NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Liberal neutrality : a re-evaluation : périodes de discussion ; Montréal, Canada, 1-3 mai 2008

This is the audio recording of all discussion sessions of the International Conference on the Re-evaluation of Liberal Neutrality organized by CRÉUM, Montreal May 1-3 2008. (The conference announcement is at http://www.creum.umontreal.ca/spip.php?article765)

Keyphrases: Liberal neutrality, Plurality, Political philosophy
Web, texte, conversation et redocumentarisation

Search engines mainly use linguistic and statistic tools and implicitly regard the Web as a large, global and permanent talk. The Web disturbs the traditional order of documents like a new media taking its place between old ones. A process of redocumentarization is currently taking place. Usually even with new tools, linguists work within the old world of documents. However, they have a special responsibility in building the new one.

Keyphrases: Web, Document
Ancrage de l'idéologie de l'Union des producteurs agricoles et de l'utopie de l'Union paysanne dans des significations imaginaires sociales

The main goal of this thesis is to disclose the ideology of the Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) and the utopia of the Union paysanne (UP) and to interpret them by anchoring it in prevailing "social imaginary significations" of our historical period. The first part of the thesis presents the social imaginary evolution of Quebec's agricultural trade unionism from 1924 to 2005. Four periods are established and this thesis is basically a study of the last period beginning in 2001 with the birth of the Union paysanne. To study this period, we first present the global social imaginary as configuration of "social imaginary significations" (SIS) - general and encompassing "ideas-values" - wich explain why a society is what it is and why it can not be otherwise. We then follow the works of significant thinkers allowing us to speak of social imaginaries and the relationship between forms and levels of social imaginaries. In the second part, we demonstrate that, through the general problematique of agricultural-rurality, "intermediate" social imaginaries - anchored in a person and in something through the UPA ideology and the utopia of the UP as an "active minority" - enable us to discover a society's SIS as a whole, and how these SIS make sense of the "intermediate" social imaginaries. The agricultural-rurality problematique is made operational within three dimensions: the relation to the self, the relation to the "other" and, the relation to nature. The relation to the self discloses an ideology in wich the farmer's working sphere is regarded mainly as a "sphere of necessity" wich implies, notably, inescapable alienating working conditions; whereas the UP utopia working sphere combines acceptable wage and the farmers "autonomy". The relation to the "other" unveils a utopia advocating equality of opportunity between types of farming and between established farmers and new comers on the one hand, and political equality between farmers and non farmers in agricultural rural area, on the other hand. In the UPA ideology, the existing inequality of opportunity and political inequality are questionnable but inescapable. Finally, leaving aside the subtleties, the relationship between agriculture and nature is to the UP utopia what the relation between agriculture or nature is to UPA ideology. The partial construction of the ideology and the utopia enables us, in the third and final part, to discover the SIS and to show that the meaning and consistency of the utopia is understandable through naturalism-ideology, autonomy and self-limitation as the dominant SIS and "unlimited expansion of rational mastery" (Technique) and capitalism (Economic) as a secondary SIS. We discover the opposite in the UPA ideology. The dominant SIS and the secondary SIS are inverted in the SIS underlying the UPA ideology, that is to say the SIS configuration of the "imaginary institution" of contemporary western civilisation.

Keyphrases: Castoriadis, Union des producteurs agricoles, Union paysanne, Agriculture
Lecture sociodémographique de l'évolution de la mortalité par suicide au Québec (1926-2004): la question de l'âge et des générations

Over the last two centuries, the most remarkable transformations in the phenomenon of suicide have been associated with the age variable. Indeed, suicide has traditionally progressed with age to reach its highest point with old age; however, over the last quarter of century in Quebec, things have changed and it would appear that it is now a youth-related phenomenon. Our study examines the recent tendencies in the evolution of mortality by suicide in Quebec from the point of view of age, discusses the possible respective effects of age, of the time period and of generations between 1926 and 2004 and proposes sociological interpretation leads. We initially present the transformations that have occured in Quebec's society since 1930 and provide a consolidated balance sheet of what is known on the subjet of suicide in Quebec as compared to international trends, all this from the standpoint of various sociodemographic variables. Our study then recalls the prominent theories and concepts on suicide, from traditional literature to contemporary thinking. It has been observed that the age variable is seldom at the core of these theories and concepts, but rather a marginal factor thereof, mediatized by other social variables. The results of our analysis clearly indicate a generation effect in the evolution of male mortality due to suicide in Quebec. This phenomenon is not present among women. However, recent generations adopt a behaviour that differs from the one shown by babies-boomers and it will be interesting to follow their journey in time.

Keyphrases: Suicide
Sociologie et histoire. À la recherche des fondements d'une distinction disciplinaire

The guideline of our research is to question the obviousness of a disciplinary dictinction between sociology and history. The subject being too broad, we have adopted an explorative approach wich follows two main tracks. The first one questions a common way of distinguishing sociology from history according to the idea that the first would be mainly explanatory while the latter would be essentially descriptive. We have confronted Durkheim's and Weber's main ideas about sociology, and brought together the debate around history which took place in France between the "histoire traditionnelle" and the "Annales" school. In doing so, we have noted a variety of ways of conceiving each discipline and that seems to be corroborated by some of these author's research work. We have also noticed a gap between disciplinary definitions and the academic research as such. Therefore, the second track of our exploration was the analysis of the "disciplines at work". By selecting three studies in history and three others in sociology, we have tried to identify some elements on wich a disciplinary distinction can be based. Far from revealing a clear boundary, the studies seemed rather to show that history and sociology take part in a common analytical practice guided by a complex process of inquiry. In that sense, we argue that the analysis of the disciplinary distinctions should carry on by a search for inquiry stances that may be specific to each of history and sociology.

