Mais La Research Articles

Les plateformes : assureurs du XXI e siècle ?

Alors que l’assurance a d’abord constitué un enjeu important pour les plateformes en raison de la confiance qu’elle insuffle aux utilisateurs, la multiplication des plateformes a ensuite obligé les assureurs à entreprendre, en collaboration avec des acteurs spécialisés, leur transformation digitale, afin de maintenir leur compétitivité. Le modèle économique des plateformes numériques et les écosystèmes qui s’y construisent présentent encore d’indéniables avantages pour les assureurs en termes de croissance et de création de valeur, mais la stratégie big data de ces plateformes peut aussi laisser craindre qu’elles deviennent les assureurs de demain.

Le Bien: édification, exemple et scandale dans le roman du xixe siècle. Édité par Mathilde Bertrand et Paolo Tortonese

This engaging and elegantly written edited volume tackles the problem of goodness in the nineteenth-century novel — a problem derived from the idée reçue that the genre concerns itself with anything and everything other than goodness. The collection focuses on Balzac, especially L’Envers de l’histoire contemporaine, and Flaubert, especially Un cœur simple, these two authors both having had famous things to say about the topic at hand. More surprisingly, it also focuses on Barbey d’Aurevilly, especially Un prêtre marié. Hugo and Zola are discussed more sketchily, as are various non-canonical works of edifying literature. The collection has no index and no bibliography and seems mostly unaware of English-language criticism beyond Peter Brooks. It has four chapters that each function as a kind of introduction, the last of which finally discusses the eighteenth-century background, especially Rousseau: goodness in the nineteenth-century novel makes most sense if one starts with Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse or, failing that, Richardson. The collection is at its most interesting when it thinks about what goodness comes to mean in nineteenth-century fiction. The old good of inflexibly upholding moral imperatives becomes bad and is replaced by the new good of demonstrating pity, compassion, empathy, generosity, and benevolence. Yet, nineteenth-century authors increasingly exhibit a post-Romantic disenchantment (what Stendhal, oddly absent from this collection, refers to as suspicion), according to which all empathy is delusional and narcissistic. Could it be that goodness is only to be found in intelligent self-awareness (Baudelaire) or blind stupidity (Flaubert)? For unless goodness is either intelligent or stupid, it is false (bourgeois). Much is made of the opposition between Flaubert and Sand, who famously corresponded on the problem goodness poses. Flaubert’s tales of sanctity suggest, however, that he was straining to find a goodness that Sand felt more confidently able to locate within herself and others. Baudelaire makes only fleeting appearances as a point of reference, but alongside the (self-)mocking disenchantment evident in his prose poems, we might do well to consider the extent to which he too pursued the ideal represented by la conscience dans le bien. As Balzac famously puts it, true Catholic charity must be ‘aussi savante que le vice’ (p. 110). However, the goodness analysed by Balzac, and more generally by this excellent collection, finally owes more to Rousseau than to Catholicism: it takes the form not of virtue but rather of pity, or benevolence. Thomas Pavel has pertinent things to say about three forms of love: amor concupiscentiae, amor amicitiae, and amor benevolentiae. Goodness, in both Romanticism and the crabbed post-Romanticism that so struggles to believe in goodness, is always finally the last of these. Benevolence allows us both not to recoil before distress and to give of ourselves. It also causes us patiently to accept the help of others: to understand that gifts are not in fact a form of violence. Benevolence might indeed imply a form of possession, but ‘cette possession […] n’évoque ni la maîtrise sur une personne ni le droit d’en disposer, mais la dévotion et les soins’ (p. 30).

Undoing Odysseus’s Pact: Marginal Faces and Voices in the Narratives of Assia Djebar and Agnès Varda

