The post-Macy paradox,information management and organising: Good intentions and a road to hell?

Between 1946 and 1953, leading scientists met in New York in the context of the so-called Macy conferences, often linked to the emergence of cybernetics. They hankered for a new vision of mind and society. The traumatism of WW2 was implicit but omnipresent, and the Cold War was beginning. Macy key tools and concepts about information, the value of information, and computer artefacts have finally produced a new world, in particular an organisational world, which is far removed from their original dreams. Organisational members are now involved in difficult situations in terms of organising, that is, new modes of performativity which are difficult to comprehend and deal with; a transformation of meaning and knowledge in collective activity; and a threat to well-being and happiness as mental activities, cognition and bodies are increasingly disconnected. We use the Macy conferences as an entry point to reflect on the ‘longue durée’ evolution of the material underpinnings of information and their relationship with organising. We first explore the new conceptualisations at the core of the Macy conferences, information, value of information, and computer artefacts. We then put the Macy conferences into a socio-historical perspective by means of two theoretical approaches, iconographical and semiotic; this involves a historical comparison between the ‘screen-images’ or our Information Age and the ‘object-images’ of medieval cathedrals. We show that there are important disruptions in organising grounded in a new semiosis, which emerged over the longue durée of collective activity, and was articulated further during the Macy conferences. We describe this long-term evolution as the post-Macy paradox.     

Non linear parametric mode regression

In this article, we propose a semi-parametric mode regression for a non linear model. We use an expectation-maximization algorithm in order to estimate the regression coefficients of modal non linear regression. We also establish asymptotic properties for the proposed estimator under assumptions of the error density. We investigate the performance through a simulation study.     

The nexus between extreme weather events,sexual violence,and early marriage: a study of vulnerable populations in Bangladesh

Population and Environment - This study aims to explore whether a relationship exists between extreme weather events, sexual violence, and early marriage. We selected two districts in Bangladesh...     

Has the HIV Epidemic Peaked?

This study reviews the highly diverse regional and country patterns of HIV epidemics and discusses possible causes of the geographic variation in epidemic sizes. Past trends and projections of the epidemics are presented and the peak years of epidemics are estimated. The potential future impact of new prevention technologies is briefly assessed. A final section summarizes the future impact of the epidemic on key demographic variables. The main finding of this analysis is that the HIV epidemic reached a major turning point over the past decade. The peak years of HIV incidence rates are past for all regions, and the peaks of prevalence rates are mostly in the past except in Eastern Europe, where they are expected to peak in 2008. But owing in part to the life‐prolonging effect of antiretroviral therapy and to sustained population growth, the absolute number of infected individuals is expected to keep growing slowly in sub‐Saharan Africa and to remain near current levels worldwide, thus posing a continuing challenge to public health programs. No country is expected to see a decline in its population size between 2005 and 2050 that is attributable to high mortality related to AIDS.     

Les effets pervers du partage de la sécurité. Polices publiques et privées dans une gare et un centre commercial

This article focuses on controlling delinquency in a train station and a shopping center in a big French city. The increasing implication of private organizations in implementing security policies in public areas has spawned a literature about the “dangers of privatization”. As this fieldwork shows, private security officers and NGOs assume duties (related, for example to public relations or social policy) left vacant by police officers. Owing to this sharing of security, the police concentrate on its purely bureaucratic assignments and this has a negative impact on its legitimacy. A historical approach helps us understand how relations between the police and other parties have soured.     

Passion and gambling: on the validation of the Gambling Passion Scale (GPS)

Vallerand and his colleagues (Vallerand & Blanchard, 1999; Vallerand, Blanchard, Koestner, & Gagné, 2001) have recently proposed a new concept of passion. According to these authors, passion refers to a strong inclination toward an activity that we like, find important, and in which we invest time. Vallerand et al. have identified two types of passion: obsessive and harmonious. Obsessive passion refers to an internal pressure that forces an individual to engage in the activity. Harmonious passion, on the other hand, refers to an internal force that leads an individual to choose freely to engage in an activity. While obsessive passion has been shown in some circumstances to lead to negative psychological and physical consequences, harmonious passion generally leads to positive psychological and physical consequences. The purpose of the present research was to validate a measure of passion toward gambling: the Gambling Passion Scale (GPS). The GPS consists of two subscales (obsessive passion and harmonious passion) comprising five items each. Results from two studies involving a total of 340 participants revealed satisfactory internal consistency and temporal stability indices, as well as a two-factor structure supported by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Finally, a series of partial correlational analyses between the two subscales and scales assessing behavioral measures related to gambling supported the construct validity of the GPS. The present results suggest that the GPS is a useful scale for research on gambling.     

Social capital in the field of power: the case of Norway

This paper analyses social capital structures in the field of power, based on data from the Norwegian Power and Democracy Survey on elites. Separating between objectified, institutionalised, embodied, and inherited social capital, and inspired by Bourdieu's approach, we analyse the relations between social capital and the other forms of capital by way of specific multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical cluster analysis. First, we find that the level of institutionalised social capital varies from one fraction of the Norwegian elite to another. Secondly, the range of networks established through previous work experiences is related to field seniority. Thirdly, the positions of highest endogamy are situated in the religious field, and to a lesser extent, in the scientific field, and in the juridical field. Finally, the ‘core of the core’ is defined by actors who are strongly interconnected inside what is called ‘the tripartite system’, with a high level of multipositionality and intersectorial connections.     

The Inquisitorial Trial of a Cross-Dressing Lesbian: Reactions and Responses to Female Homosexuality in 18th-Century Portugal

This article analyzes the inquisitorial trial of Maria Duran, a Catalan novice in the Dominican convent of Nossa Senhora do Paraíso in Portugal. Maria Duran was arrested by the Inquisition in 1741 and, after a lengthy trial, condemned in 1744 to a public lashing and exile. She was suspected of having made a pact with the Devil and was accused by many female witnesses of possessing a “secret penis” that she had allegedly used in her amorous relations with fellow nuns and novices. Her voluminous trial dossier offers a rare and fascinating documentary insight into the often extreme reactions that female homosexuality provoked from both men and women in early modern Portugal. Using the evidence offered by the 18th-century trial of Maria Duran, this article highlights female bewilderment when faced with female-on-female sexual violence and the difficulty that men (in this case, churchmen) had coming to terms with the existence of female homosexuality. It also discusses the case in light of the acts/identity debate among historians of the history of sexuality.