Un plafond à caissons : les femmes à l’EHESS

The feminization of employment at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris has fallen off after an early start and it remains low. This is not to be set down so much to the formally discriminating nature of the recruitment examination (concours) as to competition, the accumulation of social capital and the methods for producing job applications. The initial feminization owed much to long inhouse careers, as women were recruited without sitting for an examination but into subordinate positions from which they could move upwards. This trend came to a halt as this channel of recruitment was shut down and a more elitist, relational and competitive one was opened that leads fewer women to enter job applications. The situation is not a stalemate however. A group of women professors has managed to place the gender question on the agenda and this seems to have given a (weak) boost to feminization.     

Les appartenances collectives à l'hôpital

Despite managerial pressures, various forms of group affiliation take shape up in the work performed in hospitals. At the ward level, group affiliations are strong owing to intense technical or relational interactions. Relational interactions are taxing on individuals and tend to weaken the care-giving community unlike stabler, “endogenous” technical interactions. Care-givers are integrated in “philanthropical chains of care” with a sectoral dimension: psychiatry, pediatrics, geriatrics. Outside this chain, feelings of belonging to a group are weaker, negative (owing to differences based on ethnic group, social class or gender) or sporadic (public service); they arise in contexts where all or part of the hospital's personnel is mobilized.     

Les appels abusifs à Police-secours. La responsabilité des usagers mise en cause

Inappropriate calls that clog up emergency switchboards and prevent the emergency services doing their jobs properly, are becoming a growing concern for the professionals concerned. They hold the users of this emergency service responsible for the situation and, more specifically, speak of malicious intentions, incompetence, need for assistance and irresponsibility. The analysis of 3162 emergency calls provides a way of exploring other explanations than those spontaneously adopted by the emergency services, and leads to the conclusion that callers represent only one aspect of the phenomenon, and not necessarily the most important.     

Différences de satisfaction au travail entre les travailleurs à salaire élevé et à bas salaires en Europe

Les données de six vagues d'enquětes du Panel européen des ménages (1996–2001) collectées dans onze pays indiquent que les travailleurs à bas salaire de l'Europe du Sud sont, contrairement à ceux de l'Europe du Nord, nettement moins satisfaits de leur emploi que les travailleurs à salaire élevé. En calculant par approximation la satisfaction au travail pour évaluer la qualité de l'emploi, les auteurs montrent que, si bas salaire ne rime pas nécessairement avec emploi de mauvaise qualité, les travailleurs de certains pays sont néanmoins doublement pénalisés: ils sont mal rémunérés et ont un travail de mauvaise qualité. Selon les auteurs, ce dualisme des marchés du travail en Europe correspond à des approches différentes au niveau national du compromis entre flexibilité et sécurité, cette dernière devant ětre privilégiée au plan politique pour améliorer la qualité de l'emploi.     

Nez à nez avec des nuisances odorantes. L'apprentissage de la cohabitation spatiale

By setting up “nose networks”, inhabitants were able to do more than merely criticize the nuisance of odors coming from a nearby paper mill. This case study conducted in France seeks to understand the process that, through a negotiated limitation of nuisances, ended up making industrial development compatible with life in the local area. This is radically different from the NIMBYist attitude, since inhabitants, instead of saying “no” to the installation of a new annoyance in their backyard, were trying to live with a problem “already there”. Neighbors of the mill thus became “nose experts” who had the right to bring evidence not in a lawsuit but through a shared know-how that made each party's rights and obligations compatible in the effort to live (at least temporarily) together in the same place.     

L’astronomie française à la Belle Époque. Professionnalisation d’une activité scientifique

This article describes the way French astronomy developed in the Belle Époque (ca. 1880-1914). It identifies and accounts for the specificities of a scientific practice, which, up until now, has been misrepresented in the history of science. We show how the practice of astronomy was rationalized by rigid procedures and integrated by a scientific-bureaucratic regime of activity. Established in state observatories (for example, the Paris Observatory), this regime defined astronomy as a professional activity practiced by a group of “workers” of the sky. Finally, the analysis of the regime enables us to shed a light on the process by which the cognitive content of the discipline of astronomy, the institutional framework constituted by the state observatories, and the group of professional astronomers all interacted and were indeed co-constructed.