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AbstractThe relations between taste and the city have largely gone unstudied. In an effort to stimulate reflection on this nexus, three lines of investigation are suggested. The first line explores the way in which different cities - for geographical, historical and cultural reasons - have developed their own unique “signature” dishes and systems of savours. The second seeks to demonstrate how the changing patterns of eating and drinking in Montreal have impacted on the experience and development of urban space and time, tipping the balance in favour of greater conviviality. Finally, with a view to the future, this essay foresees the relations between taste and the city growing ever more intricate, most notably through the development of gourmet circuits; the ideal of the garden-city becoming reality (with the increasing production of food in urban environments), and the creation of new institutions dedicated to the furtherance of taste.

Keywords: Lemasson, ville, goût, Montréal, circuits, gastronomie, cosmopolite, ville-jardin, Lemasson, city, taste, gastronomy, Montréal, circuit, cosmopolitan, garden city, Lemasson, ciudad, gusto, gastronomía, cosmopolíta, ciudad-jardín

In this article, Ève Lamoureux explores the evolution of “art engagé” by québécois artists on the left from the 1970s to the present day. In describing their practices, she compares them to those of the international contemporary art milieu and reflects on the specific conditions that influenced their trajectory. She shows in what ways the general characteristics of political art are similar across western countries. In particular, she identifies a passage from militant avant-gardism to micropolitical art that relies on the investment of the spectator in the process of making sense of the work and/or as a participant. Despite this similarity, the social, cultural, and political climate particular to Québec influences the pratices of québécois artists, as well as structuring the sphere of visual arts and its evolution. Some particularities flow from this : (1) abundant creativity, (2) constant experimentation by artists both with regard to their practices and to the organisation of artistic production and dissemination, (3) a rich theoretical expertise, (4) a tighter association between artists with community groups, interest groups and unions rather than political parties, and (5) a conflicted partnership between artists and artistic institutions and institutions of the state ; a partnership which, on the whole, favoured the evolution of political action by and through art despite its difficulties.

Since the late 1980s, the regionalization of immigration has become one of the concerns of the Quebec Government, which wishes to achieve a more spatially balanced distribution of immigration. Beginning with the history of this policy and its development over a period of nearly ten years (1987-1996), the author begins a first critical analysis of the policy, covering both the underlying objectives and the central strategic concepts. The interrelationships are identified between multiple issues that are territorial, demographic and political as well as economic. Situated in the context of globalization of the economy, neo-liberal restructuring and a Worldwide crisis faced by govemments, the analysis deals ith the concepts of decentralization and partnership, which are central political axes, in order to identify the thrust of this new mode of government controls of immigration. Certain ambiguities and limits are underlined, particularly regarding the role of the State in the global development of the regions, in the power of local actors, and in the status of the regional nuclei of culturel communication.

In this article the author presents a critical history of literacy programmes in Québec. Charitable organizations and more recently, government programmes have increasinly institutionalized a reductionist approach to the "treatment of the problem" of illiteracy.After wading through a mass of descriptive material concerning the main projects that have been attempted over the last decade, the statistical descriptions of target groups and the various types of services offered, the author attempts to evaluate the results of these efforts. He concludes that progress is minimal.So why is so much effort poured into literacy programmes? The effectiveness of these programmes lies perhaps less in their capacity to produce literate citizens and more in the effect they have in implementing certain forms of social control.

This paper examines the experience of the burden of representation as lived by spokespersons involved in the fight against racism in Quebec. Semi-directed interviews with fifteen of these activists revealed mixed feelings about their role, which are expressed through the lexicon of burden and heaviness. According to the critical literature on affect and representation, this sense of burden is not an isolated, individual feeling; it is, in part, a result of the economy of racialized and minoritized representation that “rations” access to spaces of visibility and power by limiting the resources available to racialized people, and restricting the ways in which they may appear in public spaces. Therefore, to better make sense of the spokespersons' affective experience of racialized representation, this article adopts a theoretical framework that understands racialization as an affective process produced by relationships and encounters and apprehends affects as situated social and cultural practices embedded in power relations. Affects are also apprehended through a decolonial approach that takes into account the asymmetry of affective norms and—by ricochet—the affective performances that can be expected or demanded of antiracism spokespersons. The analysis of the semi-structured interviews through the lens of affects made it possible to identify four affective practices implemented by the spokespersons: awareness-raising, adaptation, protection, and contestation. These different affective practices are both complementary and in tension. They are complementary because they are used by spokespeople at different times, depending on the situation and the demands of their representational work. They also are in tension, because they reveal spokespeople's ambivalence about their role: between what they see as their role as mediators and translators, on the one hand, and their desire to shake up the status quo and the dominant “rules of feeling,” on the other. By examining these affective practices of racialization, this article sheds light on the processes by which racialization and denial of racism (re)shape the affective demands of spokesperson work, and consequently prompts a rethinking of the affective practices of antiracist political representation.

Keywords: fardeau, représentation, racialisation, affects, pratiques, porte-parole, antiracisme, burden, representation, racialization, affect, practices, spokesperson, antiracism

This paper aims to evaluate and analyze trade potential of Monetary and Economic Community of Central Africa's countries (MECCA) in the light of market integration theory. Gradually, we analyze stylized facts of member's countries trade and estimate an augmented gravity model to evaluate the bilateral trade patterns in the subregion. The results obtained are used to compute the trade potential index in the community. The study found four major results: (i) the stylized facts show heterogeneity and a low level of integration in the subregion; (ii) the coefficients of the traditional variables of the gravity model globally keep their theoretical signs; (iii) the poor level of GDP per capita and the lack of diversification of productive structures are the main factors reducing trade potential in the sub-region; (iv) even though weak, there is some trade creation episodes, notably in the bilateral flows of Cameroon and others member's countries.

While in the past, Canada has earned a fairly liberal reputation as it developed political relations with African countries, the trend for the 1980s has been to concentrate on promoting trade and investment. In particular, the interest in expanding markets for Canadian manufactured exports has led to the co-ordination of the Export Development Corporation (EDC) and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to encourage and support the private sector. As a result, exports to Africa have tripled in the past five years and North Africa (especially Algeria) is becoming a region of major importance for Canadian exporter s. Although in the past the Canadian government has been ambiguous about its approach to promoting trade and investment in white-ruled Southern Africa, it has strengthened its inclination to leave the private sector alone, regardless of the support which Canadian companies are giving to the apartheid system. The before, in the 1980s, Canada's relations with Africa are being increasingly governed by economic imperatives as the government attempts to come to grips with the problems emerging from the economic recession.