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In Silesia, a zone of cultural contact, ethnomusicology has been a militant science since the nineteenth century. Ethnomusicologists were initially preoccupied with maintaining Polish national identity within Silesia, and later, between the wars, with promoting pronationalist regional unification. During the socialist period, the discipline was highly sought after by the regime, desirous of creating a unified popular culture. This policy, already contested before the end of the regime, has been thoroughly disputed since 1990, as much over its ideological content as over its methodology. The notions of the “happy people” and their “charming folklore” have been challenged. At the same time, there has been a rediscovery of the traditional music of native peoples from the plains and mountains, as well as that of the regions ethnic minorities. Complex on cultural, religious, historic, geographical and economic levels, the case of Silesia can serve as a model for the exploratory analysis of other European regions.

One commonality between France and Quebec is the strong influence of the Catholic Church, in France up to 1789 and in Quebec up to 1960. This makes it legitimate to compare the French Revolution and the Quebec “Quiet” Revolution, despite the distance in time and space of these two political and religious ruptures. This article shows the key and founding moments in the conquest of autonomy of each of these nations, including the assent or even the collaboration of Catholic actors, whether the conquest involved conflict, as in France, or occurred less explicitly, as in Quebec. The analysis, which underlines the distinction between the magisterial and matricial function of the Church, also allows us to understand the strongly differentiated management of the religious effects of the revolutions.

Keywords: France, Québec, Révolution française, Révolution tranquille, analyse comparative, Église catholique, autonomie du politique, sécularisation, France, Quebec, French Revolution, Quiet Revolution, comparative analysis, Catholic Church, political autonomy, secularization

School textbooks are more than just a platform for a discipline. They are tools of the first order in the exercise of cultural mediation underlying the teaching of geography and, consequently, a privileged space for the production and reproduction of representations. In Quebec given that the teaching of geography underwent conceptual transformations during the second half of the twentieth century, we can ask ourselves how it has conditioned the ways of thinking geographically about Quebec. By analyzing a sample of French geography textbooks published in Quebec between 1957 and 2005, we are led to believe that the reassessment of the theoretical content of the concept of the region (from a geographic-historical perspective to a political-administrative unit), combined with its recent replacement by the concept of territory, impacts the representation of Quebec and its regions.

Keywords: manuels scolaires, géographie, Québec, représentations, régions, territoires, textbooks, geography, Quebec, representations, regions, territories

Since the beginning of the 1980s, administrative reforms of democratic states have been largely influenced by managerialism or, in other words, new public management. Yet, few empirical studies have been devoted to the rise, and the proliferation of these new modes of governance. If the reforms enacted in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the United States, and to a lesser extent Canada, have influenced many other democracies, it could hardly have been achieved without the continuous support of influential international organisations, such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). How exactly were these new modes of governance being promoted from one country to another? What specifically was the role played by financial and non financial International Organisations in the promotion of these new modes of governance? Though there is a strong international homogeneity in terms of values, principals, and discourses used to promote these (then) emerging patterns of governance, diversity of organizational settings has never been doubted by academics and practitioners. The following paper suggests that the institutional isomorphism of the new modes of governance stands in sharp contrast to the heteromorphism of organisational practices, resources and constraints.

A comparative historical sociology of the industrialization processes in Shanghai and Calcutta between 1880 and 1939 shows that the causal primacy given to capitalism by the social reproduction theory to explain women's subordination is empirically unfounded. While industrialization in Shanghai relied heavily on a female labor force subjected to a gendered familial control that was reinstated by their capitalist employers, in Calcutta, on the contrary, the industrialization process was characterized by a very low rate of female participation in wage labor. Not only can the genesis of these gender relations be placed before capitalism, but their variation leads to strongly differentiated occupational structures and sexual division of labor, suggesting that capitalist development is shaped by historical paths created by gender relations. Since the the use of female labor by capitalism independently varies in function of the specific form taken by gender relations, we conclude that the assumption that capitalism has internalized gender relations must be rejected in favor of an approach that gives gender a real causal autonomy.

