South Kivu: identity, territory, and power in the eastern Congo

This Usalama report by Koen Vlassenroot outlines the historical dynamics behind the armed movements in South Kivu, focusing on the period before and leading up to the First Congo War. The province of South Kivu has been at the heart of the conflict in the eastern DRC. Since the end of the Second Congo War (1998–2003), the province’s potential to cause broader regional destabilization has decreased, but violent local conflicts have multiplied, fuelled by political opportunism and local struggles over land and power. The report concentrates on sources of local conflict but argues that these can only be understood when also concentrating on wider political, social, economic, and demographic processes at both national and regional levels

Territoire

Territoire: notion particulièrement polysémique dans ses usages savants au sein des sciences sociales, rendant quasiment impossible les points de convergence entre les définitions proposées par les ethnologues, les géographes, les juristes, les économistes et les politistes

The fourth dimension in landscape analysis: changing of heritage and ecological values in the Évora cultural landscapes.

Time is one of the most important driving forces in Landscape Ecology. Time along with geosystem, biosystem and socialsystem determines landscape heterogeneity which reveals itself in different patterns and functions. Cultural Landscapes are the result of the interactions between man and environment along time

Territoire

Territoire: notion particulièrement polysémique dans ses usages savants au sein des sciences sociales, rendant quasiment impossible les points de convergence entre les définitions proposées par les ethnologues, les géographes, les juristes, les économistes et les politistes

The conceptual question among sovereignty, biopolitics and law: a sensible point between Foucault and Agamben

The concept of biopolitics has its origin on the Michel Foucault works developped since 1975 to 1979. In this period, the author introduced the foundations for a new approach about the modern government, based in both crescent enpowerment on individuals and the control of populations. The theme has attracted the attentions of some critical political studies, with many practical uses. However, I believe there is not enough consolidation about biopolitics as a concept and a comprehensive theory of the new political mechanisms. This uncertainness is more evident when the very role of Law is questioned in a biopolitical model, due to the archaic nature that Foucault gives to it. So the aim of the paper is to identify the theorical comprehension of biopolitics in a contemporary author as Giorgio Agamben to demonstrate his oppositions and proximities from the original idea of Michel Foucault. I propose that Agamben has the same difficulties of Foucault to deal with legal theory and Law inside biopolitics. Nevertheless, after a critical review on the works of this two authors, my conclusion is that a settlement of the concepts of Law and biopolitics depends of the surpassing of the Foucaldian version of Law as sovereignity, a clear delimitation of a common core between the authors and their differences and the research and affirmation of the concept of Law in Agamben, more well-refined than Foucault's one

Les missions catholiques françaises et le développement des études igbo dans l’Est du Nigeria, 1885 - 1930

Partly based on archives, this description of the progression of French Catholic missions from Senegal to Igboland emphasizes the crucial roles played by the Congrégation des Pères du Saint Esprit (Spiritains) and the Société des Missions Africaines (SMA) from Lyon in collecting folklore, diffusing the Onitsha dialect throughout Igboland, and developing a system of writing for the language. By comparison with their predecessors (the British Church Missionary Society), these two missionary organizations, through their prublications, opened the way for progress in Igbo studies. These authors can be considered to be harbingers of the current cooperation between France and Igboland in the context of Franco-Nigerian relation

Les racines historiques des conflits sociopolitiques en pays maasai, Kenya

This book is in French only. Abstract not available