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.

Welfare Comparisons Among Individuals Under Samuelson’s Model of Households

Abstract: The paper investigates the relation between welfare among households and welfare among individuals. Following Samuelson’s model of the family, it is assumed that family’s members share the household income by maximizing a weighted sum of individual utility functions. While the individual population is considered as homogeneous from the point of view of social planner, individuals are treated unequally within each household. We assume a strong regularity in this unfair treatment by assigning a given weight to each type of individuals. The main result shows that the welfare ranking among households is preserved at the individual level if the utility function is increasing, concave and satisfies additional assumptions expressed in terms of the absolute inequality aversion and the absolute prudence towards inequality.

Women’s experiences of self-administration of misoprostol at home as part of early medical abortion: a qualitative evaluation

Abstract: Background Between 2017 and 2019, legislation was introduced in the UK that approved the home as a place for self-administration of misoprostol for early medical abortion. While research has shown that early medical abortion at home is as safe as in a clinical setting, women’s experiences in the UK in the light of this change have not yet been investigated. This qualitative research explored the experiences of women in one region of Scotland, UK who accessed early medical abortion with home self-administration of misoprostol. Methods Qualitative interviews were conducted with 20 women who had recently undergone early medical abortion (≤69 days9 gestation) with home self-administration of misoprostol. The data were analysed thematically using an approach informed by the Framework analytic approach. Results Women appreciated the flexibility that home administration of misoprostol offered, including the opportunity to control the timing of the abortion. This was particularly important for women who sought not to disclose the abortion to others. Most women valued being in the comfort and privacy of the home when preparing for self-administration, although a small number highlighted some concerns about being at home. Most women reported that self-administration of misoprostol was straightforward; however, some expressed concerns around assessing whether their experiences were ‘normal’. Conclusions Women welcomed the opportunity for home self-administration of misoprostol. To further improve women’s early medical abortion experience we suggest that the legislation be amended so that women can self-administer in an appropriate non-clinical setting, not just their home.

Travailler dans l’ESS : aspirations, représentations et dispositions : Une étude auprès des adhérents de l’association Ressources solidaires

Abstract: A partir d’une etude menee aupres des adherents d’un site specialise dans l’economie sociale et solidaire (ESS) dont il diffuse les offres d’emploi, cet article s’attache a dessiner le portrait type de l’aspirant salarie de l’ESS et plus specifiquement dans le monde associatif, qui regroupe l’essentiel de l’emploi dans ce champ. Si les premieres conclusions de cette etude ne sont donc pas generalisables a l’emploi dans les cooperatives et les mutuelles, elles sont riches d’enseignements sur les representations et les dispositions des actifs souhaitant travailler dans l’ESS. Loin de l’image du cadre superieur du secteur capitaliste « en quete de sens », l’etude revele que le « profil type » est davantage a chercher parmi les jeunes actifs, souvent des femmes fortement diplomees, dont les parents sont salaries de la fonction publique et qui voient se reduire considerablement leurs chances de titularisation dans le service public.

From inert matter to the global society life as multi-level networks of processes.

Abstract: A few billion years have passed since the first life forms appeared. Since then, life has continued to forge complex associations between the different emergent levels of interconnection it forms. The advances of recent decades in molecular chemistry and theoretical biology, which have embraced complex systems approaches, now make it possible to conceptualize the questions of the origins of life and its increasing complexity from three complementary notions of closure: processes closure, autocatalytic closure and constraints closure. Developed in the wake of the second-order cybernetics, this triple closure approach, that relies on graph theory and complex networks science, sketch a paradigm where it is possible to go up the physical levels of organization of matter, from physics to biology and society, without resorting to strong reductionism. The phenomenon of life is conceived as the contingent complexification of the organization of matter, until the emergence of life forms, defined as a network of auto-catalytic process networks, organized in a multi-level manner. This approach of living systems, initiated by Maturana & Varela and Kauffman, inevitably leads to a reflection on the nature of cognition; and in the face of the deep changes that affected humanity as a complex systems, on the nature of cultural evolution. Faced with the major challenges that humanity will have to address in the decades to come, this new paradigm invites us to change our conception of causality by shifting our attention from state change to process change and to abandon a widespread notion of 'local' causality in favour of complex systems thinking. It also highlights the importance of a better understanding of the influence of social networks, recommendation systems and artificial intelligence on our future collective dynamics and social cognition processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Unifying the essential concepts of biological networks: biological insights and philosophical foundations'.