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AbstractRag Dolls and \Vooden SexesWithin the Hausa linguistic area. some strolling traditional puppet players dramatize se.x - and alterity-related conflicts. Thèse puppets. or " children of magie ". are represented in two ways : as sexed wooden anthropomorphic statuettes, and as rag dolls personifying society's conflictual couples. Their repertory's history testifies to their authenticity. Représentations of sexuality can be studied through thèse puppet shows where the confrontation between traditional models and modem discourse is being expressed : they could also be helpful in the prévention of AIDS.

The purpose of the paper is to present some reflexions on the cultural relativity of victimization. It argues against the widely held belief among victimologists that victimization can be universally defined. Like crime, victimization can be seen as a cultural construct. The paper presents many examples illustrating the cultural relativity of victimization. Children's work, child abuse and neglect, violence, abortion, sexual behavior etc. are given as examples to emphasize the variability in the definition from one society to another. The author concludes by proposing comparative research covering various aspects of victimization.

In the works of Lise Tremblay and Nelly Arcan, the body, and more specifically its beauty and the sexual power it exudes, is an integral part of the female characters quest for identity and conditions the forms linked to the novelistic discourse.Through the analysis of the portrayals of the body, its (self)objectification, and the strategies used by the authors to expose the effects of the beauty imperative on women, it is therefore possible to define, in terms of the literary discourse, the alienation that women still endure in a society that calls itself egalitarian.

AbstractProstitution became a political issue in Thailand in the beginning of the 1980s. The national debate about commercialising sexuality was soon aligned with Western positions. Via a study of one Thai organisation, Empower, this article documents how local actors were able to make discursive imports that favoured their own interests. Going beyond optimist positions on international advocacy, this article offers a critical reading of global advocacy around prostitution by inquiring into the practical consequences of the transnationalisation of solidarities.

AbstractThis study focuses on two novels marked by Dostoevsky's “influence”: Âmes russes (Russian Souls) by Francis de Miomandre and Un Raskolnikoff (A Raskolnikov) by Emmanuel Bove. Whereas Miomandre's novel takes advantage of some of the main writing characteristics that testify to the relatively stereotyped manner in which novelists between the wars could receive Dostoevsky's work, Bove's novel accompanies his “reading” of Dostoevsky with a very renewal of the master's aesthetic and metaphysical thought. Not only does Bove breathe new life into the character of Raskalnikov, but he proposes a new figure as well, one that is specific to the time and leads to what I call “the heroism of inaction.”

Presented as a sequel to explain the changes made in la Nuit, Jacques Ferron's Appendice astounds us by its complexity and its tenuous connections with les Confitures de coings. The author is concerned less with justifying the hardening and amplification of his earlier narrative than with developing to a considerable extent his few allusions to his hero's childhood. What Ferron produces in effect is a veritable "family portrait"; this is particularly true of his maternal descent, for which the four-volume history of the Ursulines of Trois-Rivières serves by and large as "biblio-text". All the evidence tends to confirm that his family was socially eminent. Given all his links with the French-Canadian professional high bourgeoisie, why did Ferron choose to cast off his ancestral connection and assume the class consciousness of a dispossessed and alienated hero? It is this question that the article attempts to elucidate.

For the last twenty years, hip-hop in West Africa, among the few musical genres common to the whole region, has considerably contributed to the vitality of the local musical sector as well as to social change among the West African youth. hip-hop music has asserted itself through the articulation of new socio-cultural and ideologico-political perspectives. Drawing the nowadays globalised geographies of hip-hop and its musical expression, this article suggests an analysis of the political production of hip-hop musical from the West African collective, AURA. The mobilisation of those hip-hop actors thus illustrates the application of the differential politics and the politics of difference inscribed in this musical genre in West Africa.

Keywords: hip-hop, AURA, production politique, Afrique de l'Ouest, musique-rap, hip-hop, AURA, political production, West Africa, rap music, hip-hop, AURA, producción politízale, África del Oeste, rap-música

Since the early 1980s, journalist and author Jean Rolin has been writing original works that often start with the exploration of a given place. His 2002 La Clôture is set around the Ney Boulevard, a social and urban wasteland populated by marginals and criminals that separates Paris proper from its suburbs. The author-cum-narrator weaves his story, both fictional and autobiographical, around his route, telling the now and the then, and taking a subjective yet critical look at his surroundings. In so doing, Jean Rolin foregoes the all-encompassing discourse of the maoist activism of his past. As he stages a series of paradoxical heroes, he resorts to various shades of sarcasm, including romantic satire, to illustrate the irony of a history that reveals his own melancholy at the loss of his revolutionary ideals.