Human Sciences All books
Geneviève Bédoucha
Lunar Eclipse in Yemen An Anthropologist's Emotions and Feelings of Bewilderment
This is a fascinating approach by a woman of a tribal society in a mountain valley in northern Yemen, near the Saudi Arabian border. Partly a travel book and partly a journal of the author's fieldwork, it restores an anthropologist's unique first-hand experience, questionings, hesitations and discoveries, from the first moments spent in an unfamiliar village. There are few anthropological works on Yemen, and even fewer about private life in rural societies in the hinterland of the former Arab Republic of Yemen (the author's fieldwork dates from the 1980s, before reunification). At the time, the presence of a female anthropologist led both men and women to talk openly, often jokingly and provocatively, of male-female relations, and it seemed to encourage women to voice strong criticisms of male behaviour and privileges. The women's comments reveal them to be lucid independent thinkers, and not at all submissive. This book is an invitation to discover a little-known rural community at close quarters, and to penetrate the secret universe of Yemen's many-storied mud houses. It reveals relations between men and women in a closed, but curious and hospitable, Muslim Arab society. An anthropologist and research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Geneviève Bédoucha is a specialist in the relations between socio-political structures and irrigation systems in Arabic and Islamic societies.
Sebastian Roché
Réformer la police et la sécurité
Demands for increased public safety are prevalent in both Europe and the United States, and they take similar forms. Do policies based on such notions as zero tolerance, local policing, partnership and mediation serve any real purpose or do they simply act as decoys? In New York City, as elsewhere, improved public safety resulted from the decentralisation of resources and power and, therefore, of responsibilities. In the articles included here, the writers, who are all experts in public safety in their respective countries, examine the issues in a dispassionate manner and offer a comparative study of the results obtained in different countries. Finally, they make some concrete suggestions to resolve the problem of petty crime and incivilities. Sébastian Roché is a professor at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, in Grenoble. He is the author of Tolérance zéro? Incivilitié et insecurité, published by Editions Odile Jacob.
Jacques Bouveresse, Daniel Roche
Freedom Through Knowledge: Pierre Bourdieu, 1930-2002 (Travaux du Collège de France)
Gathered in this volume are the texts of lectures given in memory of Pierre Bourdieu at an international colloquium held on 26-27 June 2003 and jointly organised by the Collège de France and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, with the backing of the Hugot Foundation.
Daniel C. Dennett
Evolutionist theory of freedom
Billions of years ago, there was no freedom on earth, for the simple reason that there was no life. What forms of freedom have evolved since the first stirrings of life? Can freedom and free will exist in a deterministic universe? If we are free, are we responsible for our freedom, or is it governed by chance? Drawing on evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences, Daniel Dennett provides a series of unorthodox replies to these traditional philosophical questions. It is generally held that what is determined is inevitable and that freedom can only exist in a non-deterministic universe. This is untrue, says Dennett. It is also held that in a pre-determined universe, we have no real choices: all we have is the illusion that we can choose. This too is false, argues Dennett. He then goes on to explain how, some day, we will be able to create robots endowed with free will. In this groundbreaking book, written in a striking, lively style, Dennett interweaves philosophical creativity with the latest scientific developments, and challenges a series of philosophical orthodoxies. Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, Mass., U.S.A. He is the author of Consciousness Explained and Darwin's Dangerous Idea.
Yves Michaud
New Therapeutics
Advances in medical science are constantly being made, but it is often difficult for patients to realise what these advances entail and to understand their applications. The twelve lectures collected in this new volume in the series L'Université de tous les savoirs aim to inform us about some of these recent advances by addressing the following questions: What is the procedure for putting new medication on the market? How is new medication tested? What are the policies for furthering pharmaceutical innovation? How are health care structures organised? What will the hospital of the future be like? What are biotechnologies? What has been the impact of the neurosciences on therapeutics? What advances have been made in genetic mapping? What benefits can patients hope to gain from it? Gathered here are contributions by a geneticist, a surgeon, a psychiatrist, an emergency doctor, a neurologist and a philosopher. They examine the state of medical research today and address a question that concerns us all: What will medical care be like in the future? Contributions by Yves Agid, Pierre Carli, Alain Carpentier, Patrick Couvreur, Claude Debru, Bernard Golse, Didier Houssin, Gérard Le Fur, Jacques Marescaux, Arnold Munnich, Luis Omnès and Olivier Saint-Jean. Other books in the series include Qu'est-ce que la vie?, Qu'est-ce que l'humain?, Qu'est-ce que la société?, Qu'est-ce que l'Univers?, Qu'est-ce que les technologies?, Qu'est-ce que la culture?, Qu'est-ce que la vie psychique?, Le Renouvellement de l'observation dans les sciences, La Chine aujourd'hui, Egalité et inégalités, Qu'est-ce que la diversité de la vie?, Qu'est-ce que la globalisation?, Paris and La Guerre d'Algérie 1954-1962.
Alain Bentolila
All about scholl
This is a brilliant, clearly argued demonstration of how the inability of the school system to evolve and develop a critical spirit may lead to the general failure of our entire society.
Françoise Héritier, Margarita Xanthakou
Body and Affects
The articles gathered here, written by eminent French anthropologists, present a novel angle on the way societies function. The writers argue that because societies are not abstract intellectual constructions, they cannot be dissociated from the physical individuals that constitute them, or from the affects (feelings and emotions) expressed by them. Included here are studies of Western and non-Western societies on such subjects as skin colour, religious rituals involving animals, witchcraft and flying sorcerers, passion in traditional North African cultures, and breast-feeding (both induced lactation to breastfeed infant girls and spontaneous lactation to breastfeed infant boys) in parts of Italy. Françoise Héritier is an anthropologist and teaches at the Collège de France. She is the author of Les Deux Soeurs et leur mère and Masculin/Féminin I and II, published by Editions Odile Jacob. Margarita Xanthakou, an anthropologist, is a research fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS).