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AbstractMeasurement realism, the view that measurement targets quantitative attributes and that not all attributes are quantitative, has come under attack both from metrologists and philosophers. In this paper, I take a close look at two influential arguments against measurement realism: the argument from obsolescence and the argument from coordination. I concede that these arguments do challenge the epistemological position traditionally taken by measurement realists, but argue that the metaphysical core of measurement realism survives the challenge posed by these arguments. This metaphysical core is vital to maintaining a clear and ambitious standard for successful measurement.

Standard approaches to the analysis of crisis situations either take some psychological stance, where the individual is the unit of analysis, or they investigate groups of actors taking turns, where individuals act following their own interpretation of what others have done. Philosophers have characterized these two approaches as self-actional and interactional. Actions and interpretations clearly can be assigned to one or the other actor, which allows allocating the responsibility for a violent event to someone "culprit." A radically different, rarely chosen approach is a transactional one, where each action is understood as joint action both in space and in time that cannot be decomposed into independent individual contributions. In this paper, following a sketch of the differences in the epistemological under- pinnings between standard and transactional approaches, exemplifying analyses are presented and discussed from a violent encounter that left a streetcar passenger dead and a police officer before the courts of justice for homicide. Discussion topics include the attribution of cause and effect, understanding the historical trajectories of participant actors, and the consequences of analyzing events in terms of events (not substantive entities, and inter-actions).

Africa is highly ideologised in terms of two antagonistic positions. Facing two extreme ideological positions, namely what one might call '19th century European nation state-ideology' vs '20th/21st century African Renaissance-ideology', language planners and decision-makers in Africa are caught in a complex dilemma. The paper begins by sketching out salient differences between the two positions: (1) Ideologies based on European historical-cultural experience, which gave rise to a particular 'Western' mind-set; this mind-set is built on convictions regarding European exceptionalism and on notions linked to linguistically and culturally homogenous nations. (2) Ideologies informed by anti-colonialist struggle and anti-imperialist philosophy which, further, rest on the recognition of sociolinguistic realities in Africa that are different from 'the West', i.e. being characterised by extreme ethnolinguistic plurality and diversity. While the first position continues to have considerable impact on academic and political discourse in terms of prevailing Eurocentric perspective and attitudes infested by Orientalism, the second is rooted in idealistic romanticism relating to notions of Universal Human Linguistic Rights and of African Identity and Personality. Political strategies embedded in any of these apparently mutually exclusive ideological positions have been and still are widely discussed in academic and political circles across Africa. A third position and the one adhered to in this presentation, is that of bridging this ideological divide by advocating multilingual policies for Africa, which would combine indigenous languages of local and regional relevance with imported languages of global reach towards the strategic goal of mother tongue-based multilingualism (MTBML). Interestingly, the ongoing highly controversial debate in Africa tends to overlook the fact that MTBML is exactly the 'language(s)-in-education policy' that most so-called developed countries, including the former colonial powers of Europe, have long since installed to best serve their own political interests and economic progress. Therefore, it remains somewhat paradoxical that African postcolonial governments copy from European models those features that are incompatible with sociolinguistic facts on the ground, like monolingual policies in the face of extensive multilingualism, but do not copy features that would be beneficial in Africa as well, like operating professional foreign language teaching and learning through a familiar medium of instruction.Key words: Applied African Sociolinguistics, language ideologies, language policies and politics, linguistic and cultural imperialism, multilingualism and polyglossia

International audience ; Notre intervention porte sur l'analyse de l'évolution d'une compagnie ferroviaire privée, la NordWestBahn —NWB—, qui a fait roulé ses premiers trains en décembre 2000, dans la partie nord orientale du land de Basse-Saxe et dont le siège est localisé à Osnabrück. A plus d'un titre, son parcours nous interpelle. La NWB appartenait à Veolia/Connex avant d'être reprise par Transdev Deutschland et elle constitue toujours sa première filiale en matière ferroviaire sur les 9 détenues en Allemagne en 2015. Mais avant de suivre la création, le lancement et le développement de cette société ferroviaire, nous ne pouvons pas faire l'économie d'évoquer le cadre institutionnel, politique et sociétal de l'Allemagne des années 1970 jusqu'à sa réunification, qui permet d'analyser beaucoup plus finement les politiques de libéralisation qui se manifestent en Europe depuis les années 1990. I. UN CONTEXTE FAVORABLE A DES INNOVATIONS FERROVIAIRES Au moment où un accord entre le Parlement européen et le conseil des ministres de l'UE sur le quatrième paquet ferroviaire vient d'être signé en 2016, qui définit un cadre juridique européen pour l'acceptation ou le refus des attributions de marchés par appel d'offres, il est important de revenir sur cette ouverture du ferroviaire en Europe et plus particulièrement en Allemagne à travers l'exemple de la NWB. La concurrence dans les transports ferroviaires, lancée tout d'abord en Grande-Bretagne en 1994 et s'inscrivant dans le paysage ferroviaire suite au démantèlement des British Rail en 1997, s'est ensuite propagée dans plusieurs pays européens, sous la houlette de la Commission de Bruxelles et de la montée du libéralisme économique. C'est dans cette optique que nous nous attacherons à retracer les spécificités de l'ouverture à la concurrence en Allemagne pour en dresser aujourd'hui un bilan. Nous prendrons comme fil conducteur de cette analyse, l'exemple de la NordWestBahn créée à la fin des années 1990, premier cas développé dans ce pays par Veolia. Cette mutation ...