Suchergebnisse

Sports have taken a considerable place in the contemporary world, and yet, the concept od sports is very unprecise. That vagueness enables the individuals to get involved in them easily and to find out what they are looking for : some find in them a means of distinction, others, on the contrary, a means of getting connected with society.

Numerous comments, from pubs to universities, point out in our contemporary society the reign of individualism, selfitness, every one for himself. It seems that those criticisms nostalgie of laudatory have too much undervalued the emergence of new solidarities replacing the links of traditional communities. More than by only punctual manifestations (telethlon...) the organisation of society in "network" seems to take precedence. Is it only an epiphenomenon of the crisis ? The future will tell.

According to our usual thought process in EspacesTemps, we have intended to sum up the situation with experts on the Third-World from several social sciences. The diversity of the Third-World's awareness is not doubt a quite recent phenomenon. While this reality is acknowledged by everyone, the debate on the existence of universals or even the argument in favour of the existence on cultural specificities or not is much more contradictory. What stands out from thoses talks is the divergence of positions : some insist on the need of going deeper into concepts, others puzzled by the gradual downfall of great theories lay the emphasis on empirical attitudes. The confrontation of points of view leads to the conclusion that today the concept of the Third-World allows the most diversified representations and the shape of the whole world is altered by them. Interviews of : Boudhayan Chattopadhyay, Charles Condamine, Nigel Harris, Yves Lacoste, Serge Latouche, Henri Moniot, Ignacy Sachs, Milton Santos.

The City in All Its Aspects. Six specialists on the city, coming from different horizons, have answered EspacesTemps' questions. In front of the urban explosion, which is a major phenomenon of our times, what visions of the city does each of the persons questioned give, as representative of a social science, but also in a more subjective way ?

Is it the advent of the new child ? The historical analysis on the evolution of the child shows that it is not a given fact, eternal and unchangeable, but a social product. Alain Bidaud finds that that reality can only bring about a reassessment of the status of the adult himself and of all the models of age classes.

Une enquête rapide auprès d'adolescents révèle un fort consensus sur la structure par âges, la persistance de l' attachement à certains "rites de passage". Mais ce consensus n'est-il pas, comme l'adolescence elle-même, un produit social ?

Quelques barrières demeurent qui empêchent d'aborder les phénomènes artistiques pour ce qu'ils sont : sociaux. en avant-première de prochains travaux sur les relations entre les arts et l'espace social, et, au delà, la société, Alain Bidaud rend compte de quelques études déjà réalisées sur l'espace dans la musique et au cinéma.

Les géographes coupés en deux. Après l'analyse question par question des réponses à notre enquête auprès des géographes, aujourd'hui ce sont les géographes eux-mêmes qui nous intéressent : à une géographie fourre-tout ne correspond-il pas un magma de géographes ? Changer la géographie, la très grande majorité affirme en avoir la volonté, mais que reste-t-il de cette envolée transformatrice une fois faite la confrontation entre ces belles paroles et la réalité concrète des problèmes épistémologiques Re la géographie ? A l'image de la France politique (qui, là aussi, ne s'affirme pas pour le changement) ne peut-on pas dire que la géographie est coupée en deux avec d'un côté des adeptes de la continuité (malgré des appels pour des"réformes") et de l'autre des partisans du changement total (mais vers quelle géographie ?) ?