School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

About: School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a facility organization based out in Villejuif, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Politics. The organization has 1230 authors who have published 2084 publications receiving 57740 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales & EHESS.

The Sustainability of Quinoa Production in Southern Bolivia: from Misrepresentations to Questionable Solutions. Comments on Jacobsen (2011, J. Agron. Crop Sci. 197: 390–399)

Abstract: Reviewing the situation of quinoa production in southern Bolivia, Jacobsen (2011, J. Agron. Crop Sci. 197: 390) argues that the booming export market has a negative effect on the environment and on the home consumption of quinoa, thereby leading to an environmental disaster in the region. In view of the scarcity of scientific knowledge on the rapid social and environmental dynamics in the region, we consider that Jacobsen’s review misrepresents the situation of quinoa production in southern Bolivia. Specifically, we argue that (i) the data presented by Jacobsen (2011, J. Agron. Crop Sci. 197: 390) do not support any drop in quinoa crop yield supposed to reflect soil degradation and (ii) his demonstration regarding home consumption of quinoa is ill-founded from both a nutritional and a cultural point of view. We suggest that the diffusion of the arguments exposed by Jacobsen (2011, J. Agron. Crop Sci. 197: 390), because of their flaws, might have strong negative impacts on those concerned with sustainable food production and fair-trade with developing countries. We conclude that, rather than reinforced agro-technical controls on local farmers, the rising competition in the international quinoa market requires a shift towards an ethical economy and ethical research cooperation with quinoa producers.

Bodily/material culture and the fighter’s subjectivity:

Abstract: In this article, the author contends that the practice of warfare involves fighters’ subjectivity, which can be partly accessed by investigating fighters’ bodily/material culture. If this is the case, one would expect there to be a subjectivity gap between the social scientist, on the one hand, and the experienced fighter, on the other. This problem is discussed with regard to a Cameroon kingdom of the early 20th century and a fighter in the First World War (as analysed by the historians Stephane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker), which enables the author to make significant comparisons.

The neural resource allocation problem when enhancing human bodies with extra robotic limbs

Abstract: The emergence of robotic body augmentation provides exciting innovations that will revolutionize the fields of robotics, human–machine interaction and wearable electronics. Although augmentative devices such as extra robotic arms and fingers are informed by restorative technologies in many ways, they also introduce unique challenges for bidirectional human–machine collaboration. Can humans adapt and learn to operate a new robotic limb collaboratively with their biological limbs, without restricting other physical abilities? To successfully achieve robotic body augmentation, we need to ensure that, by giving a user an additional (artificial) limb, we are not trading off the functionalities of an existing (biological) one. Here, we introduce the ‘neural resource allocation problem’ and discuss how to allow the effective voluntary control of augmentative devices without compromising control of the biological body. In reviewing the relevant literature on extra robotic fingers and arms, we critically assess the range of potential solutions available for this neural resource allocation problem. For this purpose, we combine multiple perspectives from engineering and neuroscience with considerations including human–machine interaction, sensory–motor integration, ethics and law. In summary, we aim to define common foundations and operating principles for the successful implementation of robotic body augmentation. The development of extra fingers and arms is an exciting research area in robotics, human–machine interaction and wearable electronics. It is unclear, however, whether humans can adapt and learn to control extra limbs and integrate them into a new sensorimotor representation, without sacrificing their natural abilities. The authors review this topic and describe challenges in allocating neural resources for robotic body augmentation.

Talker diarization in the wild: The case of child-centered daylong audio-recordings

Abstract: Speaker diarization (answering ’who spoke when’) is a widely researched subject within speech technology. Numerous experiments have been run on datasets built from broadcast news, meeting data, and call centers—the task sometimes appears close to being solved. Much less work has begun to tackle the hardest diarization task of all: spontaneous conversations in real-world settings. Such diarization would be particularly useful for studies of language acquisition, where researchers investigate the speech children produce and hear in their daily lives. In this paper, we study audio gathered with a recorder worn by small children as they went about their normal days. As a result, each child was exposed to different acoustic environments with a multitude of background noises and a varying number of adults and peers. The inconsistency of speech and noise within and across samples poses a challenging task for speaker diarization systems, which we tackled via retraining and data augmentation techniques. We further studied sources of structured variation across raw audio files, including the impact of speaker type distribution, proportion of speech from children, and child age on diarization performance. We discuss the extent to which these findings might generalize to other samples of speech in the wild.

Beyond colonialism: servants, wage earners and indentured migrants in rural France and on Reunion Island (c. 1750–1900)

Abstract: The way bonded labour was defined and practised in the colonies was not only linked to the definition and practise of wage labour in Europe but their development was interconnected. The engages (equivalent to indentured servants) and bonded labourers in the French colonies would have been inconceivable without hiring for services and domestic service in France. This connection was possible because there were important differences in status between masters, landowners and employers on the one hand, and domestic servants, wage earners, bonded labourers and apprentices on the other.