Domestic space as a social total fact. Thinking by using photography.

How to produce a photographic essay with an esthetic, but also scientific, value? This is the starting point of our research on domestic interiors. By using photography as a method of analysis and at the same time communication, we wanted to explore links between furniture and great contemporary social issues, such as fragmentation of biographies, increasing mobilities, expanding possibilities of choice and ethic of individual performance. This article focuses on methodological choices regarding the use of photograph (comparability, neutrality [...]

Déplacer les disciplines : le nouveau rôle des aires

Our societies appear increasingly polarized between the camp of the advocates of "de-globalization" and that of the relentless globalists. Such polarization obscures, by caricaturing it, the complexity of the challenge of human plurality and generates a dilemma, illusory to a certain extent, between the quest for generality and the consideration of particularities. In the humanities and social sciences, this dilemma takes the shape, among others, of a recurring debate about the relation between “the disciplines” and area studies. Overcoming [...]

Du travail de l’histoire à la professionnalisation de la raison.

Anheim, Étienne. 2018. Le travail de l’histoire. Paris : Éditions de la Sorbonne, coll. « Itinéraires ».

Etienne Anheim’s book is the published version of the synthesis thesis constituting his authorization to direct research, supported in 2015. By questioning the historian’s profession in the continuity of Marc Bloch’s work, the author skilfully raises the question of the professional practice of history, the conditions of its teaching and its influence beyond the spheres of research. [...]

Croiser les disciplines, se croiser dans l’indiscipline.

Dialogue autour de la notion de rythme.

As polysemous and intangible as the notion of "rhythm" might be, one must note its capacity to make diverse disciplines (such as geography, literature, biology, dance, sociology or economy) work and speak together. Wishing to pursue this dialogue, can the specific conditions to build a common reflection and the production of an "undisciplined knowledge" be identified ? In light of the seminar "Urban Rhythms" – that took place in Lausanne from 8 to 10 November 2017 –, our reflection [...]

Néandertal : Une espèce en voie de disparition ?

Is Neanderthal a very real and singular species, who disappeared from the surface of the globe "with" the advent of Homo sapiens, or rather a buffer category of human paleontology, originally useful to the progress of this science, especially to define Sapiens, but whose obsolescence was epistemologically programmed and which arrives today at the end of its scientific life ? [...]

Pratiquer l’interdisciplinarité : pourquoi persister ?

In charge of the conclusion of a seminar devoted to the evaluation of the multidisciplinary practices of young researchers with various disciplinary trainings, the author drives the reader of this paper into a confrontation of the postures and experiences of these "newbies" with her own, built in its long time of experience in interdisciplinarity. By identifying first the points of convergence – to get out of disciplinary rigidity and invent an assembling method –, she then detects those that deviate from [...]

Une architecture des frontières.

Teyssot, Georges. 2016. Une topologie du quotidien. Lausanne : Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes, coll. « Poche Architecture ».

In Une topologie du quotidien, Georges Teyssot positions himself as an architect of borders. The border is studied under various angles : physical, ontological, epistemological. This analysis stems from an initial observation that the traditional conception of borders is unsatisfactory, and doesn’t explain the current limits of a house, a field, or an object. A new concept of border is drawn by Teyssot. [...]

Science, histoire des sciences et vérité scientifique.

Recension croisée de Guenancia, Pierre, Maryvonne Perrot et Jean-Jacques Wunenburger (dirs.). 2016. Bachelard et Canguilhem. Dijon : Cahiers Gaston Bachelard (n°14) et de Barreau, Aurélien. 2016. De la vérité dans les sciences. Paris : Dunod.

What does truth mean for science ? Bachelard, Canguilhem and Dagognet, French philosophers who are also mathematicians and doctors, produced some important ideas about truth : it is not something that exists as a quality of the scientific object, it is something that the scientist creates according to its own likings, and not in relation with some objective characteristics of the world. More recently, a philosopher who is also an astrophysicist, Barrau, has elaborated an original epistemic approach, stating [...]

Les murs de la critique.

If by looking at a reality we cannot change the model we have of it, then this model teaches us nothing. The theoretical model of critical and radical theory is based on the concepts of alienation and reification. I argue that the objects of interest of these theories cannot contradict their theoretical model. Critical studies have fostered the emergence of new scientifically legitimate objects — gender, minorities — but have also built solid walls around them. There is contradiction [...]