Written in the form of a dialogue with Brussels sociologist Dieter Vandebroeck, this article retraces the social and intellectual trajectory of Loïc Wacquant as stepping stone to reviewing and discussing the major concepts coined and theoretical propositions elaborated in the course of his research on comparative urban marginality, racial domination, the ghetto, the penal state, neoliberalism, and carnality. This provides an opportunity to specify the relationships between ethnography, history and theory; the dialectic of domination and resistance; the role of (...) public (dis)honor in social life; the uses of Bourdieu's bureaucratic field; and the social and academic conditions of incubation, diffusion, and death of scholarly myths such as the “underclass.” The article closes on a call to clearly distinguish the rhetorical, metaphorical, and analytical usages of concepts and reaffirms the need for epistemic reflexivity as sine qua non for the articulation of robust scientific problematics. (shrink)

The sudden growth and glorification of the penal state in the United States after the mid-1970s (and in Western Europe two decades later) is not a response to the evolution of crime, but a reaction to—and a diversion from—the social insecurity produced by the fragmentation of wage labor and the destabilization of ethnoracial hierarchies following the discarding of the Fordist-Keynesian compact. It partakes of a new government of poverty wedding restrictive “workfare” and expansive “prisonfare,” which ensnares the precarious fractions of (...) the postindustrial proletariat in a carceral-assistential net designed to steer them towards deregulated employment or to contain them in their dispossessed neighborhoods and in the booming prisons that have become their satellites. This policy of penalization of urban marginality guided by moral behaviorism partakes of a broader reengineering and remasculinizing of the state that has rendered obsolete the traditional scholarly and policy division between welfare and crime. It must be grasped, not under the narrow rubric of repression, but under the generative category of production, as it has spawned new state agencies, social types, knowledges and experts. It makes the study of incarceration an essential chapter in the sociology of the state and social stratification in the era of triumphant neoliberalism. (shrink)

I use the collection of “carnal ethnographies” of martial arts and combat sports assembled by Raul Sanchez and Dale Spencer under the title Fighting Scholars to spotlight the fruitfulness of deploying habitus as both empirical object (explanandum) and method of inquiry (modus cognitionis). The incarnate study of incarnation supports five propositions that clear up tenacious misconceptions about habitus and bolster Bourdieu’s dispositional theory of action: (1) far from being a “black box,” habitus is fully amenable to empirical inquiry; (2) the (...) distinction between primary (generic) and secondary (specific) habitus enables us to capture the malleability of dispositions; (3) habitus is composed of cognitive, conative and affective elements: categories, skills, and desires; (4) habitus allows us to turn carnality from problem to resource for the production of sociological knowledge; and (5) thus to realize that all social agents are, like martial artists, suffering beings collectively engaged in embodied activities staged inside circles of shared commitments. (shrink)

We introduce a notion of syntactical truth predicate (s.t.p.) for the second order arithmetic PA 2 . An s.t.p. is a set T of closed formulas such that: (i) T(t = u) if and only if the closed first order terms t and u are convertible, i.e., have the same value in the standard interpretation (ii) T(A → B) if and only if (T(A) $\Longrightarrow$ T(B)) (iii) T(∀ x A) if and only if (T(A[x ← t]) for any closed first (...) order term t) (iv) T(∀ X A) if and only if (T(A[X ←▵]) for any closed set definition $\triangle = \{x \mid D(x)\}$ ). S.t.p.'s can be seen as a counterpart to Tarski's notion of (model-theoretical) validity and have main model properties. In particular, their existence is equivalent to the existence of an ω-model of PA 2 , this fact being provable in PA 2 with arithmetical comprehension only. (shrink)

In this paper we present a discussion of the basic aspects of the well-known problem of prediction and inference in physics, with specific attention to the role of models, the use of data and the application of recent developments in artificial intelligence. By focussing in the time evolution of dynamic system, it is shown that main difficulties in predictions arise due to the presence of few factors as: the occurrence of chaotic dynamics, the existence of many variables with very different (...) characteristic time-scales and the lack of an accurate understanding of the underlying physical phenomena. It is shown that a crucial role is assigned to the preliminary identification of the proper variables, their selection and the identification of an appropriate level of description (coarse-graining procedure). Moreover, it is discussed the relevance, even in modern practical issues, of old well-known fundamental results, like the Poincaré recurrence theorem, the Kac’s lemma and the Richard’s paradox. (shrink)

Pourquoi les STAPS (Sciences et Techniques des Activités Physiques et Sportives), discipline universitaire et de recherche sont-elles fragmentées en une multitude de programmes et de sous-programmes? Qui est-ce qui assure le succès général des sports comme contenus d'éducation physique scolaire et explique l'accueil extrêmement favorable qui leur est fait dans nos sociétés? Les STAPS peuvent-elles être une science?