While reading Ces Voix qui m'assiegent ... en marge de ma francophonie, Assia Djebar's collection of writings on language, I could not help but recall Agnes Varda's autobiographical film Les Plages d'Agnes, in which she narrates her own life story by returning to specific scenes from her films. Each memory becomes a shore at which filmmaker stops to reconstruct a significant moment of her life. Just like Varda, in Ces Voix qui m'assiegent, Djebar revisits key scenes from her books, including prologues and epilogues, to reflect on symbolic significance of her novels and her own position visa-vis and Francophone literature. Both authors use Homer's Odyssey as an allegory to construct a metanarrative about their career and personal experience. The Odyssey is, of course, a common literary trope, but Varda and Djebar bring another dimension to this classical narrative, almost turning it upside down. As they revisit repertoire of images, stories, and documents, they challenge masculine control over women's representation and authorship that is explicit in Homer's text. In this article, I attempt to construct a dialogue between novelist and filmmaker Assia Djebar and writer and director Agnes Varda. Most often, academic studies consider Djebar's work through a postcolonial lens, focusing primarily on Algerian colonial history. As a result, reading of patriarchy in her work is frequently confined to framework of imperialism, where it is seen as an oppressive structure, but also as a liberating outlet: Djebar's education opened door for her writing career and allowed her to escape from tradition of seclusion and veiling. (1) By opening up a dialogue between Varda and Djebar, I seek to complicate this binary by looking into structures operating within domain of artistic expression. I ask how these two artists, who were paradoxically situated simultaneously at margins and center of their fields, addressed this challenge while treating themes inside and outside Hexagone. In performing this reading, I do not wish to consolidate a universal patriarchal project or gloss over different contexts of both authors under a banner of universal feminism. As Clarisse Zimra has suggested, a feminist reading need not imply that one comes to a definitive and essential textual truth, but, rather, to a specifically grounded and firmly circumscribed one. French Feminism (the handle has conveniently covered a variety of diverging positions) was always more strategy than methodology. (Disorienting Subject 151) By examining this moment of convergence between patriarchies, I seek to highlight elusive way in which power structures operate by constantly organizing and reorganizing their discourse, sometimes aligning with forces that seem to be contradictory to their own. This will in turn elucidate complex and precarious position of Djebar's work as it navigates sometimes competing and sometimes converging and Algerian structures. At center of these converging systems figures a gendered dynamic that operates by disconnecting female voice and image--a visual representation, or an abstraction of women's body--in way that Djebar describes in her critique of Delacroix's painting Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, Regard interdit, son coupe (262) (forbidden gaze/severed sound). Djebar concludes her Femmes d'Alger by casting light on broader mechanisms at work outside Orientalist, or colonial, purview of harem: II n'y a plus de serail. Mais la 'structure de serail' tente d'imposer, dans les nouveaux terrains vagues, ses lois de l'invisibilite, loi du (262). (There are no longer seraglios, but the structure of seraglio tries to impose its laws of invisibility and silence over distant new lands. …

Les boudoirs dans l’œuvre de Balzac: surveiller, mentir, désirer, mourir par Jean-François Richer

by riches (48). For his part, Raffaele Carbone reads Montaigne in dialogue with Giordano Bruno, both of whom “ont cultivé une forme de marginalité capable de remettre en cause l’ordre social et politique établi”(75).The growing number of students and scholars interested in Early Modern France and its Mediterranean context will enjoy Mahbouba Saï Tlili’s study of the anarchic society of corsaires barbaresques (Barbary pirates) in Marin Le Roy de Gomberville’s L’exil de Polexandre (1629), situated on an island “abritant le désordre et le chaos à la frontière d’un monde d’ordre et de droit” (121). The fact that Gomberville’s novel aims largely to “mettre en valeur la politique étrangère de la France en dénigrant sévèrement celle de l’Espagne” (129) reminds the reader that margins and marginality are largely a question of perspective. Mediterranean pirates are also the topic of Sandrine Blondet’s “Pirates et corsaires sur les théâtres parisiens en 1637.” There, the corsaire “ne revendique jamais sa marginalité, mais la subit, et la déplore” (154). The open definition of marginality throughout the volume, as well as the juxtaposition of authors from different places (England, France, Italy) and times (approximately 1530s–1680s), mean that the volume offers more a sample of possible topics related to a range of forms of marginality (often the case with conference proceedings) than a specifically focused treatment that results in carefully planned conceptual heavy lifting, which is not a problem—each of the chapters is informative, well written. A collection worth reading by anyone interested in the range of topics discussed. New York University Phillip John Usher Richer, Jean-François. Les boudoirs dans l’œuvre de Balzac: surveiller, mentir, désirer, mourir. Québec: Nota bene, 2012. ISBN 978-2-89518-370-9. Pp. 320. $30 Can. In the course of four chapters, Richer convincingly demonstrates the essential role played by the boudoir in the Balzacian universe.Richer takes us far from the eighteenthcentury erotic spaces of Crébillon fils and Sade into the darker terrain of the many boudoirs within the architecture of power constructed by Balzac across his oeuvre. “Le lieu des ébats est désormais un lieu de combats,”Richer notes of the divide between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries (42). Through close readings spanning Balzac’s fiction, and occasionally illuminated by references to other treatises of the period such as Chaumont’s 1841 Physiologie du boudoir et des femmes de Paris, Richer steers us through a series of boudoirs where private meets public, where, more often than not, suitors are infantilized, where rendezvous have lethal consequences, and where silence and eloquence reflect the destinies of individuals and the fates of politicians. Under the theoretical aegis of Foucault, chapter one,“Surveiller,” demonstrates the impossibility of intimacy within the boudoir. Narrators or other characters can be stationed just outside and husbands lurk. In short, the boudoir is anything but a private place. Appearances are deliberately deceptive here, as Richer shows in the 288 FRENCH REVIEW 88.4 Reviews 289 next chapter, “Mentir.” The boudoir at the beginning of Sarrasine uncovers, while at the same time covering up the origins of the Lanty fortune and the originary gender ambiguity that would prove fatal to Sarrasine. Rarely is desire consummated in this space of mendacity.As grown men enter the boudoir only to leave silenced and reduced to sons of a mother figure, the space is shown to be one haunted by the specter of incest. Not all males succumb to the dangers of the boudoir, however. Part of what distinguishes the triumvirate of (generally) successful Balzacian male protagonists— Eugène de Rastignac, Henri de Marsay, and le marquis de Ronquerolles—is their ability to wield their eloquence in this space so fraught with danger. As suitors of influential women, the boudoir, for them a space of conquest, serves to catapult them upward into brilliant public careers. The book’s final chapter, “Mourir,” exposes the boudoir to be, for many, a toxic space. There is, of course, the spectacular boudoir death scene of Paquita Valdes in La fille aux yeux d’or. More subtle, however, are other...

