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In the eyes of a large part of the French ethnologists community, France's signing of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention in 2006 opened a new era in the history of its heritage. For some, it is a question of radically shaking loose the traditional values of French heritage and public policy, dominated by the monopoly of high culture and, specifically, fine arts. For others, it is at least a question of a field of opportunity opening up to the discipline and its recognition. Putting this decision in an historical perspective requires a return to the conditions and limitations of the institutionalisation of ethnological heritage over the course of the “heritage years” of the 1980s. Two issues merged at the end of this twenty year period. The first, museological and museographical, directly arises from the perpetual and unresolved crisis of how to collect items of ethnological interest, display them, or turn them into items for scientific inquiry. The second rests with the relationship between projects of regional identity — or “territory projects,” which have been growing in number since 1995, and certainly since 1998-2000, within the context of national area planning, and the multiple attempts at decentralised rezoning — and the continued affirmation of in situ heritage, located in a place from which it draws its legitimacy and which it in turn legitimates. From these two points of view, intangibility poses a challenge which the institutions of the Ministry of Culture and local actors are presently assessing.

The method by which small-scale farmers produce food in poor countries is a form of polyculture long considered to be outmoded by so-called conventional farmers and governments. Researchers, several of them geographers, have contributed to demonstrating its role and scientific applications. The advent of sustainable development and agro-ecology in the last quarter of the 20th century gave it fresh impetus. This method of food production, currently referred to as intercropping agriculture on account of its ecological impact and its special contribution to food production, has led the United Nations to declare it, alongside biological agriculture, as being “nearly organic” and particularly appropriate for solving the food crisis in Africa and in the developing world at large.

Keywords: Petits exploitants agricoles, désengagement, agriculture, Révolution verte, souveraineté alimentaire, système alimentaire, Small-scale farmers, withdrawal, agriculture, Green Revolution, food sovereignty, food system, Pequeños explotadores agrícolas, liberación, agricultura, Revolución Verde, soberanía alimentaria, sistema alimentario

AbstractSince time immemorial, strategists have taken a keen interest in the environment, not to protect but to harm it. The major strategy theorists since Sun Tzu, who authored The Art of War in the fifth century B.C., have shown that a successful manoeuvre costs less when nature is exploited boldly. By contrast, the effect on the environment was given little consideration, if any at all. War and the environment are diametrically opposed in Western military culture. From 1965 to 1973, when the United States army waged its destructive war in Vietnam, it realized more and more that climate change and the full-scale exfoliation of the jungle could serve its tactical plans to thwart the Vietcong. However, it underestimated the effect the extensive degradation of the environment reported by the media on site and occasionally by geographers would have on a significant part of international public opinion. Starting in 1976, an awareness of the damage to the environment in time of war and the beginning, in 2000, of a common appreciation of environmental protection as well as the development of national sustainability strategies was growing. But this “correct use of the environment by the army continues” to be restricted to modern armies – in other words, to affluent countries – not so much for military as for political reasons. So what are these new environmental strategies – and how will they be implemented in an international context where the prospect of major ecological disasters happening during the next century is looming large?

Keywords: Géographie militaire, dégradation et protection de l'environnement, conflits, Military geography, environmental degradation and protection, conflict, Geografía militar, degradación y protección del medio ambiente, conflictos

AbstractThree times over the last century the border situation of Hull between Ontario and Quebec has led to an abnormally large concentration of bars in some areas of the town and hence a shift in social trends (festive and “criminal” or at least underground) which local officials consider intolerable. This paper provides an historical and geographical interpretation of these three cycles of urban order and disorder. Acquainted with recent theoretical projections regarding the location, the author interprets Hull's festive locations as the result of a series of converging processes, as a mediator of social relations and as the focus of representations that played a role in the dynamics of this energetic location. By aligning his analysis within the framework of a border geography, he highlights the unique features of this border town that brings together French-speaking Quebecers and English-speaking Ontarians, who historically have had distinct cultural attitudes towards drinking in bars.

Keywords: frontière Ontario-Québec, ville frontalière, Hull, XXe siècle, ordre et désordre urbain, problématique du lieu, alcool, Border town, Hull, century, urban order and disorder, place, alcohol

AbstractDardanelles and Bosphorus are probably the most emblematic straits in the world. These two narrow and winding waterways, together with the Sea of Marmora lying between them, link the Black Sea with the Mediterranean Basin, which have witnessed numerous conflicts throughout history. In recent years, they have experienced a sharp increase in maritime traffic, which is a threat to waterside residents and the natural environment. This has led to a gradual dispersion of Istanbul's harbour plants and facilities. The rural environment of Dardanelles is in sharp contrast to the very densely urbanized Bosphorus, the hub of a metropolis with 10 million people, confronted with a chaotic urbanization process and intense intra-urban traffic. The Turkish Straits contribute to Istanbul's vantage point in the region of the Black Sea, which is today challenged by Turkey's new commitment to openness to the Mediterranean Basin as a venue for increasing trade with the European Union.

Keywords: Dardanelles, Bosphore, Turquie, trafic maritime, urbanisation littorale, position géopolitique, Dardanelles, Bosphorus, Turkey, sea transportation, coastal urbanization, geopolitical position

This article presents a diachronic and theoretical overview of spatial approaches to literature in order to highlight their methodologies, objectives, differences and similarities. Starting with Mikhail Bakhtin's and Yuri Lotman's seminal studies on the chronotope and the semiosphere, the author then turns to the work of Henri Mitterand, Jean Weisgerber and Roland Bourneuf on the question of fictional space in novels. The main focus, however, are the new so called geo-centered approaches that have emerged since the 1990: literary geography, geocriticism, spatial narratology, geopoetics, la pensée-paysage, and ecocriticism.

Keywords: littérature, espace, géographie, approches géocentrées, literature, space, geography, geo-centered approaches, literatura, espacio, geografía, aproches geo-centrados

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes's (1884-1974) literary legacy is well established with regard to his activities as poet, polemicist and playwright working within the Dada movement. His importance as a novelist, however, remains to be acknowledged. In order to contribute to the (re)discovery of this atypical French writer, who managed to remain faithful — but not enslaved — to Dada's subversive and liberating spirit, the present contribution offers a new reading of Céleste Ugolin (1926), a novel which constantly alternates between indifference and aggressivity, and its affinities with the works by Alfred Jarry (1874-1907). Inspired by Jarry's ultramodern ideas of literature, Ribemont-Dessaignes implements a binary logic of destruction and reconstruction. More than a study in literary influences, this paper seeks to establish Ribemont-Dessaignes's place among important early twentieth-century novelists like Aragon, Cendrars and Camus.

Developing a theoretical approach to culture today is inevitably anchored in the relationship between the global manifestations of cultural dynamics and the localized meaning making practices. This dialectic operates within all symbolic forms constitutive of our social and historical contexts. This article addresses the difficulties, and yet the necessity of investigating the inherent dialectic within the concept of culture. Fernand Dumont's important body of work on the analyses of culture in Quebec will be the basis for this investigation. What is at play in this critical reflection on Dumont's work is twofold. On the one hand, the authors argue that Dumont's sociology of culture participates to a larger yet unfinished interest in understanding culture in Quebec, at least in the way it does not echo to, or dialogue with other important cultural theories. On the other hand, this reflection insists on the importance of this oeuvre which calls for a reception and a critical legacy able to grasp and answer to contemporary cultural developments.