Coordinated by Isabelle Jabiot, Maïté Maskens and Carine Plancke. Edited by (for Émulations) François Romijn.
This issue of Émulations intends to do its bit towards the young research linking love and social sciences. Love has been long ignored as a research topic, mostly because it was associated with irrationality, the feminine, the ineffable or even with a mystery too unfathomable to be approached by science, but it slowly becomes a legitimate research subject. This is why, in this issue, we honor love by placing it at the heart of social sciences, by considering it not only as a research subject, but also as a stance or as an approach. Two main focuses underline the structure of this issue.
On one side, the declinations and specificities of the experience of love in a diversity of contexts are explored, and particularly the importance of romantic love today. Its emergence, persistence and evolution in many societies (Belgian, Swiss, Omani, Canadian and French), as well as the tensions and exclusions that it causes and its articulation to local practices and imaginaries are questioned. At a time when social science questions the diversity of beings and their existence, the reader will have a glimpse of what love can be, beyond The idea of close proximity between human beings.
On the other side, understanding how researchers’ love towards their own research, their field, ortheir interlocutors can be be a driving force of the knowledge produced in social sciences constitutes this issue’s other challenge. To answer this interrogation, four interviews with researchers who have been working on this subject for a long time through a variety of approaches (Michèle Pagès, Jennifer Cole, Charles Lindholm and Catherine Besteman) are proposed.
Coordinated byr Marie Peretti-Ndiaye, Hélène Quashie et Liza Terrazzoni. Edited by (for Émulations) Fanny Robles.
Migratory profiles and experiences appear today as more and more diversified and incite researchers to study, beyond the socioeconomic or national affiliations, the changes in status that affect trajectories, as well as the reconfigurations – the weakening even – of the role of the States in migratory movements. In an ambivalent context marked by an intensity of movements under stricter policies or by a more fluid passage of borders certain aspects of migratory phenomena are still neglected. Contributions in this issue titled “Entre migrations et mobilités : itinéraires contemporains”, mobilize the dominant paradigms in social sciences (integration, circulation, transnationalism) to discuss them and to test them with observed empirical evidence.
Coordinated by Marie Fierens et Julien Danero Iglesias. Edited by (for Émulations) Grégoire Lits.
For centuries, mass media have been credited with a form of power. But what really constitutes this alleged influence? Who are the actors that hold it? What strategies are such media pursuing – consciously or not? This issue, titled “Médias et identités” offers answers to these questions by tackling the role that mass media plays in the building or strengthening of individual or collective feelings of belonging. The considerations proposed by young researchers from multiple disciplinary traditions are rooted in nine specific historical and contemporary contexts. These considerations relativize the notions of fourth power and independency often associated with mass media and shed light on the interdependency networks in which journalists operate.
Coordinated by Cécile Charlap, Stéphanie Pache and Laura Piccand. Edited by (for Émulations) Ghaliya Djelloul.
The naturalization of sexes, i.e. their understanding as a phenomenon of nature rather than nurture, is probably both constructivism’s most necessary target and its most difficult subject. The obviousness of the existence of categories of sexes and of gendered bodies appears to be so tangible that their social production is not easily conceived. The difficulty of this task is reinforced by the fact that science is generally marked by this essentialist conception of sexes. Therefore, social and historical studies on science and medicine play an essential role in understanding naturalization processes. Our contemporary period commonly conceives nature as the purest object of the most exact sciences, thus providing naturalist stances with a greater sense of truth, an authority to claim more objectivity than constructivist programs. A dichotomy opposing objectivity and subjectivity has long been applied with the idea that nature, being outside of social considerations, would constitute a “good object” of this objectivity, while the subjetcs of social sciences would be too complex to be rigorously objectivated, mainly because we are part of this social entanglement. We thus chose to title this issue “La construction scientifique des sexes”, to reflect our project of directly addressing these oppositions, by focusing on the categories of sex, following the works pursued on this theme by feminist studies of science and medicine (Fausto-Sterling, 2000 ; Gardey & Löwy, 2000 ; Rouch et al., 2005).
Coordinated by Delphine Masset and Éric Hitier.
The links between women and ecology are many: they extend from the essentialist notion of a feminine “nature”, that would apply to both care and ecology, to the contradiction of this notion. Is ecology then a springboard for women – does it announce a new era of taking responsibility and crystallization around so-called feminine “values” – or is it a travesty, a threat of incapacitation? Is a “naturalization” of the social phenomenon that is feminine gender to be feared? Or should we distance ourselves from this dichotomy and use this “feminine” concept to engage with change possibilities. Without providing a definitive answer, the contributions of this issue offer their perspective on the link between women and ecology.