Integration of diagnosis and treatment of sleeping sickness in primary healthcare facilities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Control of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has always been a vertical programme, although attempts at integration in general health services were made in recent years. Now that HAT prevalence is declining, the integration question becomes even more crucial. We studied the level of attainment of integration of HAT case detection and management in primary care centres in two high-prevalence districts in the province of Bandundu, DRC. We visited all 43 first-line health centres of Mushie and Kwamouth districts, conducted structured interviews and inspected facilities using a standardised checklist. We focused on: availability of well trained staff - besides HAT, we also tested for knowledge on tuberculosis; availability of equipment, consumables and supplies; and utilisation of the services. All health centres were operating but most were poorly equipped, and attendance rates were very low. We observed a median of 14 outpatient consultations per facility (IQR 8-21) in the week prior to our visit, that is two patients per day. The staff had good knowledge on presenting symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of both HAT and tuberculosis. Nine centres were accredited by the national programme as HAT diagnosis and treatment centres, but the most sensitive diagnostic confirmation test, the mini-anion exchange centrifugation technique (mAECT), was not present in any. Although all nine were performing the CATT screening test, only two had the required cold chain in working order. In these high-prevalence districts in DRC, staff is well-acquainted with HAT but lack the tools required for an adequate diagnostic procedure. Attendance rates of these primary care centres are extremely low, making timely recognition of a resurgence of HAT unlikely in the current state of affairs.

Césaire at the Crossroads in Haiti: Correspondence with Henri Seyrig

Césaire at the Crossroads in Haiti: Correspondence with Henri Seyrig

A LiTat 1.5 variant surface glycoprotein‐derived peptide with diagnostic potential for Trypanosoma brucei gambiense

To evaluate the accuracy of a peptide, corresponding to the variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) LiTat 1.5 amino acid (AA) sequence 268-281 and identified through alignment of monoclonal antibody selected mimotopes, for diagnosis of Trypanosoma brucei gambiense sleeping sickness. A synthetic biotinylated peptide (peptide 1.5/268-281), native VSG LiTat 1.3 and VSG LiTat 1.5 were tested in an indirect ELISA with 102 sera from patients with HAT and 102 endemic HAT-negative controls. The area under the curve (AUC) of peptide 1.5/268-281 was 0.954 (95% confidence interval 0.918-0.980), indicating diagnostic potential. The areas under the curve of VSG LiTat 1.3 and LiTat 1.5 were 1.000 (0.982-1.000) and 0.997 (0.973-1.000), respectively, and significantly higher than the AUC of peptide 1.5/268-281. On a model of VSG LiTat 1.5, peptide 1.5/268-281 was mapped near the top of the VSG. A biotinylated peptide corresponding to AA 268-281 of VSG LiTat 1.5 may replace the native VSG in serodiagnostic tests, but the diagnostic accuracy is lower than for the full-length native VSG LiTat 1.3 and VSG LiTat 1.5.

The Ship, the Plantation, and the Polis:

The Ship, the Plantation, and the <i>Polis</i>:

The Ship, the Plantation, and the Polis:

The Ship, the Plantation, and the <i>Polis</i>:

