Company Presence as a Marker of Urban Development in France

Since the Industrial Revolution, entreprises have left their imprint on the urban landscape and local government. This paper begins with an historical context on the subject which is followed by an analysis of the different influences of enterprises on town planning, housing and local urban and social policies

From Predators to Icons: Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero

[ Excerpted from Forword by John R. Kimberly] From Predators to Icons takes us on a provocative and nuanced journey through the business practices of a number of individuals and the companies they built and shows how they navigated through this volatile mix to achieve extraordinary success in their undertakings. In an era in which we are obsessed with rankings of everything from colleges and universities to hospitals to tennis players, we tend to focus on the end result—who is number 1?—and much less on the means: how did they get there? In an era when we are fascinated by stories of leaders as heroes and by the lives of the rich and famous, we tend to let the gloss of the material trappings of success blind us to questions of their origins. In the work they report here, Villette and Vuillermot use the lens of social science as a vehicle for unpacking the roots of extraordinary success in business, for analyzing how success was achieved. They have accumulated evidence from a variety of sources, including the myriad biographies—authorized and unauthorized—of business icons, to build their comparative analysis of the practices of thirty-two businessmen from Europe and North America, of how their wealth was built, and of the common threads that characterize the roots of success across geographies, across industries, and across time. Their approach is highly original, and the data they assemble are wide-ranging. They are well aware of both the promise and the limitations of their data and are careful to discuss both. Ultimately, it is up to each of us to judge the credibility of both the empirical foundations on which their analysis is built and the conclusions they reach, the messages they send. But theirs is an impressive undertaking and needs to be taken seriously

Spatial peripheries, social peripheries: reflections on the 'suburbs' of Paris

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to seek to conribute to debates on disadvantage and social exclusion by examining the evolution of the concept of 'periphery', with specific reference to Paris. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on research undertaken on the 'suburbs' of Paris in order to highlight some of the socio-spatial dimensions of social exclusion. Findings – The notion of periphery has evolved from being a purely spatial concept, to a functional concept, and during the crises of the 1980s it became a key social concept in France. Originality/value – Today, it is the absence of employment, or common values which characterises those who make up a social periphery. It is the unwaged, or the poor (in waged work or retirees), and immigrants, who live in the Parisian socio-suburban periphery

Daunting Encounters: La Hague’s Infrastructures of Secrecy

The article explores secrecy, more particularly, nuclear secrecy in relation to two nuclear facilities situated at the tip of the Norman peninsula of La Hague, in France. Both sites - the CSM nuclear waste repository and the close-by refueling plant - were developed at the end of the 1960s in connection with France’s extensive civil and military nuclear program. While institutional archives and access to the sites remain tedious, the article contends that the nuclear secrecy shielding the facilities can be approached by unpacking the numerous accidents that took place at the site. Silenced and subjected to amnesia, spills and accidents offer an epistemological opportunity to address the political and engineering conditions that led to their happening, the political era that framed them, and subsequently, the ways with which they were normalized and meant to be forgotten. The article advances that the repository facility co-evolved with and co-extends to the waste it received. Thus, by staying with the facility’s opacity and façading - its secrecy - one can delineate how secrecy operates and informed the surrounding landscape

Dynamics of a driven probe molecule in a liquid monolayer

We study dynamics of a probe molecule, driven by an external constant force in a liquid monolayer on top of solid surface. In terms of a microscopic, mean-field-type approach, we calculate the terminal velocity of the probe molecule. This allows us to establish the analog of the Stokes formula, in which the friction coefficient is interpreted in terms of the microscopic parameters characterizing the system. We also determine the distribution of the monolayer particles as seen from the stationary moving probe molecule and estimate the self-diffusion coefficient for diffusion in a liquid monolayer.Comment: Latex, 7 pages, 1 figur

Maps meet myths : Understanding Jahai place naming through Geographical Information Systems

Placenames are seemingly universal, with the potential to reveal different systems of organizing information in everyday communication. We report on the relationship between placenames in Jahai, an indigenous language spoken by the Jahai people of the Malay Peninsula, and the environment. Our approach explores the tendency to organize names using a hierarchy of kinship associated with the cnεl, mythological entities in origin stories, which appears to map onto catchment areas. By associating linguistic data with these ethnographic inputs and geographical properties calculated in a Geographic Information System, we generate and make suggestions for productive ways of understanding placenames as systems

Sociologie de la pratique des affaires

Michel Villette, professeur à AgroParisTech Ce séminaire a réuni des doctorants français, russes, polonais, marocains, chinois et brésiliens spécialisés dans l’étude ethnographique des situations de travail en entreprise. Nous sommes partis du point de vue d’observation d’un professionnel adoptant une posture réflexive sur sa pratique dans le but d’en rendre compte dans le cadre académique d’une thèse. Nous avons considéré la possible réduction de la situation de travail dans laquelle ce prof..

Sociologie de la pratique des affaires

Michel Villette, professeur à AgroParisTech Ce séminaire a réuni des doctorants français, russes, polonais, marocains, chinois et brésiliens spécialisés dans l’étude ethnographique des situations de travail en entreprise. Nous sommes partis du point de vue d’observation d’un professionnel adoptant une posture réflexive sur sa pratique dans le but d’en rendre compte dans le cadre académique d’une thèse. Nous avons considéré la possible réduction de la situation de travail dans laquelle ce prof..