L’installation et le développement de la discipline universitaire « Sciences et techniques des activités physiques et sportives » ne peuvent être pleinement compris que si l’on voit qu’ils résultent de l’action conjointe de facteurs cognitifs et sociaux. La perspective sociohistorique montre que ce qui est arrivé récemment a d’abord été préparé par un long processus non linéaire et complexe. Mais il a encore fallu sur le court terme un dynamisme cognitif interne et des effets sociaux multiples, enchevêtrés, voulus et non (...) voulus, afin que s’établissent l’instutionnalisation irréversible de cette nouvelle discipline universitaire, son « académisation », puis son expansion « démographique ».The setting-up and development of the « sport sciences » as an academic discipline can only be fully grasped by acknowledging that it results from the combined action of both cognitive and social factors. Viewed in a social and historical light, what has recently taken place proves to have come at the end of a long, complex and winding process. But, in the short run, internal cognitive dynamics as well as multiple and intertwined social effects – whether intended or not – were also necessary for the non-reversible institutionalization of this new academic discipline, its establishment as part of the academia and eventually its « demographic » expansion. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article présente l’analyse d’une expérience de construction de savoirs mathématiques en rapports avec les machines, dans les années 1950 et 1960, à une époque où le calcul analogique cohabitait avec le calcul digital (c’est-à-dire le futur « ordinateur », terme introduit dans la langue française pour désigner principalement les « digital computers »). Les mathématiques en jeu relèvent des théories des systèmes dynamiques, c’est-à-dire des outils mathématiques construits pour comprendre la dynamique de différents types de systèmes, qu’ils soient (...) mathématiques, physiques, biologiques, mécaniques, etc. L’objet du présent article est à la fois un groupe de chercheurs, leurs pratiques de « mathématiques pour l’ingénieur », leurs efforts pour construire des calculateurs analogiques (mécanique ou électronique) pour étudier la dynamique, le programme baptisé « Dynamique théorique » qu’ils se sont fixés, et l’épistémologie des mathématiques sous-tendant leur pratique. (shrink)

Tomando como referencia la obra de Pierre Bourdieu, se reconstruyen los orígenes del concepto de habitus y desde una perspectiva sintética se indican algunas de sus principales propiedades teóricas. Se reseñan los principales horizontes teóricos de los que participa esta noción.

In this response to my critics, I amplify the conceptual clarification and methodological stipulation of habitus begun in ‘Homines in extremis’ to help us move from a sociology of the body as socially construc-ted object to a sociology from the body as socially construc-ting vector of knowledge, power, and practice. The specification of habitus by membership in collectives, attachment to institutions, and analytic purpose makes it a flexible multi-scalar notion with which to construct the epistemic individual and account for both (...) reproduction and change, conformity and creativity, as well as self-revision. For this, we must reject theological interpretations that rigidly lock habitus into Bourdieu’s framework; avoid conflating the formal properties of the notion with its concrete features in specific settings and cases; and distinguish between the rhetorical invocation of his concepts (‘speaking Bourdieuese’) and their effective deployment in the construction of the empirical object. As embodied and embedded capacity, habitus brings temporality, depth, and desire to the analytic epicenter. It reminds us that the social world is not transparent, open-ended, and instantaneous, but endowed with gravity, opacity, and asymmetry. Treating the sentient and skilled organism as fount of both social intelligence and sociological acumen can help historical social science connect with enactive psychology and recover the carnality of action that conventional accounts of social life routinely erase. (shrink)