Peur d’une dysmorphophobie corporelle et psychose. Cas cliniques et discussion

The diagnosis of patients who have a preoccupation about physical ugliness is not easy. Many diagnoses can be made. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is defined as a preoccupation with an imaginary defect in physical appearance. What seems difficult in this diagnosis is to make the difference between the psychotic and the non-psychotic form of the disorder. If the patient becomes delusional, we have to make the diagnosis of delusional disorder, somatic subtype. Sometimes it is not easy to make the difference between the delusional and non-delusional form of the illness. A good example is the so-called "olfactory reference syndrome" (ORS), which involves the persistent preoccupation with one's body odour. To make it more difficult, the preoccupation with one's appearance can be seen in many other disorders, such as schizophrenia, or major depressive disorders. We present three cases of dysmorphophobic patients, to discuss their diagnosis and show how we have to be careful about this delusional versus non-delusional difference. The first case is a young man, aged 20 year, who exhibits the typical picture of an ORS. He has probable olfactory hallucinations. He had good response to a treatment combining escitalopram 15mg and risperidone 1mg. The second case had a first appearance of BDD, but he had auditive hallucinations and the evolution showed a pattern more typical of schizophrenia, paranoid subtype. He responded initially to citalopram 20mg and ripseridone 2mg. Sleepy with risperidone, it was shifted to amisulpiride 200mg. After five years, it was possible to stop the amisulpiride, but we had to maintain it to avoid a relapse. The third case is typical of schizophrenia, with a pseudo neurotic aspect, and its course was terrible, with poor response to all neuroleptic therapy, including clozapine. These three cases are typical of a feature rarely reported in the literature: the delusional aspect of a dysmorphophobic concern. The literature mainly focuses on the more anxious pattern, and so emphasises the treatment with serotoninergic antidepressants. Our cases demonstrate a gradation in the delusional and psychotic aspect. The first case is dubitatively psychotic, the second is an "ambulatory" schizophrenia with a good response to treatment, the third a very destructive disease. In our cases, some features showed in the typical BDD are also present. We question the obsessive compulsive aspect of the disorder, which was present in our three cases. This supports the fact that the dysmorphophobic feature could be considered more like a symptom than a disorder itself. It reminds us to be always looking for the delusional features of a disorder so as to give the appropriate treatment.

Police reform and state formation in Southern Sudan

Since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement in 2005, stability has prevailed but peace remains fragile in Southern Sudan. This article explores the modernisation of security forces in the territory, focusing on challenges and opportunities for the Southern Sudan Police Service. It examines how the political ambivalence of national leaders and key international actors, linked to their goal of creating a state in the South, are shaping the new police force. The study also examines the impact that institutional factors such as a weak legal framework and structural factors such as scarce public resources are having on the development of an effective, rights-respecting police service in the South. Depuis la signature de l'Accord de Paix Compréhensif entre le Gouvernement du Soudan et l'Armée/Mouvement populaire de libération du Soudan en 2005, la situation sécuritaire s'est stabilisée mais la paix reste fragile dans le Sud du Soudan. Cet article analyse la modernisation des forces de sécurité sur le territoire, en ciblant les défis et les possibilités au niveau du Service de Police du Soudan du Sud. Elle examine comment l'ambivalence politique des dirigeants nationaux et des acteurs internationaux clé, ancré dans leur désire de créer un État dans le Sud, affectent l'émergence de la nouvelle force policière. L'étude examine aussi l'impact des facteurs institutionnels tels que le faible cadre normatif et des facteurs structurels tels que le manque de ressources publiques sur le développement d'un service de police qui combine l'efficacité avec le respect des droits humains dans le Sud.

1968: Crisis in African Letters

The year 1968 marks, without doubt, a critical moment in African Francophone literature. Two novels published that year bear testimony that indeed something new might be happening, something we may characterize as a break away from a more traditional African writing: annus mirabilis 1968 is the date of publication of two first novels, Malian Yambo Ouologuem's Le Devoir de violence and Ivoirian Ahmadou Kourouma's Les Soleils des independances. Both Ouologuem and Kourouma made a thunderous entrance into the world of letters: in the very same year 1968, unknown writer Yambo Ouologuem was the winner of the prestigious Prix Renaudot, and Les Soleils des independances was widely acclaimed. When, in 2000, Ahmadou Kourouma won the Renaudot for his novel Allah n'est pas oblige (the book also won the Goncourt des Lyceens), it certainly can be said that the prize came as a crowning of a trajectory, of a way of writing that first struck the unexpectedly large audience that discovered Les Soleils more than thirty years earlier. With thunder also came sulfur. In the case of Kourouma's Les Soleils, the controversy was about its language. Should what some considered a literary promotion of francais debrouille (broken French) be saluted as innovative writing? What is the merit, they would ask, of a work of literal translation of an African language (Malinke) into French, of an art of speaking Malinke in French? It has to be recalled that at first the French publishers contacted by Amadou Kourouma did not want to publish a text in what they simply perceived as broken French. It was then published in Canada, precisely a non-French Francophone country, where the idea of working the language in such unexpected ways, from another language, found a warm welcome. Following that first publication, a few months later, Le Seuil in Paris decided to publish the novel which rapidly encountered great success. Sulfur is certainly a word to be used to speak of Yambo Ouologuem's novel: after the acclaim came the scandal when the Malian writer was lambasted and his work vilified as he was accused of plagiarizing many passages of it. The very incipit of the novel, it soon appeared, laid the cards on the table: a comparison between the first words of Le Devoir de violence: Nos yeux boivent l'eclat du soleil, et, vaincus, s'etonnent de pleurer, Maschallah ! oua bismillah ![...]. Un recit de l'aventure sanglante The Romanic Review Volume 101 Numbers 1-2 (c) The Trustees of Columbia University de la negraille--honte aux hommes de rien !- tiendrait aisement dans la premiere moitie de ce siecle ; mais la veritable histoire des negres commence beaucoup, beaucoup plus tot, avec les Saifs, en l'an 1202 de notre ere, dans l'Empire africain [...]. and the following passage from Andre Schwarz-Bart's Le Dernier des justes: Nos yeux recoivent la lumiere d'etoiles mortes. Une biographie de mon ami Ernie tiendrait aisement dans le deuxieme quart du XXe siecle ; mais la veritable histoire d'Ernie Levy commence tres tot, dans la vieille cite [...]. shows clearly the presence of Schwartz-Bart text in Ouologuem's writing. In addition to Schwartz-Bart, other writers had also been visited by Ouologuem, who borrowed and rewrote from their works: Graham Greene, Maupassant, and others. While a representative for Graham Greene threatened to take legal action, Andre Schwartz-Bart, with great elegance, declared: am especially touched, even overwhelmed, to think that a Black writer should have relied on Le Dernier des justes in creating a book like Le Devoir de violence. Thus Mr. Ouologuem is not indebted to me, but rather I to him. Yambo Ouologuem himself protested that in his original manuscript, the borrowings from other writers and texts were clearly indicated but that sounded just clumsy as the publisher was very quick to throw him under the bus as the saying goes, in order to put away possible legal issues. …

