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Focusing on his life and academic production, especially the long eleven years that he spent in the United States, in this text I explore the complex relation between the first President of the Mozambique Liberation Front Eduardo Mondlane and the social sciences - the academic world of sociology and anthropology. I do so through an analysis of the correspondence between Mondlane and several social scientists, especially Melville Herskovits, the mentor for his master's and doctoral degrees in sociology, and Marvin Harris, who followed his famous study of race relations in Brazil with research in Lourenço Marques in 1958 on the system of social and race relations produced under Portuguese colonialism. My main argument is that his academic training bore on Mondlane's political style more than normally assumed in most biographical accounts.

As a consequence of the recent global recession, a new "crisis in the humanities" has been declared, and ideas of how best to defend the humanities have been vigorously debated. Placing this "crisis" in the context of neoliberal reforms to higher education since the 1980s, I examine the argument expounded by Martha Nussbaum that the very foundation of democratic citizenship is at stake. I indicate a number of problems with Nussbaum's case. First, to resist the neoliberal agenda that pits disciplines against one another, I maintain that we need to understand the humanities broadly to include the social sciences. Second, I indicate that the humanities are not just important to democracies, but are a vital aspect of any society because they form a crucial part of human existence. Third, I argue that the humanities are important to democratic societies not merely because they promote critical thinking about our political processes and sympathetic understanding as Nussbaum argues. More fundamentally, the diversity of the humanities in both their content and approaches to knowledge is central to freedom. Finally, I warn against framing the challenges facing the humanities in terms of a crisis discourse that deprecates freedom in accord with the neoliberal agenda.

The task of designing social impact of science (SIS) indicators is an ill-structured or systemic problem involving competing design goals, indeterminate design states, unspecified design rules, and an unbounded design space. These features of the problem are not a result of imperfections of measurement alone; they are due primarily to properties of the knowledge system that make it resemble a tangled river delta (anastomotic reticulum) in which different functional patterns (serial, parallel, assembly, arborescent, segmented, cyclic) coexist. The stunning complexity of knowledge systems makes it difficult but nevertheless possible to develop SIS indicators that are policy relevant by virtue of their being at once relational, causal, and normative (see also Peters, this volume). Any attempt to improve the policy relevance of impact indicators will recognize that systemic problems require nonconventional solutions based on principles of externalization, formalization, and simplification. An initial attempt to externalize the design process yields typologies of science output indicators and social impact indicators that may be conjoined to form social impact of science (SIS) indicators. By formalizing rules for making and challenging causal inferences, we can formulate rival hypotheses about the role of knowledge functions and structures in mediating the impacts of science on the achievement of social goals. By simplifying the design process we can maximize the likelihood that SIS indicators and the basis for their construction are widely comprehended by groups that have a stake in the social performance of science.

This paper seeks to explicate the widely used but largely unworked concept of levels of analysis in social psychology by examining its origin, need, and place in the discipline. Following Schneirla's distinction between levels of organization and levels of analysis, it outlines the problem of varied relationships between the two kinds of levels and discovers among social psychologists distinctly reductive, anti-reductive, and interdisciplinary attitudes toward the idea of levels. The presentation culminates in a paradigm of levels which generates not only the ideal typical approaches, but also clarifies the actual patterns of interdisciplinary relations, in social sciences.

