Political power, technology, and total war: Two French views

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68009/2/10.1177_002200275800200404.pd

Les camps de Jales (1790-1792), épisodes contre-revolutionnaires ?

En juillet 1792, l’armée du Comte de Saillans cherche à « allumer la flamme de la Contre-Révolution » dans le sud de la France. L’insurrection est immédiatement écrasée dans le sang par les patriotes. Pourtant, au mois d’août 1790 et en février 1791, les deux premiers camps de Jalès avaient semblé manifester la force de la Contre-Révolution naissante dans les départements de la Lozère, de l’Ardèche et du Gard. Cet article revient sur les trois premiers camps de Jalès pour montrer que la conspiration de Saillans, ouvertement contre-révolutionnaire, ne réussit pas à s’inscrire dans la continuité des deux épisodes précédents. Ceux-ci sont des réactions catholiques aux rumeurs de menaces protestantes dans des terres soumises aux tensions confessionnelles. Organisés ou utilisés par certains élus locaux, ces rassemblements s’inscrivent dans les luttes internes aux communautés d’habitants et se nourrissent des conflits qui se développent lors de la mise en place des pouvoirs locaux.The « Camps de Jalès » (1790-1792) : Episodes of the Counter-Revolution ? In July 1792, an army led by the Comte de Saillans attempted to «fan the flames of counter-revolution» in the south of France. The insurrection was immediately crushed in a bloodbath by patriot forces. Yet, in August 1790 and February 1791, the first two camps de Jalès had appeared to embody the nascent counter-revolution in the departments of Lozère, Ardèche and Gard. This article reviews the first three camps de Jalès and concludes that the Saillans conspiracy, overtly counter-revolutionary, was hardly a linear continuation of the previous two episodes. These were both Catholic reactions to rumours of Protestant threats in areas of confessional tension. Organized or exploited by a number of elected officials, these mass gatherings resulted from internal struggles within local communities and were sustained by the conflicts that developed as the local powers were installed

Constructing futures: a social constructionist perspective on foresight methodology

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the relationship between a particular epistemological perspective and foresight methodology. We draw on a body of social theory concerned with the way that meaning is produced and assimilated by society; specifically, the social construction of knowledge, which is distinguished from its nearneighbour constructivism by its focus on inter-subjectivity. We show that social constructionism, at least in its weak form, seems to be implicit in many epistemological assumptions underlying futures studies. We identify a range of distinctive methodological features in foresight studies, such as time, descriptions of difference, participation and values, and examine these from a social constructionist perspective. It appears that social constructionism is highly resonant with the way in which knowledge of the future is produced and used. A social constructionism perspective enables a methodological reflection on how, with what legitimacy, and to what social good, knowledge is produced. Foresight that produces symbols without inter-subjective meaning neither anticipates, nor produces futures. Our conclusion is that foresight is both a social construction, and a mechanism for social construction. Methodologically, foresight projects should acknowledge the socially constructed nature of their process and outcomes as this will lead to greater rigour and legitimacy

Understanding and enhancing future infrastructure resiliency: a socio-ecological approach

The resilience of any system, human or natural, centres on its capacity to adapt its structure, but not necessarily its function, to a new configuration in response to long-term socio-ecological change. In the long term, therefore, enhancing resilience involves more than simply improving a system's ability to resist an immediate threat or to recover to a stable past state. However, despite the prevalence of adaptive notions of resilience in academic discourse, it is apparent that infrastructure planners and policies largely continue to struggle to comprehend longer-term system adaptation in their understanding of resilience. Instead, a short-term, stable system (STSS) perspective on resilience is prevalent. This paper seeks to identify and problematise this perspective, presenting research based on the development of a heuristic 'scenario-episode' tool to address, and challenge, it in the context of United Kingdom infrastructure resilience. The aim is to help resilience practitioners to understand better the capacities of future infrastructure systems to respond to natural, malicious threats