Accuracy of WHO CD4 cell count criteria for virological failure of antiretroviral therapy

To examine the accuracy of the World Health Organization immunological criteria for virological failure of antiretroviral treatment. Analysis of 10 treatment programmes in Africa and South America that monitor both CD4 cell counts and HIV-1 viral load. Adult patients with at least two CD4 counts and viral load measurements between month 6 and 18 after starting a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor-based regimen were included. WHO immunological criteria include CD4 counts persistently <100 cells/microl, a fall below the baseline CD4 count, or a fall of >50% from the peak value. Virological failure was defined as two measurements > or =10 0000 copies/ml (higher threshold) or > or =500 copies/ml (lower threshold). Measures of accuracy with exact binomial 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. A total of 2009 patients were included. During 1856 person-years of follow up 63 patients met the immunological criteria and 35 patients (higher threshold) and 95 patients (lower threshold) met the virological criteria. Sensitivity [95% confidence interval (CI)] was 17.1% (6.6-33.6%) for the higher and 12.6% (6.7-21.0%) for the lower threshold. Corresponding results for specificity were 97.1% (96.3-97.8%) and 97.3% (96.5-98.0%), for positive predictive value 9.5% (3.6-19.6%) and 19.0% (10.2-30.9%) and for negative predictive value 98.5% (97.9-99.0%) and 95.7% (94.7-96.6%). The positive predictive value of the WHO immunological criteria for virological failure of antiretroviral treatment in resource-limited settings is poor, but the negative predictive value is high. Immunological criteria are more appropriate for ruling out than for ruling in virological failure in resource-limited settings.

Envenoming after carpet viper (Echis ocellatus) bite during pregnancy: timely use of effective antivenom improves maternal and foetal outcomes

The report describes successful management of 10 women in 2nd and 3rd pregnancy trimesters with EchiTab IgG antivenom after carpet viper (Echis ocellatus) envenoming. All women survived but foetal loss in a victim with delayed presentation and a case of mild hypersensitivity reaction were recorded. Excellent outcomes can be achieved in rural and semi-nomadic populations without specialized care and immediate access and provision of effective antivenoms is paramount in curtailing snakebite maternal morbidity, mortality and foetal loss.

Use of proxy measures in estimating socioeconomic inequalities in malaria prevalence

To present and compare socioeconomic status (SES) rankings of households using consumption and an asset-based index as two alternative measures of SES; and to compare and evaluate the performance of these two measures in multivariate analyses of the socioeconomic gradient in malaria prevalence. Data for the study come from a survey of 557 households in 25 study villages in Tanzania in 2004. Household SES was determined using consumption and an asset-based index calculated using Principal Components Analysis on a set of household variables. In multivariate analyses of malaria prevalence, we also used two other measures of disease prevalence: parasitaemia and self-report of malaria or fever in the 2 weeks before interview. Household rankings based on the two measures of SES differ substantially. In multivariate analyses, there was a statistically significant negative association between both measures of SES and parasitaemia but not between either measure of SES and self-reported malaria. Age of individual, use of a mosquito net, and wall construction were negatively and significantly associated with parasitaemia, whilst roof construction was positively associated with parasitaemia. Only age remained significant when malaria self-report was used as the measure of disease prevalence. An asset index is an effective alternative to consumption in measuring the socioeconomic gradient in malaria parasitaemia, but self-report may be an unreliable measure of malaria prevalence for this purpose.

