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: Politics & Context (language use). 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.

"Du coup" et les connecteurs de conséquence dans une perspective dynamique

Abstract: Summary« Du coup » and the consequence discourse markers in a dynamic perspectiveDu coup is a French discourse marker (DM) which signals that a consequence relation obtains between two propositions. In this respect it is in the same class as the other consequence French DM, such as donc, alors, par consequent, de ce fait or aussi. Those different DM’s impose different constraints on the syntactic and semantic environments where they occur. In this paper, we describe the constraints which are particular to du coup. First, we propose a global description of the consequence DM, in order to emphasize the different dimensions along which the DM’s of this kind can be classified. This leads us to a first characterization of du coup. We show that, unfortunately, du coup eludes any analysis in these terms and calls for a more fine-grained description. We then show that the properties of this DM are aspectual and epistemic and we formulate a constraint which allows one to derive the aspectual properties from the epistemic ones, by resorting to the notion of omission in information states.

Why Do They (Still) Sing Stories? Singing Narratives in Tanjung Bunga (Eastern Flores, Lamaholot, Indonesia)

Abstract: In eastern Flores, on the Tanjung Bunga peninsula (among Western Lamaholot speakers), several times a year, ritual narratives (opak) are performed on a square dancing area, where all the clans of the same ceremonial land meet. Three types of narrative are sung, according to three kinds of rituals. The article explains the context, content and performance details of these stories, performed all night long. Why do the various clans continue to sing all these narrative? What values do these long poems have for people who sing them? Until now, studies on this subject have been remarkably few, and not even a partial transcription or translation of these narratives is available. This article offers a preliminary insight into these sung narratives, to show how vital they still are in eastern Flores.

Wireless Community Networks: Towards a Public Policy for the Network Commons?

Abstract: The history of communication technologies is populated with conflicts between centralization and decentralization. While many of these technologies started or have existed at some point of their development as a decentralized structure, often replacing older technological paradigms, nearly all progressively evolved into concentrated clusters of power as a result of industrialization and of the reaffirmation of state sovereignty, following a Schumpeterian process of “creative-destruction” (Wu 2010). However, when the needs of citizens turn out to be systematically overlooked in existing power dynamics, decentralized initiatives may emerge as an attempt to disrupt the dominant hegemony and allow for the democratic re-appropriation of technology—a process that the philosopher Andrew Feenberg calls “subversive rationalization” (Feenberg 1995).

Birth models in and between Italy and Senegal: a cross-cultural inquiry on the risks related to childbirth and birth technologies

Abstract: In Western societies, such as Italy, a positive representation of birth technologies as the main remedy to fight against the uncertainties of physiology and biological risks associated with pregnan...

Islamic Positivism and Scientific Truth: Qur’an and Archeology in a Creationist Documentary Film

Abstract: The ambition of “scientific creationism” is to prove that science actually confirms religion. This is especially true in the case of Muslim creationism, which adopts a reasoning of a syllogistic type: divine revelation is truth; good science confirms truth; divine revelation is henceforth scientifically proven. Harun Yahya is a prominent Muslim “creationist” whose website hosts many texts and documentary films, among which “Evidence of the true faith in historical sources”. This is a small audiovisual production which, starting from some archeological files, seeks to demonstrate that Qur’an truth precedes science but is equally proven by it. In this paper, we examine the organization of the scientific and religious argumentative repertoires and, in particular, what in each of them is taken as evidence and gets access to an authoritative status. It leads us to show how much this type of Muslim creationism constitutes a kind of scientism.