We propose that interaction rules derived from polyamine exchange in connected cells may explain the spatio‐temporal organization of gap junctions observed during tissue regeneration and tumorigenesis. We also hypothesize that polyamine exchange can be considered as signal that allows cells to sense the proliferation status of their neighbors. Polyamines (putrescine, spermidine, and spermine) are indeed small aliphatic polycations that serve as fuels to sustain elevated proliferation rates of the order observed in cancer cells. Based on recent reports, we consider here (...) that polyamines can be exchanged through gap junction channels between mammalian cells. Such intercellular exchange of polyamines has critical consequences on the local control of growth. In line with this hypothesis, the complex protein network that keeps polyamine levels finely tuned in mammalian cells can translate polyamine efflux or influx into integrated signals controlling transcription, translation, and cell communications. (shrink)

Both the physiological and the pathological morphogenetic processes that we can meet in embryogenesis, neogenesis and degenerative dysgenesis present common features: they are ruled by three different kinds of mechanisms, one related to cell migration, the second to cell differentiation and the third to cell proliferation. We deal here with an application to the cambial growth which essentially involves the third type of mechanism.Woody plants produce secondary tissue (secondary xylem and phloem) from a meristematic tissue called vascular cambium, responsible for (...) the radial growth of a tree. This paper focuses on the formation of secondary xylem, considered in two dimensions in a cross-section framework. A new discrete modelling approach is used, based on the cellular scale, in order to attain a more accurate understanding of how the elementary microscopic behaviour of each cell takes part in the macroscopic morphogenesis. The mathematical model essentially uses an occurrence method simulating the main features of radial growth with simple geometric rules, such as Thom's division rule (Thom,1972)to account for the cell proliferation. The study applies to concrete instances in which the changes made in the geometrical cellular patterns of the vascular cambium clearly affect the shape of the tree, as in Pinus radiata (D. Don.). (shrink)

Drawing on the Begriffsgeschichte of Reinhart Koselleck and the reflexive sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, my book The Invention of the ‘Underclass’ draws a microhistory of the birth, diffusion, and demise of this racialized folk devil at the intersection of the academic field, the journalistic field, and the politics-policy-philanthropic field. This history illuminates the politics of knowledge about dispossessed and dishonored categories in the metropolis and suggests three notions that can help researchers parse the use and abuse of other social science (...) constructs and thus practice better conceptual hygiene: lemming effects (illustrated by the wild rush to deploy ‘diaspora’), conceptual speculative bubble (as with ‘racial capitalism’), and turnkey problematics (such as the ‘resilient city’ and the ‘creative city’). I discuss the factors that foster the development of epistemic bandwagons, speculation, and turnkeys, and specify the criteria that make for a robust concept in terms of semantics (clarity and neutrality), logics (coherence and type-specificity), and heuristics (empirical adequacy and theoretical productivity). (shrink)

Most decisions concerning insurance and self-protection have to be taken in situations in which the effort exerted precedes the moment uncertainty realizes, and the probabilities of future states of the world are not perfectly known. By integrating these two characteristics in a simple theoretical framework, this paper derives plausible conditions under which ambiguity aversion raises the demand for insurance and self-protection. In particular, it is shown that in most usual situations where the level of ambiguity does not increase with the (...) level of effort, a simple condition of ambiguity prudence known as decreasing absolute ambiguity aversion is sufficient to give a clear and positive answer to the question: Does ambiguity aversion raise the optimal level of effort? (shrink)

This paper reflects on the notion of partial ambiguity. Using a framework decomposing ambiguity into distinct layers of analysis, among which are risk and model uncertainty, and allowing for different attitudes toward these layers, I show that partial ambiguity may prove less desirable than full ambiguity, even under ambiguity aversion. This observation poses difficulties for interpreting the notion of partial ambiguity in relation to the partial information available to determine the potential compositions of an ambiguous urn. Two Ellsberg-style thought experiments (...) are described to challenge the meaning of partial ambiguity further, and an alternative interpretation, based on a more ambiguous relation, is discussed. (shrink)

Resumen La formidable expansión e intensificación de las actividades de la policía norteamericana, las cortes criminales y las prisiones durante los últimos treinta años ha sido finamente dirigida, en primer lugar a la clase, en segundo a la raza, y en tercero al territorio, conduciendo no a un encarcelamiento masivo sino a un hiper-encarcelamiento del (sub)proletariado conformado por hombres negros que provienen del ghetto implosionado. Esta triple selectividad revela que el edificio del pantagruélico estado punitivo que ha hecho de los (...) Estados Unidos el campeón mundial del encarcelamiento resulta una reacción tardía al movimiento de los Derechos Civiles y a los disturbios de los ghettos de mediado de los años sesenta, y un instrumento desplegado para fomentar la revolución neoliberal ayudando a imponer la inseguridad laboral como el horizonte normal de trabajo para las fracciones no cualificadas de la clase trabajadora postindustrial. El doble acople de la prisión con el hiperghetto dilapidado, por un lado, y el workfare 2 por el otro, no es un dilema moral sino un problema político que requiere un análisis expandido del nexo del estigma étnico, la desigualdad de clase y el castigo en la era postfordista. (shrink)