Précision de la définition du harcèlement moral au travail

Bullying is a much discussed and studied concept and yet there is a huge amount of terms and definitions that describe it. The lack of unity and precision around bullying raises several questions, notably in the judicial field. Indeed, how can judges determine if a given situation comes close to bullying or not if they do not have a precise definition of what bullying consists in? The French law attempts to clarify this concept, but it still remains vague on several points, highlighting the effects of bullying without explaining its causes and nature. This study aims at providing further precisions on the definition and bases itself on the analysis of law cases. These show which criteria the judges use to determine if the victim has been bullied or not. In this study, we used the judgments published on the website of the French ministry of justice in which a situation of bullying had been proven. Seventy-two percent of the victims were women whereas 75% of the perpetrators were men. The great majority (91%) of the persons convicted of bullying had a higher hierarchical position than their victims. No case from a subordinate to a superior could be found. Nine percent of the cases were bullying between colleagues. The average seniority was 15 years. The facts that influence the judges' decisions are always dignity-undermining facts, which are frequently combined with an alteration in the victim's health, an endangering of the victim's career and, less often, with the non-respect of the worker's rights. Dignity-undermining consists in humiliations (in 61% of the cases), insults or discourteous comments (27%), disrepute of the victim's work (24%), unjustified sanctions or reproaches, attacks on private life (15%), isolation (15%) and overload of work (12%). In half of the cases, alteration in health is held as the consequence of bullying. The judges mention some anxiodepressive syndroms or psychological problems without providing any supplementary details. No PTSD-like symptomatology has, for now, been mentioned although since the end of the 1990s, the relationship between bullying and clinical symptoms of PTSD has been proven by many researchers. In 31% of the cases, the judges mention some facts that endanger the victim's career and in 20%, the worker's rights have not been respected (wages not paid...). Very often, the judges use some other criteria related to the conditions which caused the appearance of bullying, to the kind of bullying the victim had to face and to the circumstances that enabled the situation to continue. Moreover, the judges try to determine if the negative acts described above have been repeated in time. The average number of the facts that influence the judges to determine if a situation is or is not a bullying situation is seven. The criterion related to the conjunction of different kinds of consequences (dignity undermining, non-respect of rights, alteration in health and endangering the professional future) is found in 90% of the cases. The duration of bullying does not seem to be a determining factor. The shortest length we found was six months and the average was three years. The judges nearly always refer to written documents (medical certificates, affidavits by colleagues or former employees, contracts of employment, internal documents, etc.) that must be detailed and in agreement.

Modeling Health Behavior Change: How to Predict and Modify the Adoption and Maintenance of Health Behaviors

Health‐compromising behaviors such as physical inactivity and poor dietary habits are difficult to change. Most social‐cognitive theories assume that an individual's intention to change is the best direct predictor of actual change. But people often do not behave in accordance with their intentions. This discrepancy between intention and behavior is due to several reasons. For example, unforeseen barriers could emerge, or people might give in to temptations. Therefore, intention needs to be supplemented by other, more proximal factors that might compromise or facilitate the translation of intentions into action. Some of these postintentional factors have been identified, such as perceived self‐efficacy and strategic planning. They help to bridge the intention–behavior gap. The Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) suggests a distinction between (a) preintentional motivation processes that lead to a behavioral intention, and (b) postintentional volition processes that lead to the actual health behavior. In this article, seven studies are reported that examine the role of volitional mediators in the initiation and adherence to five health behaviors: physical exercise, breast self‐examination, seat belt use, dietary behaviors, and dental flossing. The general aim is to examine the applicability of the HAPA and its universality by replicating it across different health behaviors, based on various measures, time spans, and samples from different countries.Les comportements nuisibles à la santé tels que le manque d’exercice physique et les mauvaises habitudes alimentaires sont difficiles à modifier. La plupart des théories socio‐cognitives admettent que le meilleur prédicteur d’un réel changement est l’intention que la personne a de changer. Mais la conduite est souvent en contradiction avec les intentions. La divergence entre intention et comportement est due à plusieurs raisons. Par exemple, des obstacles imprévus peuvent apparaître, ou encore les intéressés peuvent succomber à la tentation. L’intention doit donc être associée à d’autres facteurs plus immédiats susceptibles de compromettre ou de faciliter le passage de l’intention à l’action. Certains de ces facteurs ont été identifiés, à savoir la planification stratégique et la perception de l’efficacité personnelle. Ils aident à combler le fossé entre l’intention et le comportement. L’Approche des Processus d’Action en faveur de la Santé (HAPA) établit une distinction entre les processus motivationnels préalables à l’intention qui conduisent à une intention comportementale et les processus volontaires secondaires à l’intention qui débouchent sur un comportement effectivement favorable à la santé. On expose dans cet article sept recherches qui examinent le rôle médiateur de la volition dans l’adoption de et la persévérance dans cinq comportements utiles à la santé: l’exercice physique, l’inspection personnelle de ses seins, l’usage de la ceinture de sécurité, un bon régime alimentaire et l’utilisation du fil dentaire. Il s’agit de mettre à l’épreuve le caractère opérationnel de l’HAPA et son universalité en l’appliquant à différents comportements liés à la santéà partir de mesures et de périodes diversifiées sur des échantillons provenant de différents pays.

