities of heritage and property regimes.

This article examines the different forms of representation and participation set up by Togolese refugees as a means of organizing life in the Agam<a><ac>e</ac><ac>´</ac></a> camp in Benin between 2005 and 2013, and the wave of protests which accompanied their claims to statutory rights during that same period. The emergence of ‘refugee politics’ is considered not as an epiphenomenon, but as an aspiration that is found in numerous camp contexts, and which is indicative of the tensions brought about by the confrontation between refugees and humanitarian organizations. It is in fact a hybrid form of politics, at the crossroads between traditional political representation (electing a president, nominating representatives) and the categorization advocated by humanitarian organizations in an attempt to give an increased voice to vulnerable groups. Furthermore, self-organization by refugees and the instances of insubordination seen in the camps seem to be determining factors in the strategies employed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the organizations running the camps as regards setting them up, withdrawing from them and eventually dismantling them.

This article focuses on blood donation as a form of bloodletting in a context where donation is commonly seen to alleviate the symptoms of `thick blood'. It deals with the gendered aspects of blood donation, and the parallels drawn between donating blood and menstruating. Women are seen not to need to donate blood as much as men, who, in the absence of menstruation, are more prone to thick blood and require a means to expunge the ensuing excess. While blood donation professionals strive to reconstruct donation as a selfless and ungendered act, counterposing the `facts' of arterial blood circulation to local blood-lore and beliefs, lay understandings challenge this construction in the use they make of blood donation centres or by reiterating the personalistic and gendered dimensions of donation. The article explores cases of patients who use hormonal contraceptives which suppress menstruation and express concerns over the resulting accumulation of blood in the body. It considers how blood donation is adopted by some women as a means of dispelling both the perceived inconveniences of menstrual bleeding and its swelling effects. Such literalized engagements with medical technologies reveal a conception of the body as a permeable, malleable and recipient-like enclosure. These views are often characterized as `ignorance' by medical practitioners, where ignorance is seen to derive not only from the absence of knowledge, but from the presence of the wrong kind of knowledge.