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In order to analyze cities as social technologies, it is necessary to focus on middle-range phenomena. The Polanyi/Akerman framework is used to carry out a meso-analytical survey of Canadian urban history in the 1850-1914 period. The Canadian urban system is seen as marginal to the American system in the same way that the Atlantic and Western regions are marginal to Central Canada. This relationship modifies the expected impact of technological and industrial change on the pattern of urban development.

The academicization of social work training is often thought of as a remedy for the tendency to reproduce knowledge and practices due to a system in which peer training is highly dominant. Faced with the transformations and processes of pedagogical reengineering that have developed in the field of social work training in France since the 2010s, including their entry into the European system of higher education, and the addition of academic subjects to the training courses, it is appropriate to question the issues and the scope of a resulting universitarization. In the absence of a clear theoretical framework and of concepts that allow for thinking about the social action of individual support and collective transformation, future social workers are exposed to cognitive dissonance. Intervention sociology, among other disciplines, can provide the theoretical, conceptual and methodological materials to avoid these dissonances.

This article describes a participatory action-research aimed at endowing a tourist area of Souss with a very little developed competitive advantage in Morocco, a self-guided hiking plan carried out in a concerted form. It examines in two dimensions the wellsprings of its evolution, the conditions of this participatory action-research, and in particular those of the partnership that it implies between practitioners and researchers, and the mode of development of rural tourism in a Moroccan hinterland. Finally, it tries to interpret the reasons, cyclical as well as structural, for stopping this ambitious project that some local players are still trying to finalize.

Keywords: randonnée pédestre, Maroc, recherche-action participative, concertation, sociologie, hiking, Morocco, participatory action-research, consultation, sociology

Two distinct categories can be established in the field of exploratory studies. First, there are studies on subjects that are relevant but which, for various reasons, have been left more or less unexplored. The second category of exploratory studies comes above the first category since these studies revolve around issues which relevance has not been yet supported in a way that would justify thorough consideration and adéquate investment, even if a certain form of argumentation could be elaborated on their potential interest. To work with the second category of exploratory studies, it is necessary to create an approach that will confïrm or invalidate their potential interest and, in the case of a confirmation, determine the orientation of the subsequent studies.A problem may arise from the use of the last mentioned category of stratégies. When these strategies do confirm the potential interest of the studies, they have to be given up for other strategies that are best suited to carry out the research. Consequently, new resources as well as additional time are required. In both scientifically and professionally oriented fields, this problem could have a negative impact since the researches carried out in these fields often give rise to more immediate concerns and expectations. In our opinion, the problem arising from this discontinuity is not necessarily unavoidable.In this article, our objective is to set out and examine an investigation strategy that we already used to tackle a problem falling in the second category of exploratory studies and relating to the implementation of technological changes in unionized environments.This strategy uses concepts such as «concrete action System», «power», and «uncertainty zone» which form the basis of the theory of organizations elaborated by Crozier and Friedberg (1977). This approach avoids the discontinuity problem previously mentioned and indicates interesting investigation paths, when such paths exist. Moreover, it does not require a large investment at the beginning of the research. Finally, it seems to us that this strategy can easily be used and adapted for several research problems that arise in the field of relations in the workplace.

Dominique Fortier's entire oeuvre engages in dialogue with figures from History, particularly from her cherished 19th century, and is wary of “our overexcited modern lives.” The novelist denies, however, that she writes historical novels and refuses to be judged by historians, as she takes pains to indicate at the end of almost all of her books: “Why am I always hunting down the past in everything?” she asks herself in Révolutions, a work co-written with Nicolas Dickner, inspired by the republican calendar in force in France from 1793 to 1806. This article examines three potential answers to her question: first, the attraction of the “inactuel” in the sense that the philosopher Giorgio Agamben, following Roland Barthes, attributed to this term; second, the actualization of the past through contemporary values (notably ecology, postcolonialism and feminism); finally, the desire to write in the company of others, regardless of whether or not those others are alive or dead, provided that this singular relationship, that which Lionel Ruffel calls the apprenticeship specific to the contemporary, stimulates the creative imagination of the novelist. The nostalgia asserted by the author thus presents itself as a creative force and not as a regretful longing for the past. It participates directly in her contemporary art in that it allows the rediscovery of the sensation, and the diffused emotion, associated with the fragility of existence.

The foundation of sociology rests on postulates which have, historically, been the source of endless quarrels and which have come to constitute limits to the very development of the discipline. The first of these postulates is that human societies are to be studied, to be understood, as either the result of individual situations (methodological holism) or, to the contrary, as that of individuals' characteristics, choices and actions (methodological individualism). The second premise is that scientific analysis must be devoid of all randomness and unpredictability in the movements that occur within society in order to be able to understand and project ourselves into the future. Contemporary developments in sociology abandon, at least partially, these positions. Many researchers in social sciences adopt a joint methodology (holism and individualism). Some also attempt to introduce temporality (or temporalities) in the analysis in order to account for the inevitable historicity of humankind. This paper aims to offer a “relational” sociological approach, which combines holism and individualism within the historicized models of complex systems that are social systems. It stresses the interest, or better, the necessity of a trialectical relational model for the study of complex systems.

Keywords: Événement, individus, relation, systèmes complexes, modèle trialectique, Events, Individuals, Relation, Complex Systems, Trialectical Model

AbstractSociologists regularly wonder about the unification of their knowledge and about the means to reach it. Some of them believe that not only is the achievement of this objective possible, but that they already possess a paradigm: the relational analysis. They support that, paradoxically, sociology, so far, did not know how to give itself this paradigm as a unifying principle. We defend the idea that there are relational sociologies, as shown by the typology which we propose. Furthermore, we defend that the relation cannot, for various reasons, serve as a unifying principle. Rather, we see in it a ground of confrontation between the upholders of the relational approach and within each approach referring to the relational analysis.

Keywords: Analyse systémique, approche relationnelle, sociologie, System analysis, relational approach, sociology

ABSTRACTRecent studies on the "new social problem" tend to deal with the latter through integration and consider work as the sole means of restoring the social link. This article takes a critical look at the way these studies represent the social sphere, by highlighting the ambiguity of their wording and the unflaggingly disenchanted image, depicting neither struggles nor dreams, which they give of the labour movement and its history. By assigning to the working class the sole perspective of negotiating its place in industrial society, they neglect the mythic quality of the link the latter has up to now represented, and, especially, fail to look at ways of examining the "new social problem" from the controversial perspective of the working class itself.