Determining the Content and Degree of Authority of Church Teachings

The Thomist 72 (2008): 371-407 DETERMINING THE CONTENT AND DEGREE OF AUTHORITY OF CHURCH TEACHINGS ]OHNR. T. LAMONT Catholic Institute ofSydney Strathfield, NSW, Australia THE TEACHING OF THE Second Vatican Council on religious liberty in its declaration Dignitatis humanae has been a subject of bitter disagreement ever since the promulgation of that declaration. Presented by some as one of the council's main achievements, it has been condemned by others as a departure from the past teaching of the Church. Most seriously, perhaps, it has been celebrated as being both these things, and as thereby establishing that it is possible for the Church to change her teachings, however authoritative, in the light of a better understanding of reality. There are two issues involved in this disagreement: the question of the content of the document's teachings, and the question of the level of authority of these teachings. These questions turn upon the more general issues of the nature of the principles to be used in determining the content and authority of Church teachings. These general issues are the topic of longstanding disputes in Catholic theology, disputes that are at least as important as those on religious freedom itself. This paper will attempt to resolve these disputes, partly as a preliminary to considering the issue of religious liberty, and partly on account of their intrinsic interest. It will not go on to apply its conclusions to Church teaching on religious liberty because of space limitations; this task will be undertaken in subsequent publications. However, the consideration of positions on the interpretation of church 371 372 JOHN R. T. LAMONT teachings and the consideration of Dignitatis Humanae are not entirely independent tasks. The debates on both these issues emerge from a common theological and ecclesiastical history, and the exposition of this history that is necessary for a consideration of interpretation of Church teachings will prove essential for an understanding of Dignitatis humanae. None of the teachings of Dignitatis humanae are infallible pronouncements that of themselves demand the assent of faith. This is the case with all the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, since that council did not make any dogmatic definitions.1 Dignitatis humanae thus raises the particular issue of the level of authority of noninfallible Church teachings. It is really only for this category of Church teaching that the question of level of authority arises in an important way, since infallible teachings by their nature have the highest level of authority, an authority that excludes rejection or doubt on the part of those who profess the Catholic faith. For theology, the question with respect to infallible teachings is not properly speaking their level of authority, but the means of identifying them. The question of how to identify infallible teachings has been fairly thoroughly discussed, and has in fact been the main focus of theological disputes about the authority of Church teachings. These disputes have generally been asking, what level of authority-fallible or 1 This was asserted by Paul VI, in his discourse closing the council on 7 December 1965. Umberto Betti claimed an authority for the dogmatic constitution Lumen gentium that virtually reached the level of infallible teaching (Umberto Betti, "Qualification theologique de la Constitution," L'Eglise de Vatican II, vol. 2, Commentaires, ed. Y. Congar [Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1967]). This claim was contested by J. Ratzinger (J. Ratzinger, "Announcements and Prefatory Notes of Explanation," in Commentary on the Documents ofVatican II, vol. 1, ed. H. Vorgrimler [NewYork: Herder and Herder, 1967]). Ratzinger, in describing Betti as taking a view that "raises most of the Council's declarations practically (though not technically) to the status of dogmas" (ibid., 299), ignores the fact that Betti bases his evaluation of the degree of authority of Lumen gentium principally on the prefix "dogmatic" that is applied to it: "Avant tout, ii s'agit d'une Constitution dogmatique. Ce qui importe, ce n'est pas la denomination de Constitution - qui aurait pu aussi bien etre remplacee par d'autres, comme Decret, Bulle, etc., mais la qualification de 'dogmatique'. Celle-ci indique que le magistere universe! a pour tache comme tel de proposer la doctrine contenue clans la Constitution," (Betti, "Qualification theologique...

