A parameterization for a class of complete games with abstention

Voting games with abstention are voting systems in which players can cast not only yes and no vote, but are allowed to abstain. This paper centers on the structure of a class of complete games with abstention. We obtain, a parameterization that can be useful for enumerating these games, up to isomorphism. Indeed, any I-complete game is determined by a vector of matrices with non-negative integers entries. It also allows us determining whether a complete game with abstention is a strongly weighted (3, 2) game or not, and for other purposes of interest in game theory.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Conversion, family, and authority in seventeenth-century Saumur

Episodes of conversion in early modern France could lay bare conceptions of community and authority that underpinned state and society. The conversion of the twelve-year-old daughter of a Huguenot apothecary to Catholicism at Saumur in 1642 serves as an entry into an examination of Catholic-Huguenot relations under the Edict of Nantes. The city's Catholic magistrates questioned the girl, Elisabeth Liger, and determined that her professed conversion was sincere. Satisfied of her Catholicism, the magistrates ordered that she be removed from her parents' authority so she could live as a Catholic. The judges' decision reveals two essential weaknesses that seventeenth-century Huguenots faced: their lack of institutional power to shape political and judicial decision making at the local level and their secondary legal status under the Edict of Nantes. En France à l'époque moderne, les épisodes de conversion mettent en relief les concepts de communauté et d'autorité sur lesquels reposent l'Etat et la société. La conversion au catholicisme de la fille mineure d'un apothicaire huguenot à Saumur en 1642 sert de point d'entrée à l'examen des relations entre catholiques et huguenots sous l'Edit de Nantes. Les magistrats catholiques de la ville ont interrogé la fille, nommée Elisabeth Liger, et ont déterminé que sa conversion était sincère. Convaincus de son catholicisme, les magistrats ont donc ordonné qu'Elisabeth soit retirée à l'autorité de ses parents pour qu'elle puisse vivre en tant que catholique. La décision des juges révèle deux faiblesses essentielles auxquelles les huguenots au dix-septième siècle doivent faire face : leur manque de pouvoir institutionnel pour influencer les décisions politiques et judiciaires au niveau local, et leur statut juridique inférieur sous l'Edit de Nantes

Work, consumption and subjectivity in postwar France: Moulinex and the meanings of domestic appliances, 1950s-1970s

This article responds to some of the limitations of the historiography of consumption in contemporary Europe, notably its tendency to divorce consumer culture from production and to subscribe, in some cases at least, to a rather schematic model of ‘consumer society’. Focusing on the Moulinex domestic appliance company which developed in Normandy from the late 1950s, it explores the interpenetration of cultures of production at several levels. It considers the role of Moulinex in making domestic appliances available to the mass market, the place of productivism in the Moulinex brand and the place of appliance consumption in company culture, before reflecting on the workers’ perspective on this culture and the meanings they ascribed to the appliances they acquired through the company

Labour process and the division of labour, a reading

This article proposes an analysis of the labour process and the division of labour in capitalist production through a reading of Marx and a few others like Babbage and Braverman. The distinction between labour and labour power is used to expose the specificity of the labour process. Cooperation constitues the fundamental from of capitalist production, which entails a double-sided command (coordination to produce use-values and despotism to extract surplus-value). Formal subordination, i.e; the threat of lay-off, is historically and logically the primitive moment of labour's subordination to capital. The effect of the division of labour on productivity is only temporary. It principally deprives workers of their professional skills, increases real control by management, reduces labour power's value and prepares its replacement by machinery. There is an incessant struggle between labour and management over the control of the labour process and over skills.Labour process, Babbage principle, division of labour, formal/real subordination, cooperation.

Settler farming, agricultural colonisation and development in Katanga (Belgian Congo),1910-1920

From 1908 to 1920, the Belgian Ministry of Colonies organised the first state-led agricultural colonization efforts in Katanga, Belgian Congo. This article ex-amines the complex interactions between public and private actors and how theyshaped a colonial agricultural policy. Mission Leplaehad a very difficult start and wasterminated after ardent discussions in the Belgian Parliament, despite the support of theAgricultural Service. This migration initiative exposed the different views and even ten-sions between the opinions of technical experts such as agronomists and the ideas of thecolonial hommes politiquesand private actors, both in Belgium and in the Congo.In this article, the image of a homogeneous colonial state acquires nuance as we unraveland analyse the daily realities and initiatives of these first Belgian agricultural settlersin the broader framework of Belgian colonial politics. When the alliance between theState, the mining sector and agricultural settlers ceased to exist, because European agri-culture was not developing fast enough and geopolitical interests had changed, the gov-ernment stopped supporting the colonization project. After the First World War, the num-ber of Belgian farmers in Katanga began to increase again, mainly thanks to supportfrom the private sector. This article shows how state support was an important but notdecisive factor in the survival strategies of a settler community

Hennebique’s journal 'Le Béton armé': a close reading of the genesis of concrete construction in Belgium

In June 1898, François Hennebique issued the monthly journal Le Béton Armé. Published until 1939, with 378 issues in all, this platform on the interface between information and propaganda serves as a perfect means to obtain a comprehensive overview of Hennebique’s legacy. Giving an insight into the increasing sphere of action, the growing number of applications and the hierarchic structure and policy of the firm, the journal is a work of reference, essential to document the unremitting development of concrete construction. By means of a close reading (based on the collections preserved at Ghent University and the Centre d’archives du XXe siècle de l’ifa in Paris), the content, meaning, and changing discourse of Le Béton Armé will be critically analyzed. Fitting within the scope of a PhD on the history of concrete construction in Belgium (www.architecture.ugent.be/concrete), particular attention will be given to the application of ‘le système Hennebique’ in Belgium