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Abstract This article reviews sixty years of the activity of the World Bank, by stressing the variations over time of its attitude with regard to the fight against poverty. Indeed, during the 1950s and 1960s, the World Bank considered that the best means of fighting poverty consisted in creating the conditions of the fastest possible growth by carrying out heavy investments in physical infrastructures. However, faced with the persistence of mass poverty and high inequalities in a great number of developing countries despite rather satisfactory performances in terms of growth, at the end of the 1960s the World Bank put for the first time the “war against poverty” at the centre of its agenda. Then during the 1970s it endeavoured to work out new growth strategies which are more favourable for the poor. Under the era of structural adjustment, the vision of the World Bank changed in many respects. During the first half of the 1980s, in a context of the debt crisis, the World Bank was led to put aside the objective of poverty reduction to favour the recovery of macroeconomic balances and the potential of growth of countries in difficulty. However, in response to criticism concerning the social costs of its adjustment programs, the international financial institution, at the end of the 1980s, reaffirmed its commitment to reduce poverty by giving greater importance to the social effects of short-term adjustment and proposing afterwards new strategies towards long-term poverty reduction.

Keywords: exotisme, musique française, orientalisme, xixe siècle, xxe siècle, exoticism, French music, orientalism, 19th century, 20th century

Immigration and city have long been inseparable, in the reality of migration flows as in that of sociological thought. But today, the changes of the former set new research agendas to the latter. Therefore, we propose to make a synthetic reading of these changes in four steps, starting by recalling the discussion of paradigmatic cities in Urban Studies and the central place occupied by immigration. Then, the new themes that researchers mobilize in urban sociology according to the new urban landscapes of immigration will be discussed. These highly contrasting landscapes depending on whether American, French, Belgian or Dutch cities, partly determine research agendas. After recalling those of our metropolis, and especially of Montreal, we will examine five areas to think the city today. These five areas are not exhaustive but illustrate that recent research on immigration tell us about how to think about the city. Indeed, the fluidity of the territories of immigration invites urban sociology to focus on mutual interactions at the level of everyday life and on places where ethnicity is negociated.

Keywords: sociologie urbaine, ville, immigration, ethnicité, espaces publics, Montréal, urban sociology, city, immigration, ethnicity, public spaces, Montreal, sociología urbana, ciudad, inmigración, etnicidad, espacios públicos, Montreal

Harnessing near-free resources - from roads to labor - Amazon is leveraging competition between territories to secure financial aid and tax exemptions to support its sales teams, hungry for deliverable goods. Cataloging, customer interfaces, data storage, warehouses, logistics - the company is widening the gap between the knowledge economy neighborhoods where it sets up its cloud and the post-industrial wastelands where an unskilled population serves its warehouses. Recently established in Washington, D.C., and a key player in the American social divide, Amazon is not helping to narrow it.

Keywords: États-Unis, Bezos, Amazon, commerce électronique, lobbying, territoire, Seattle, postindustriel, division social, Internet, mondialisation, travail, capitalisme numérique, exemption fiscale, United States, Bezos, Amazon, e-commerce, lobbying, territory, Seattle, post-industrial, social divide, Internet, globalization, labor, digital capitalism, tax exemption

ABSTRACTPopulations of green alder (Alnus crispa (Ait.) Pursh) growing on south-facing and well-drained terraces in the Rivière aux Feuilles area (Northern Québec: 58°15' N, 72° W), located above the local forest line, present a disjunct distribution, isolated from the well-established alder stands found along the river. These populations are the result of an important range expansion of the species in the XXth century, during a warmer period between 1920 and 1960. Most of alder stands appeared after 1920, under suitable seed germination conditions on periglacial barren soils (frost boils, gélifluction lobes, etc.). During succession, the initial low shrub-lichenic vegetation gradually changed, within a few decades, into a scarce under canopy vegetation controlled by the thick litter produced by alder. The gradual development of alder populations has also caused important changes in soil properties: thickening of the organic horizon related to strong alder litter accumulation, increase of organic matter, CEC, total bases and N, and lowering of C/N ratio and pH. Vegetative regeneration is virtually the only reproductive mode for alder, since germination conditions changed drastically during the successionnal process. Similar situations in such alder populations have been observed elsewhere in the Hemi-arctic, and indicate 1) that green alder responds directly to climatic changes in this major biota of the Québec-Labrador peninsula, and 2) that it represents a general phenomenon for which there is a need for more detailed studies, in particular for paleoecological and palynological purposes.

In the 20th century of Quebec, the mass media producing especially the women’s press. This is very important to transmit to families the ways of doing things in a growing new society. Moreover, the media are often perceived as important norms vectors and behaviors. For us, food practices are more the product of representations of these norms and mass media can produce them. It is for this reason then the cooking recipes of chronicles of Châtelaine, the oldest magazine of its kind, are studied. We want to know how, through simple representations, they transpose the healthy eating recommendations published by the Canadian government. Our analyzes show that cooking recipes transpose recommendations, but also other norms, which are more social and are linked to lifestyles encouraged by the bourgeoisie of modern societies.

Keywords: Cuisine, médias, Châtelaine, recommandations alimentaires, normes alimentaires, modernité alimentaire, Cooking, media, Châtelaine, food recommendations, food norms, food modernity

AbstractUsing the definition that Jack Kerouac gave himself, (« Je ne suis pas un“beat” mais un mystique catholique étrange, solitaire et fou… »), the author reads the immense work of « Ti-Jean », by Lowell, as if it was proposing, through an ethno-fiction, the imaginary production of the founding myth of the Canuck lineage, of the genealogical chronology of the migration of the Kerouacs, from Brittany to the United States passing through Quebec, and of the difficult Americanization of a working-class, catholic and French-speaking family in one of the « Little Canadas » of the United States. The article demonstrates that the image of « Beatnik » does not do justice to the extraordinary literary creativity of that writer who invented an automatic style of writing, unknown before him, which put in words the spirit of a whole epoch in one of the « great American novels » of the 20th century and which rewrote a new version of American travelling-mythology. The imaginary world of Kerouac was that of an inner exploration, as for Walt Whitman, that of excess in wandering, in a descent in self to the point of madness and death in alcohol, and finally, that of compulsive reflection on the hybrid identity of the Franco-Americans in an Amerindian America. The author shows that, for a few years, the Franco-American legend of the Duluoz was the myth of the American people.

Keywords: Bibeau, Jack Kerouac, Canuck, Franco-Américains, voyage, ethno-fiction, Bibeau, Jack Kerouac, Canuck, Franco-Americans, travel, ethno-fiction, Bibeau, Jack Kerouac, Canuck, Franco-americano, viaje, etno-ficción