Marivetz, Goussier, and Planet Earth: A Late Enlightenment Geo-Physical Project

Abstract The published volumes of Physique du Monde (1780–1787) by Baron É.-C. de Marivetz and L.-J. Goussier fulfilled only a preliminary part of an ambitious plan to present a general theory of géographie physique, together with a new set of maps showing France’s present and past topographic conditions. The 1779 Discours préliminaire et prospectus to this project, together with publications ancillary to Physique du Monde, afford some insight into the partnership between Marivetz and Goussier, and into the ideas they had in mind when they promised an exposition of the general theory of physical geography by deduction from first principles of celestial physics. Believing that the Earth is presently in a prolonged period of warming, Marivetz and Goussier adopted a theory of the oceans’ gradual diminution, through progressive conversion of water into solid matter by assimilation in organic bodies. An understanding of France’s slow emergence from the sea, in the authors’ view, was linked with one of their main practical interests: promotion of inland navigation through enlargement of the French system of interlocking canals. Their project thus reflects a typical Enlightenment conviction in the utility of knowledge. As an effort in geoscience conceptualizing, the Marivetz–Goussier project was in accord with a contemporary pattern of thinking, in which it was assumed that proper theorizing about the Earth must center upon law-like principles or descriptive generalizations. Ce n‘est donc qu’en liant la Physique terrestre aux premières & grandes loix de la Physique céleste, que l‘on peut espérer de répandre de véritables lumières sur cette Science. La Géographie Physique ne peut être éclairée que par la Physique céleste ….Marivetz and Goussier (1779, p. 8)La Physique du Monde, suivant la définition de M. de Marivetz & de M. Goussier, est composée de deux parties, celle du Ciel & celle de la Terre; mais la première n’est destinée, dans leur Ouvrage, qu’àéclairer la seconde, c‘est-à-dire à déterminer les différens états dans lesquels la terre a passé ou dans lesquels elle passera.J.-J.-L. de Lalande, in Journal des Sçavans (1781, p. 532)

Families and Communities in Post-Revolutionary France

There is today in France a Minister of Social Cohesion [ministre de la cohesion sociale]. Whatever specific attributions of such a ministry, its very existence betrays sense of a lack of social cohesion, of a crumbling of social fabric. Could it be that this sense is inherent to democracies, with their ideals of Liberty and Equality? Could it be that principle the liberty of every man ends where liberty of others begins [la liberte des uns finit oh commence celle des autres] leads to isolation of each member of society in his circumscribed sovereignty, and that principle of equality leads to atomization of whole? Could it be that aspiration towards a never complete liberty and a never reached equality makes constraints and inequalities all more manifest and unbearable? Does this explain insistence on Fraternity, a term added to Republican motto in 1848, but implicit in republican ideology since 1789? The fear of lack of social cohesion became rampant in post-revolutionary France, a time marked by abolition of most blatant injustices of Old Regime, which, however, ushered in a century punctuated by political revolutions, shaken by industrial revolution, and in quest for stable references. Here is diagnosis of Tocqueville in Democracy in America: Aristocracy linked all citizens in a long chain which stretched from peasant to king; democracy breaks chain and splits asunder each rung. To be sure, the individual benefits. But democracy loosens social links. [L'aristocratie avait fait de tons les citoyens une longue chaine qui remontait du paysan au roi; la democratie brise la chaine et met chaque anneau a part. Certes l'individu y gagne. Mais la democratie detend les liens sociaux. (1)] The Revolution undermined vertical and horizontal bonds or chains which had cemented feudal society and which still held fast under Bourbon monarchy, from serfs to King-Father, himself set by divine right under aegis of God-the-Father. These social bonds were numerous, including those of caste, vasselage or clientele; of province, village or neighborhood; of age class (bachelleries and other youth groups), of profession (corporations, compagnonnages), of parish or monastery, and, foremost among them, of family--family as extended kinship and sometimes household, embedded in a patriarchal structure. For centuries, these networks had insured a steady exchange of goods, services and knowledge, presided over collective duties and festivities, intervened in nuptial traditions, births and funerals, contributed to socialization from childhood to apprenticeship, ostracized strangers, controlled behavior with rites of integration and segregation, propitiation and exorcism. Of necessity, however, these chains could not help but limit individual, who had no choice but to submit or rebel and be marginalized. They also tended to encroach upon monarchical supremacy, which both relied on, supported and kept in check various corps intermediaires of feudalism, including patriarchal family. Hostile to such communities, Revolution glorified autonomous Individual on one hand, consensual Nation on other. That individual is informed by Enlightenment and endowed with a Cartesian reason, a Rousseauistic moral sense, and a new thirst for happiness. He is master of his person, of his possessions and of his dealings--the individual par excellence being a male, of legal age, and property holder. Before him stands Nation, no longer made up of orders granted privileges, but of citizens obeying a unique Law--the citizen par excellence, citoyen actif, being, however, neither a female, nor a domestic, nor exceedingly poor. Directly responsible to Nation, this citizen is conceived of as independent from his century-long tutelages. The Jacobins were consequently accused of destroying communities and extended families. …