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.

Precursors and Laggards: An Analysis of Semantic Temporal Relationships on a Blog Network

Abstract: Most current methods of quantifying the contribution of nodes in blog networks do not account for temporal relationships. We provide a method for measuring how early or late bloggers typically are, in the topic flow of a network of related blogs. Furthermore, we show that this type of analysis adds to the knowledge that can be extracted by studying the network only at the structural level of URL links. We present an algorithm to automatically detect fine-grained discussion topics, characterized by n-grams and time intervals. We then propose a probabilistic model to estimate the temporal relationships that blogs have with one another. We define the precursor score of blog A in relation to blog B as the probability that A enters a new topic before B, discounting the effect created by asymmetric posting rates. Network-level metrics of precursor and laggard behavior are derived from these dyadic precursor score estimations. This model is used to analyze a network of French political blogs. The scores are compared to traditional link degree metrics. We obtain insights into the dynamics of topic participation on this network, as well as the relationship between precursor/laggard and linking behaviors. We validate and analyze results with the help of an expert on the French blogosphere. Finally, we propose possible applications to the improvement of search engine ranking algorithms.

Termination of Journalists’ Employment in Russia: Political Conflicts and Ordinary Negotiation Procedures in Newsrooms

Abstract: In the media community and sociopolitical publications, every termination of a journalist’s employment in Russia immediately raises suspicions of a crackdown on the “fourthestate.” In this article we analyze employment terminations in newsrooms in light of the interactions between separating parties. The political disputes that occurred in Russian news media between 2012 and 2014 shed light on the complex forms of pressure and compromise exerted on journalists. We have selected three cases (Gazeta.ru, Kommersant-Vlast’, and Lenta.ru) to illustrate three modalities of regulation of political disputesin the Russian media in the mid-2010s. They show that political control is perfectly compatible with the liberal management of press companies, which facilitates the use of financial justifications in cases of conflict, and with newsrooms’ commitment to social civility, which insures observance of good morals. Despite their differences, the three termination cases show the avoidance of politics in the Russian media in three ways. Neither authoritarian control nor renunciation on the part of journalists explains the exercise of power over the Russian media. It is rather on the side of negotiated arrangements meant to avoid political controversy that we observe the reconfiguration of public space in Russia. DOI: 10.25285/2078–1938–2017–9–2–39–58

Avatars du pouvoir en pays de chirurgie

Abstract: Le desenchantement actuellement ressenti par les chirurgiens tient en partie au brouillage de leurs modeles identitaires, particulierement sensible dans l’hopital public. En depit d’un statut socioprofessionnel globalement devalorise du XVe au XVIIIe siecle, la nature de l’activite chirurgicale a donne a ces hommes de metier un sentiment de toute-puissance et un gout du miracle qui ne sont pas necessairement en rapport avec leur competence ou l’etat de l’art a l’epoque ou ils vivent. D’emblee confrontee a la question du pouvoir a son arrivee sur le terrain, l’auteure s’attache a l’enchevetrement des representations et des comportements caracteristiques de cette corporation qui dorenavant s’interroge sur son destin.

Academic freedom in Tajikistan: how the suppression, acquiesce and incorporation of intellectuals strengthens the state and affects knowledge production

Abstract: While there have been a number of studies of the political economy of knowledge production in Central Asia, the often exploitative relations between foreign and local researcher, there has been les...

Science and technology internationalization and the emergence of peripheral techno-dreams: the Yachay project case

Abstract: textOn the basis of interviews, observations and archival analysis, this article explores the controversies surrounding the Yachay project case in Ecuador and unveils three ideological processes behind its conception and implementation. First, we show how the new elite in the government used this project to produce and reproduce a new power structure using a symbolic strategy based on propaganda and on an imaginary of techno-scientific modernization. Second, we unveil the material and symbolic reproduction of a cosmopolitan elite of international experts that profited from the Ecuadorian public funds in exchange for their name and prestige, thanks to a discourse based on cosmopolitanism, urgency, and voluntarism. Finally, we explain how the Yachay project has triggered the reconfiguration of the local symbolic sphere according to the new conditions of reproduction of the world system by reshaping the local imaginaries around technology and innovation. We conclude that Yachay, like other similar projects that have emerged at the same time in other parts of the world, is part of a global process of reconfiguration of the ideological and institutional conditions that accompany the deployment of the latest wave of techno-economic transformations in the global system.