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How can feelings of socio-environmental injustice be captured as an experience? How can these feelings be turned into objects of collective enquiry shared between researchers and informants? To answer these questions, a number of survey devices have been developed based on forum theatre performances in Senegal. This article presents these devices from a pragmatic perspective. This method is based on the representation of situations that affect actors gathered in public in different ways. Unlike traditional qualitative research methods, the affective dimension structures these investigative processes. Such an approach meets the ethical challenges of research by defining situations of investigation shared between researcher and informant. The voice of the informants is at the heart of the theatrical device: a voice put into body and on stage, it becomes critical and analytical within the forums associated with the performances. However, the article highlights certain framing effects and ethical risks associated with these methods of enquiry, which open up the possibility of new worlds as they explore them.

Keywords: Théâtre forum, enquête pragmatique, sentiments d'injustice, travail des émotions, relation enquêteur-informateur, Forum Theatre, Pragmatic Enquiry, Feelings of Injustice, Emotional Work, Interviewer Informant Relationship

The concept of crimes against humanity has evolved slowly under international law. Its roots are in jus gentium. Subsequently, it evolved through the development of the “laws of war” which are also known as humanitarian law. After the Second World War, the first normative codification of this concept was elaborated upon and applied in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials.We argue that, despite the International Military Tribunal's reluctance to recognize the independent nature of crimes against humanity (as compared with war crimes and crimes against peace) post war international law increasingly endorses its generic and autonomous nature.Canadian law provides an eloquent example of the state practice of domestic law sanctioning against this international offence. There is no doubt that the law applicable in R. c. Finta assigns to the legal concept of crimes against humanity the status that it ought to have occupied under international criminal law ever since Nuremberg.However, if one accepts that such crimes arise from international law, their sanction should logically be administered by an international law entity. Will we ever see an international permanent tribunal sanction crimes against humanity in a universal manner?

Located one hour from Paris and only 25 kilometers from Cergy, Magny-en-Vexin is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department (France) with a population of nearly 5,600. Surrounded by fields and forests, Magny is part of a regional nature park and is crossed by the Aubette, a river that was once used for the town's domestic and economic needs, and was the basis for the development of its crafts and small-scale industry (mills, tanneries, chairs factory, sugar mills). Of the bundle of human activities once gathered along the water, the gardens are among the last uses. They enable a dialogue to be recreated with the inhabitants and their elected representatives, who are not only concerned about the risk of flooding from a river whose course and landscapes have been overly artificialized. The gardeners are the actors of new practices that contribute to redefining a meaning but also an intimate relationship with these river spaces for which we are trying to recognize “the value of the place”. Beyond the fence and the object that separates, the gardens seem to constitute today a new lever of appropriation and renewal of a historical landscape; they participate in the revitalization of a town center and bring to light a diversity of socio-spatial forms and practices inducing new looks as well as new individual and collective actions.

Keywords: Territoire, paysage, jardins potagers, pratiques jardinières, projet urbain durable, Land, Landscape, Vegetable Gardens, Garden Practices, Sustainable Urban Planning

Beginning with the first series of flights by the French Montgolfier brothers in 1783, hot air ballooning quickly metamorphosed from a dangerous scientific experiment with potential military uses into a widespread cultural craze with deep social implications. Using the lens of the idea of “wonder,” I examine the word-image interactions in a selection of engraved representations of the first Montgolfier demonstration for Louis XVI at Versailles. Such a collective close reading first exposes techniques that aim at encouraging admiration in readers for both the new technology and the French state that produced it. However, visual cues in the images indicate a persistent suggestion of doubt and uncertainty—and even fear—as they take readers “up and away” from the confines and comforts of everyday life. The word-image nexus surrounding this spectacle generates an altered textual world in which traditional social and sexual hierarchies lose stability and the future is full of possibility.

This article examines the events regarding the debate over the nature of Québec's participation in the Francophonie from the Gabon Affair (1968) to the Second Niamey Conference (1970) in order to explore the origins of and inspirations for Québec's international activity. Previous accounts have emphasized the interest neo-nationalists had in cultivating ties with France and the international francophone community. Similarly prominent is the perceived need for Quebec to project itself internationally to protect against federal encroachments on its domestic jurisdiction. Building on such accounts, this article argues that discussion of the circumstances in which Quebec participated in the institutionalization of the Francophonie and affirmed its “international capacity” should be undertaken with an awareness of the parallels to Canada's evolution to international sovereignty, and the fact Quebec actions were inspired in part by its British-Canadian constitutional heritage. To be sure, French assistance was crucial to Quebec obtaining and maintaining a distinct participation in the Francophonie and pursuing its international activities. Yet, consistent with the pragmatic and incrementalist political culture that derived from it's British heritage, Québec carefully managed its special relationship with a Paris that did not fully understand Québec realities.

This article examines an official participation process; the public debate organised by the National Committee of Public Debate (CNDP) between March and June 2006. The debate questioned the interest of a project that some inhabitants and authorities were awaiting since 1965 to be realized; the construction of a motorway extension in the outskirts of Paris, France.Our analysis comprehends the examination of this debate referring to an assessment scheme for participatory processes. The assessment scheme distinguishes three types of effects, each one on a different scale of time: 1) Procedural effects concern short term effects of the debate, e.g. access and enrichment of information, conditions of public participation. 2) Substantial effects concern the impact of the debate on the final public decision. They can only be assessed once the decision is taken. 3) Contextual effects consider long term impacts of the debate on society and community, on civil as well as on institutional levels. Our study shows how these three types of effects interfere in our case study.

Keywords: aménagement du territoire, autoroute A12, débat public, effets contextuels, effets procéduraux, effets substantifs, évaluation, processus participatif, assessment, contextual effects, highway A12, land use planning, participation process, procedural effects, public debate, substantial effects