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AbstractAfter having pointed out the continuities and discontinuities between modern sociological theory and the political and social thought from which it grew, the author attempts to place political theory in perspective with the history of social movements in Western politics itself. Further, he proposes to demonstrate the impact modernization in non-Western countries has had on the concept of the relationship between State and society which in the European tradition is seen as antinomic. We are asked to consider this idea in context and to recognize, in this light of recent comparative studies in political sociology, that new questions have arisen about the way nature of the components of social and political centers tendencies and consequently about the possible variations in the affinity between State and society. These questions are analyzed here insofar as they add to the problems of political system legitimation, of political participation, and of the selection of political elites.

This article studies, from a feminist perspective, the intermingling of affects and feeding behaviour in the production of Kim Thúy, a Quebec writer of Vietnamese origin. Associated with trauma, survival, memory and gratitude in Ru, food becomes an empowering instrument for the narrator of Mãn, who experiences care and love in its various nuances through the act of cooking. The successive transformations of the food-culinary sensorium and habitus of Thúy’s narrators, who are also endowed with a certain agency, testify to a shift in the visceral reactions (both physical and social), as well as the taste syntax and its emotional resonance at the end of the migratory experience.

Keywords: Kim Thúy, Food, Migration, Affect

This essay theorizes the relationship between representations of travel and representations of drugs in contemporary nonfiction drug travelogues. As a popular nonfiction genre, the travelogue helps structure public perceptions of travel but, like many other forms of travel writing, frequently depicts drugs. A relatively large number of travelogues feature writers traveling with drugs, traveling on drugs, or traveling for drugs. Contemporary travelogues frequently offer travel as a paradigmatic yet problematic metaphor for understanding various kinds of drug experiences: those that involve acquiring self-knowledge or undergoing transformation, those that involve encountering radical alterity or domesticating it in neo-colonial formulations. At issue here are two drug travelogues published at the end of the twentieth century: Christopher Cox's Chasing the Dragon: Into the Heart of the Golden Triangle (1996), and Kevin Rushby's Eating the Flowers of Paradise: A Journey Through the Drug Fields of Ethiopia and Yemen (1998). My analysis explores how these popular accounts imagine the mobility/intoxication nexus and how that nexus engages with the dual thematics of global mobility and the illicit movement and consumption of mind-altering substances.

Keywords: voyage, journaux de voyage, altérité, travel, travelogues, alterity, viaje, diarios de viaje, alteridad

The Anecdotes de notre temps depuis 1715 à 1736 is a set of 52 manuscript volumes acquired by the Royal Library in 1789 during the sale after the death of the Duke of Richelieu. Archivists itemized the majority of the volumes in the early 19th century and the documents in these volumes got dispersed in different thematic collections of the National Library of France. They generally combined a text and an image and referred to as anecdotes. Fortunately, a particular stamp assures their traceability and permits to identify them in the National Library. In this manner, an anonymous volume preserves around forty anecdotes containing 67 drawings and engravings of fauna and flora concerning the French colonial empire. A reconstruction was made through an intra-inter-trans structuralist approach to reconstruct first the micro-stories behind each anecdote in order to infirm the date of most of the iconographic documents. This approach also made it possible to determine the nature of the collection in the 19th century but also to identify invariabilities leading to the involvement of Antoine-Denis Raudot, class-intendant and secretary of the French Navy. It is believed that this corpus represents in fact the “pre-anecdotes” until Raudot's death in 1737, from which the Count of Maurepas must have drawn in order to partially compile the 52 volumes of Anecdotes de notre temps during his exile (1749-1774). This result and the fact that Raudot's went to New France (1705-1710) as a second clerk now permitted to identify a second set of eight Canadian anecdotes and to be presented here. The transfer of Raudot's “pre-anecdotes” corpus to Maurepas is explained partially by various events that occurred in 1737, the year when Raudot died (heritage, appropriation, saving).

Keywords: Secrétariat de la Marine, Jardin du Roi, Académie des Sciences, Compagnie des Indes, Cabinet de Curiosités, Circulation des savoirs, Cultures coloniales, Colonies françaises, Iconographie, Premières Nations, Comte de Maurepas, Antoine-Denis Raudot, Duc de Richelieu, Le Masson du Parc, Pierre Le Chevalier, Jussieu, XVIII siècle

Since female students are in the majority in first cycle university studies in the United States, England and Canada, it may appear that gender affiliation is no longer considered a major issue in studies on success in higher education. Do studies on social sciences applied to education, published in scientific articles in 2002, deal with this phenomenon? Do researchers tend to pay more attention to other social groups because of the progress women have made? Is the social interaction of the sexes a central or peripheral subject in this research? Is gender affiliation treated in concert with other types of affiliations, such as social class, race or ethnic group? Are feminist analysis frameworks part of theoretical approaches? What do these studies teach us? Can we formulate the hypothesis that women’s success in higher education will continue to progress in the years to come?