Morphogenesis is a key process in developmental biology. An important issue is the understanding of the generation of shape and cellular organisation in tissues. Despite of their great diversity, morphogenetic processes share common features. This work is an attempt to describe this diversity using the same formalism based on a cellular description. Tissue is seen as a multi-cellular system whose behaviour is the result of all constitutive cells dynamics. Morphogenesis is then considered as a spatiotemporal organization of cells activities. We (...) show how this formalism relies on Reaction–Diffusion/Positional Information approach and how it permits to generalize its modelling possibilities. Three quite different applications for concrete morphogenetic processes are presented. The first one is a model for epithelial invagination, the second is a model of cellular differentiation by local cell–cell signalling. The last example is the secondary radial growth of conifer trees. From the mathematical point of view, different modelling tools are used according to the specificity of each process. (shrink)

Reasonning in naive set theory (with unlimited comprehension), we derive a paradox (a formal contradiction) which can be seen as a variant of the Burali-Forti paradox.

Résumé Loin d’être un programme de recherche tourné uniquement vers l’abstraction, la physiocratie comporte une dimension empirique tout à fait centrale dans sa constitution et dans son développement. L’étude de cette dimension permet de mettre au jour les liens généalogiques et méthodologiques qui ont uni le mouvement physiocratique et les traditions anglaise et française de l’arithmétique politique. En outre, une attention portée à l’inventaire des différentes activités agricoles et à la mesure de leurs productions respectives témoigne d’une autre influence importante (...) dans la construction de l’économie politique de Quesnay, à savoir l’agronomie, alors en plein renouveau sous l’impulsion de Duhamel du Monceau. (shrink)

This article draws on 35 months of ethnographic fieldwork and apprenticeship in a boxing gym located in Chicago's black ghetto to explicate how prizefighters apperceive and express the fact of being live commodities of flesh and blood, and how they practically reconcile themselves to ruthless exploitation in ways that enable them to maintain a sense of personal integrity and moral purpose. The boxer's experience of corporeal exploitation is expressed in three kindred idioms, those of prostitution, slavery and animal husbandry. The (...) first likens the fighter-manager combo to the prostitute-pimp duo; the second depicts the ring as a plantation and promoters as latter-day slave masters; the third intimates that boxers are used in the manner of livestock. All three tropes simultaneously enounce and denounce the immoral marketing of disquiescent bodies. But this acute consciousness is neutralized by the doxic belief in the normalcy of exploitation, in the `agency' of corporeal entrepreneurship, and in the possibility of individual exceptionalism. This practical belief, inscribed in the bodily dispositions of the fighter, helps produce the collective misrecognition whereby boxers collude in their own commercialization. (shrink)

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has some basic structural features similar to that of most judicial bodies. According to the treaties, the members of the Court are chosen from individuals whose independence is beyond doubt and who possess the ability required for appointment to higher judicial offices. The involvement of the Court and its president in the most important reforms of the European Union's judicial architecture in recent years is a striking feature which may be called (...) judicial self‐government. International courts have shifted away from being principally committed to dispute settlement towards pursuing other goals, such as advancing international norms and facilitating cooperative international arrangements. The reinforcement of the cooperation of the Court with national courts on the one hand, and with international courts and tribunals on the other, is one of the great current challenges facing the Court. (shrink)