Coordinated by Blanche Leider and Thibauld Moulaert. Edited by (for Émulations) Grégoire Lits
La thématique de ce numéro d'Émulations est née de la volonté de mener une réflexion conjointe sur ces deux termes : résistances et vieillissements. Que peut-on dire des résistances quand l'avancée en âge situe l’individu dans la catégorie d’aîné, comment l’appréhender au-delà de différents clichés ou images simplificatrices que sont notamment la figure de la personne âgée imbuvable ou, à son opposé, celle d’un individu éteint, amorphe ? À qui, à quoi les aînés résistent-ils, avec quelles ressources, à quelles fins ? Quels liens la résistance entretient-elle avec d’autres processus comme l’acceptation, voire l’adhésion ?
Afin de répondre à ces questions, ce numéro s’organise autour de trois types de matériaux. D’abord, sept articles individuels explorent les expériences de la résistance (et l’étonnante absence de résistance collective) déclinée par des publics diversifiés (personnes en perte d’autonomie, hommes et femmes en fin de carrière, seniors arpentant les allées des « salons seniors », femmes ménopausées ou retraités engagés dans le secteur associatif). Ensuite, un dossier prend l’habitat comme espace de réflexion original sur la résistance à travers deux formes particulières (innovation d’habitat pour aînés et institutions plus « traditionnelles »).
Finalement, l’interview du sociologue Bernard Ennuyer vient apporter un vent de fraîcheur en montrant comment, par son engagement tout au long de sa carrière de professionnel et de chercheur, la résistance à l’enfermement dans des idées est une leçon de vie dont rendent compte, in fine, l’ensemble des contributions de ce numéro.
Coordinated by Ilan Lew and Daniel Bonnard. Edited by (for Émulations) Ghaliya Djelloul and Grégoire Lits.
A hundred years after WW1 broke – an event that will represent for most historians the lasting escalation and intensification of war – this issue focuses on the international armed conflict of the 20th century, considering them as a prime case study to analyze the core inclination of the human nature to give in to hatred and mutual killings. This issue brings together humanities research carried out by young researchers in France, Germany, and Switzerland, most of them associated with study centers involved in the renewal of collective violence as a research subject.
The articles tackle the issue of mass violence in various contexts, in the form of case studies that contributes to the preciseness and tangibility of this issue’s focus. These articles all have in common the adoption of a transdisciplinary perspective, and a common leaning towards anthropological questions.
This issue’s content can be divided into three mains approaches: a third of the contributions analyzes the symbolic significance of wartime violent practices, another third studies how space is transformed and appropriated during or after the cleansings of populations, while the last third focuses on the persistence of a moral dimension given to mass murder, specifically analyzing past violent perpetrators accounts and the relationships between civilians and ex-servicemen.
The recensions and an interview that complete this issue shed light on the multiplicity of national and international research customs that shaped its content.
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Coordinated by Deniz Günce Demirhisar, Ilan Lew and Marina Repezza.
What is the common point between a former professor of Sao Paulo University revisiting his stance during a dictatorship, a young Chilean bank employee whose trade-union activities are influenced by his conception of past militancy, a French couple spending weekends reenacting a Merovingian sheep pen and its essential know-how, and elders assembled onstage to retell poignant fragments of their lives? It is the link between one’s connection to the past with future horizons of actions.
This issue draws on enquiries leading to the observation of various socio-historical contexts and to their exploration by different ethnographical methods. The articles constituting this issue all have in common to resort to subjective analysis and to put individuals at the center of case studies to address collective memory and more specifically, collected memory.
Coordinated by Stéphane Baele.
This issue of Émulations is, to our knowledge, the first of its kind to be entirely devoted to studying the Belgian political crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2011. Thanks to contributions anchored in various scientific domains, this issue proposes a complex and unusual reading of this political episode, replacing it at the confluence of structural, historical, psychological, sociological and political dynamics. Going beyond the usual descriptions of ratios of power and influence of factions and parties, the authors shed light on the general difficulty shared by contemporary states: how to adapt when it is needed the most, when crisis paradoxically becomes the norm. Belgium is faced with this difficulty in a specific way that calls for the innovative but realist reforms that are mentioned throughout this issue.
Coordinated by Delphine Masset.
Since the artistic avant-gardes, reserved for the ‘initiated’, art would be perceived – following its multiple transgressive evolutions – as going hand in hand with social reforms. In modern times, art has thus become the preferred scene to carry out the instauration of a new perception and relationship with the (political) world, far from the day-to-day social conventions and decorum.
Throughout this issue of Émulations, readers can evaluate the relationship between art and democracy in six articles that, as chance would have it, are all written by female researchers. These articles contribute to our understanding of this link between art and politics, both regarding what can be called “democratic art” and the process shaping its dissemination.
Coordinated by Stéphane Baele.