Keywords: Reproduction sociale, sexage, femmes et industrialisation, Shanghai, Calcutta, Social reproduction, Sexing, Women and industrialization, Shanghai, Calcutta, Reproducción social, lo sexuado, mujeres e industrialización, Shangai, Calcuta

This article argues that the ius archivi concept of the “archival threshold”, in which the receipt of documents by authoritative archives serves to authenticate those documents, is reversed in the age of open government data and civic technologies. These witness technologies create an expectation of transparency that reverses the function of the threshold; it is only through the transmission of data out of archives and into the public space that authenticity can be judged. In the age of “fake news” and so-called “alternative facts” this dynamic is problematic and raises questions about participation in state information systems.

This article focuses on a little-known source of governance, African palaver, that complements the other two sources often cited, namely corporate governance and multi-level governance. The palaver, as a meeting place for endless public discussions, meets all the conditions to be regarded as the best public policy tool used in traditional African societies. This practice brings together actors from different backgrounds and covers almost all areas of life; all topics are publicly discussed. The general will, which emerges from the discussions, is imposed on the parties. In Africa, the palaver is the equivalent of “public space” in the West (see Jürgen Habermas) or the “participatory space”. In this place, the truth does not come from the authority, but is the result of the palaver which defines the power and gives meaning to language. Without arrogance or contempt, one goes to meet each other to (re)establish the truth in order to consolidate social ties and unity. This text is limited to presenting examples of palaver in sub-Saharan Africa as a form of modern governance.

A foundation of the hermeneutic sociology proposed by Johann Michel is that humans are “self-interpreting” and, potentially, reflexive beings who put into narrative their individual and collective experience. This narrative work is a cornerstone of democratic societies, which are built on the “self-institution” of social life and, to use Claude Lefort's term, the “dismantling of the markers of communal certainty.” In this article, we posit that the pandemic has profoundly undermined our capacity to deploy the narrative markers indispensable to the creation and maintenance of a community of citizens. As amplified by the health crisis, “conspiracy polemics” turn the public debate into confrontation between “doubt” and “knowledge,” the “strong” and the “weak.” In the process, the narrative plotting or, to use Paul Ricoeur's term, the emplotment (mise en intrigue) of social life, has degraded into a binary confrontation that removes the axiological holds that support public judgment and civic decision making. More generally, the (anti-)conspiracy confrontation and the related pathologies of narratives shed light on the exhaustion of our democratic public spheres.

Keywords: Espace public, démocratie, (anti)complotisme, récit, intrigue, Public sphere, democracy, (anti-)conspiracy, narrative, intrigue, Espacio público, democracia, auto-institución, (anti)conspiración, narrativa, trama

Research framework: French law guarantees on paper the “right to a normal family life” for immigrants, by allowing those legally residing in France to be joined by their spouse and children under 18. Objectives: This article aims to study the way in which immigrants carry out the administrative procedures during a family reunification process, and how they adapt to them. It questions the conditions of the possible emergence of collective strategies for migrant families before the institution, in regard to a measure dedicated to the private sphere. Methods: The analysis is based on observations in online “feedback” groups on the family reunification process, and semi-structured interviews conducted between September 2020 and January 2021 with members of these groups. Results: The online groups constitute a bottom-up instance of socialization with regards to the right to family reunification and reveal a gendered sharing of administrative work. They are also the place for collective narratives and mobilizations that highlight the most successful paths. Conclusions: Access to the right to family reunification should not be analyzed only at the level of the applicant, but also at the level of the couple and of collective mobilization. The community’s sharing has contrasting effects on the individual and collective experience of this right, from support to moral guidance of administrative careers. Contribution: The article underlines the agency of migrant families to reunify under French law, and in particular the crucial role of spouses who have remained abroad, often considered as passive beneficiaries of family reunification. It invites reflection on the internalization by immigrants of the state’s selective norms for family immigration.

Keywords: politique migratoire, réunification familiale, droit, France, sociabilité électronique, famille transnationale, migration policy, family reunification, law, France, electronic sociability, transnational family, política migratoria, reagrupación familiar, derecho, Francia, sociabilidad digital, familia transnacional

The Christian Arab East carries a theological heritage that goes back, in most part, to the first Christian theological formulations. For historical reasons, this theological and ecclesiological diversity lacks solid grounding for the renewal of the middle-eastern Churches' theology. Several propositions to renew and reform the theology have been made by theologians since 1970 but the Lebanese war (1975-1990) played a key role in slowing down those efforts. This paper, drawing from several theological reflections, tries to outline some possibilities in elaborating a modern and contextual Arab theology, especially pertaining the key question of ecumenism.