In the field of NLP, “noise” is a notion with many different meanings. This is also true in fields of linguistics in which the analysis of ecological data is central.In studies involving corpus linguistic methods, noise management is an essential process for data collection, data structuration and data analysis. Paradoxically, this step is almost never developed, or completely ignored.In this paper, we propose to focus on the management of noise during the various stages classically defined in the processing of an (...) oral corpus: data structuration (including transcription), data enrichment (including annotation) and data analysis.We show that noise management is a cross-cutting issue: it needs to be taken into account during the phases of structuration, data enrichment and analysis of linguistic corpora. More specifically, the creation of corpora of children’s productions leads us to manage a particular type of noise: the variation regarding the so-called “standard” forms. For noise management, we show that there is no ideal methodology: noise management is specific to each project. Moreover, decisions taken at one stage necessarily influence the others: a noise generated during data structuration may cause a silence during automatic processing; a noise “cleaned up” during the processing phase may generate a silence during analysis. (shrink)

The agronomist who wants to study the nutrient and water uptake of roots needs a quantitative three-dimensional dynamic model of the structure of root systems.The model presented takes into account current knowledge about the morphogenesis of root systems. It describes the root system as a set of root axes, characterised by their orders. The morphogenetic properties of root axes differ according to their order. The axes of order 1 are directly inserted on the stem, the axes of order 2 are (...) inserted on axes of order 1, and so on. They tend to be more plagiotropec and to have less vascular bundles as the order increases. (shrink)

This article seeks to illumine the street-level, internal, meshing of social structure, strategy and experience in the contemporary black American ghetto by dissecting the practices of a professional `hustler' who works the streets of Chicago's South Side. A socioanalytic interpretation of Rickey's life - his background, worldview and social attachments, as well as his techniques of coping and methods of predatory entrepreneuralism - shows how individual strategies of survival at the core of today's `dark ghetto' can aggregate into a trajectory (...) of collective destruction that gives all appearances of being self-inflicted, even as it is (over)determined by the twofold retrenchment of market and state and by the social entropy that these determine. Through an ironic historical reversal, it is whites who, having vanished from the social universe and consciousness of ghetto residents, have become the `invisible men' of the new sociospatial structure of relegation that consigns poor urban blacks to an internecine war with neither victors nor end. The analysis of a single individual lifeworld thus serves to illumine the whole system of material and symbolic relations, visible and invisible, local and societal, that compose the late 20th-century ghetto as instrument of relegation and lived reality. (shrink)

De los relatos que Jack London ha consagrado al boxeo, A Piece of Steak es sin dudas aquel que merece hoy nuestra mayor atención, e incluso un lugar en el panteón de los textos literarios sobre el Noble Arte, y junto a él otros tres títulos..

Using as case studies the initiatives developed by two museum curators, the Belgian bibliographer Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and the Austrian social scientist Otto Neurath (1882–1945), and their subsequent collaboration with an extended network of scientists, philanthropists, artists, and social activists, this article provides a portrait of the general movement toward the creation of a new form of museum: the “museum of the future,” as Neurath labeled it. This museum would be able to enlighten the people by showing the nature of (...) modern industrial civilization. The promoters of the “museum of the future” intended to reform museum practices by organizing exhibitions of social facts, but also by integrating several dimensions – architecture, commerce, entertainment, pedagogy, and science and technology – to create a holistic frame to address their audience. However, the effortlessly circulating museum Neurath and Otlet envisioned stood in sharp contrast to the many, often immaterial, boundaries they encountered in their attempt to implement their vision. Ever-growing nationalism, the professionalization of social science, and the increasing commercialization of scientific vulgarization are some of the factors that help explain their failure. (shrink)

Cet échange avec l’association grenobloise À bientôt j’espère retrace un travail singulier de diffusion itinérante de films documentaires qui expérimente depuis plusieurs années des possibilités alternatives de visionnage cinématographique. Comment organiser des milieux conviviaux de rencontre entre publics hétérogènes, non spécialisés et formes cinématographiques méconnues?

We have developed an approach to implementing a system for managing situated knowledge for complex instruments. Our aim is to develop a system that guides a user through the steps for operating complex scientific instruments. A user manual is often inadequate support for a community of users, so direct communication with an expert is often required. One reason for this is that not all of the author’s expert knowledge was included in the manual, thus limiting the contents to explicit knowledge. (...) This is a main concern of modern knowledge management practitioners who are attempting to design systems that consider both explicit and tacit knowledge. The key is to distribute explicit knowledge through interaction with the real world so that users can develop tacit knowledge as well as acquire explicit knowledge. We describe technical difficulties related to referencing the real world, which is required for interaction, and describe a novel approach to building a low-cost three-dimensional pointer for obtaining the required knowledge, which constitutes our preliminary result. (shrink)