International audience ; The article shows the rise of night as a field of interdisciplinary research (Night studies). Seeking to go beyond the equation of the night, it highlights the contributions of its exploration for the day such as positive disorientation and the learning of a night way of thinking to manage the contradictions of a hyper-modern society. A skill for everyone and for no one, the urban night forces exchange and cooperation and allows the integration of daily life issues and sensitive dimensions. This little-explored space-time is conducive to innovation in research methods and tools as well as in public policies. The night also makes it possible to open up some broader prospective work sites around the notions of temporary citizenship and governance as well as the urban planning of times. Finally, the article invites both further exploration and measurement: without light, no city at night, but too much light is a killer. ; L'article montre la montée en puissance de la nuit comme champ de recherche interdisciplinaire (Night studies). Cherchant à dépasser la mise en équation de la nuit, il met en évidence les apports de son exploration pour le jour comme la désorientation positive et l'apprentissage d'une pensée nuitale permettant de gérer les contradictions d'une société hypermoderne. Compétence de tout le monde et de personne, la nuit urbaine oblige à l'échange et à la coopération et permet d'intégrer les questions de vie quotidienne et les dimensions sensibles. Cet espace-temps peu exploré est propice à l'innovation dans les méthodes et les outils de recherche comme dans les politiques publiques. La nuit permet également d'ouvrir quelques chantiers prospectifs plus larges autour des notions de citoyenneté et de gouvernance temporaires et d'urbanisme des temps. Enfin, l'article invite à la fois à la poursuite de l'exploration et à la mesure : sans lumière pas de ville la nuit mais trop de lumière tue.

International audience ; The article shows the rise of night as a field of interdisciplinary research (Night studies). Seeking to go beyond the equation of the night, it highlights the contributions of its exploration for the day such as positive disorientation and the learning of a night way of thinking to manage the contradictions of a hyper-modern society. A skill for everyone and for no one, the urban night forces exchange and cooperation and allows the integration of daily life issues and sensitive dimensions. This little-explored space-time is conducive to innovation in research methods and tools as well as in public policies. The night also makes it possible to open up some broader prospective work sites around the notions of temporary citizenship and governance as well as the urban planning of times. Finally, the article invites both further exploration and measurement: without light, no city at night, but too much light is a killer. ; L'article montre la montée en puissance de la nuit comme champ de recherche interdisciplinaire (Night studies). Cherchant à dépasser la mise en équation de la nuit, il met en évidence les apports de son exploration pour le jour comme la désorientation positive et l'apprentissage d'une pensée nuitale permettant de gérer les contradictions d'une société hypermoderne. Compétence de tout le monde et de personne, la nuit urbaine oblige à l'échange et à la coopération et permet d'intégrer les questions de vie quotidienne et les dimensions sensibles. Cet espace-temps peu exploré est propice à l'innovation dans les méthodes et les outils de recherche comme dans les politiques publiques. La nuit permet également d'ouvrir quelques chantiers prospectifs plus larges autour des notions de citoyenneté et de gouvernance temporaires et d'urbanisme des temps. Enfin, l'article invite à la fois à la poursuite de l'exploration et à la mesure : sans lumière pas de ville la nuit mais trop de lumière tue.

International audience ; The article shows the rise of night as a field of interdisciplinary research (Night studies). Seeking to go beyond the equation of the night, it highlights the contributions of its exploration for the day such as positive disorientation and the learning of a night way of thinking to manage the contradictions of a hyper-modern society. A skill for everyone and for no one, the urban night forces exchange and cooperation and allows the integration of daily life issues and sensitive dimensions. This little-explored space-time is conducive to innovation in research methods and tools as well as in public policies. The night also makes it possible to open up some broader prospective work sites around the notions of temporary citizenship and governance as well as the urban planning of times. Finally, the article invites both further exploration and measurement: without light, no city at night, but too much light is a killer. ; L'article montre la montée en puissance de la nuit comme champ de recherche interdisciplinaire (Night studies). Cherchant à dépasser la mise en équation de la nuit, il met en évidence les apports de son exploration pour le jour comme la désorientation positive et l'apprentissage d'une pensée nuitale permettant de gérer les contradictions d'une société hypermoderne. Compétence de tout le monde et de personne, la nuit urbaine oblige à l'échange et à la coopération et permet d'intégrer les questions de vie quotidienne et les dimensions sensibles. Cet espace-temps peu exploré est propice à l'innovation dans les méthodes et les outils de recherche comme dans les politiques publiques. La nuit permet également d'ouvrir quelques chantiers prospectifs plus larges autour des notions de citoyenneté et de gouvernance temporaires et d'urbanisme des temps. Enfin, l'article invite à la fois à la poursuite de l'exploration et à la mesure : sans lumière pas de ville la nuit mais trop de lumière tue.