Every political policy relies on categories. This deceptively simple statement is the common ground for all the articles united in this issue of Émulations. Together, these articles explore the dynamics at work in the setting up, crystallization, and disappearance of political categories. Émulations thus bets on resorting on the collective investigation of what should be considered as the most fundamental political process: categorization. From affirmative action to nuclear waste management, the legal recognition of handicaps, the way to measure productivity and wealth, the strategies used by minorities to resist exclusion, categorization show the full strength of its political dimension as a key normative process to organize society. In this issue, empirical studies and theoretical analysis jointly explore the vast complexity of categorizations that often appear to be unavoidable, almost natural. This diversity produces a dialogue with multiple meeting points that underline potential future research developments.
Coordinated by Quentin Martens and Brice Goddin.
This issue is devoted to the study of the European Union building process, and focuses on the relationships that the EU maintains with the rest of the world. If there is no question that the Union has the means to become a major actor of the international scene, the issue of the political decisions that underlying the implementation of the values that shape its foreign policy still requires further investigation. This issue aims to shed light on the mechanisms that allow Europe to build its identity relying on a set of values in constant international dialogue with surrounding societies. This issue is the second and last one devoted by Émulations to the analysis of contemporary European construction.
Coordinated by Quentin Martens and Grégoire Lits.
The editors of this issue of Émulations took it to heart to situate their vision of the European continent while paying tribute to those of Robert Picht and Bronislaw Geremek, who recently passed. These two would have assuredly been pleased by this passing of the baton in the European studies. This transition to other visions is not a mimetic prolongation, but takes into account the posterity of a teaching as well as of an audacity and of an innovative stance. The transversal perspective regrouped here are those of a generation of Europeans who have mostly not lived neither tragical nor miraculous times. To them, Franco-German reconciliation and the unification of a continent once divided ceased to be the horizons of the European construction. Such utopias of the last half of the 20th century became true. Thus, the current generation is a more difficult one to rally around the theme of European integration. Peace that has been acquired after the Cold War is almost merely an unpleasant memory. How then can we instill a hugolian momentum to the European dream?
Coordinated by Grégoire Lits.
Often considered as the unsung father of sociology, Georg Simmel proposes a specific sociology that consideres individuals as the “immediate and tangible places of all historical reality” This affirmation that sums up the main characteristic of his practice of sociology has often been wrongly interpretated as a methodological individualism. Contrary to a widespread conception, Simmel’s sociology is not one in which norms, social constraints and even society are absent.
The specificity of his sociological vision lies in the never-ending analytical articulation between the individual who is, when he acts, “assaulted by strange subjective states” and who is, at the same time, always part of a set of reciprocal actions that possess a formal and objective existence. What is a stake in simmelian analysis is to grasp such duality of human lives in its modernity, to seize this modern condition as Danilo Martuccellu calls it. Individualism is only possible in the crystallization of a tension within action between subjective experience and subjective globality. If the individual is the tangible place of all historical (and thus social) reality it is because the overlooking objectivity in society can only function when confronted subjectively to such objectivity – that is, to other individuals. This is why, according to Simmel, we are all caught in “reciprocal actions”.
Drawing from here, the articles proposed in this issue of Émulations all answer to the question of how this vision of the social life – of the modern condition – can allow us today to grasp in a renewed way what individuals previously experienced.
Coordinated by Stéphane Baele.
This fourth issue of Émulations is the first of its second volume, the first of a new year. After a successful period marked by eclecticism, the second year of Émulations is that of bigger challenges: an increase in the number of articles submitted, as well as of their geographical provenance, an ongoing work on Émulations’ recognition and diffusion, the publishing and sale of paper issues, a new website, etc. The most import challenge that we took up is that of the occasional publishing of themed issues – a challenge that starts here.
The book reviews section of the journal.
The interviews section of the journal.
The varia section of the journal.
Contact : maxime.behar@revue-emulations.net et anne.dalles@revue-emulations.net
Émulations is an international Open-Access peer-reviewed social sciences journal published by the University Press of Louvain (Belgium) that publishes four thematic issues every year. The journal has also three online-only sections: varia, book critique and interview.
New website: https://journals.openedition.org/emulations/
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Last thematic issues
2022 - #42
Race, Racism, Racialization
2022 - #41
Moral Panics. 50 years after Stanley Cohen
2021 - #39-40
Teaching fieldwork. Transmit, experiment, experience
2021 - #38
Catholicism and medical practices. Socio-historical approaches (XXth-XXIst centuries)
2021 - #37
Associations and bureaucratisation: African perspectives
2020 - #35-36
Health, inequalities, discriminations
2020 - #34
Transnationalizing the return
2020 - #33
The urban night
2019 - #32
At the edges of kinship. Margins in contempory kinship studies
Published with financial support from the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique-FNRS (Belgian National Science Foundation).
ISSN (electronic) : 1784-5734 - ISSN (paper) : 2030-5656.
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