Keyphrases: Divisions disciplinaires, Disciplinary divisions, Human sciences, Epistemology, Muslim Spain, Multiethnic societies
L'évolution de l'appui à la souveraineté du Québec: effets de la formulation de la question et effets de contexte

The purpose of this research was to study the evolution of the support for Quebec sovereignty from 1976 to 2007, taking into account the many wordings used by political actors and pollsters to refer to the sovereignty project. The methodology used to perform this study is a multilevel and longitudinal analysis of more than 800 polls conducted. Such an approach assumes that measurement-related factors are nested within broader contextual units, in this case time units. Hence, one can find out in what ways measurement-related factors (i.e. question-wording) influence support for Quebec sovereignty on one hand, and how time-related factors (i.e. events and time itself) affect these same measurementrelated factors effects on the other hand. We found that the many constitutional proposals, separation, independence, sovereignty and sovereignty-association/partnership generally do have significantly different mean effects on the support for Quebec sovereignty. We then found that some events cause significant changes in the evolution of sovereignty support. We finally tried to find out if changes in support for these different proposals were similar; in other words, whether these important events affect support for sovereignty in the same way for each proposal or not. In this regard, interesting but yet not conclusive results were found.

Keyphrases: Public Opinion, Question-Wording Effect, Quebec Sovereingty, Referendum, Multilevel Analysis
Une analyse en milieu de travail : Étude de cas d'une firme de sondage

[english]  The objective of this study is to analyze the internal organization of a polling firm from the perspective of workplace spheres, as identified by Bélanger, Giles and Murray (2004): production management, work organization and employment relations. More specifically, we sought to discover how the studied firm behaved in terms of managing organizational flexibility and its impact on the three aforementioned spheres.  The analysis uses case-study methodology and calls upon various types of material: point source observations, informal interviews, as well as administrative databases and assessment reports of telephone interviews carried out by interviewers. In addition, the analysis employs both classical methods such as correlations, as well as graphical representations and qualitative analyses.  The analysis traces an operational logic from the point of view of the different spheres: the significant standardization of the work process (in the sphere of production management), the reduction of flexibility (in the sphere of work organization), and the non-recognition of interviewer expertise (in the sphere of employment relations). The contradictions revealed by the analysis between the spheres of work and the goals of flexibility demonstrate that the structures currently in place block, to a certain extent, the capacities for initiative and adaptation required by flexibility. The research demonstrates that what is asked of interviewers is both a reflection of the requirements of flexibility, as seen in this thesis, but also of social requirements related to survey methodology. All of which points to the conclusion that these requirements can lead to a leveling off of employee performance.   Key words: call centers, interviewers, polling firms, organizational flexibility, production management, work organization, work relations, emotional labor.

Keyphrases: Interviewers, Call centers, Polling firms, Organizational flexibility, Work organization, Emotional labor, Work relations
Les Services documentaires adaptés aux personnes handicapées de l’Université de Montréal :
Le savoir accessible…la connaissance…la liberté !

[ENGLISH ABSTRACT] Les Services documentaires adaptés aux personnes handicapées de l’Université de Montréal :  Accessible learning…knowledge…freedom !  Université de Montréal’s Services documentaires adaptés aux personnes handicapées de l’Université de Montréal (SDAPH), an  assistive documentation service for disabled persons at UdeM, has as a goal to make documents  physically and intellectually accessible as quickly as possible. Specialize assistive technology is made available to both students and staff to facilitate the conversion of documents into formats appropriate to their needs. Training on the equipment is available from qualified personnel who also ensure that students obtain the documents they require within academic deadlines and formatted for their particular disability.

Keyphrases: Personnes handicapées, Mission
Investment Under Demand Uncertainty: the Newsboy Problem Revisited

In this article we study the effect of uncertainty on an entrepreneur who must choose the capacity of his business before knowing the demand for his product. The unit profit of operation is known with certainty but there is no flexibility in our one-period framework. We show how the introduction of global uncertainty reduces the investment of the risk neutral entrepreneur and, even more, that the risk averse one. We also show how marginal increases in risk reduce the optimal capacity of both the risk neutral and the risk averse entrepreneur, without any restriction on the concave utility function and with limited restrictions on the definition of a mean preserving spread. These general results are explained by the fact that the newsboy has a piecewise-linear, and concave, monetary payoff witha kink endogenously determined at the level of optimal capacity. Our results are compared with those in the two literatures on price uncertainty and demand uncertainty, and particularly, with the recent contributions of Eeckhoudt, Gollier and Schlesinger (1991, 1995).

Keyphrases: Uncertainty, Investment, Newsboy problem, Increase in risk, Optimal capacity
Les dirigeants du SPVM, les chercheurs et les policiers arabo-musulmans : une étude sur l'institutionnalisation de la « diversité »

This M.A. thesis questions the institutionalization of “diversity” within the Montreal Police Service (SPVM) and its impact on the actors. From a Weberian perspective, institutionalization is defined through a theory of legitimate orders. It is understood as a process by which “diversity” guides the actors’ behaviours while being shaped by them. From that perspective, “diversity” can be contemplated as a norm. It is changing depending on times, spaces and actors. From this theoretical point of view, three types of actors are looked at with two analytical aims in mind. Based on documentary research, researchers and SPVM’s managers contribute to portray, since the end of 1980s until today, the process by which “diversity” is defined and guides the Police Service’s actions. The relation between researchers’ studies and organisational measures related to “diversity” and applied by the SPVM” attest to a growing institutionalization of the norm within this organization. Finally, based on six interviews with Arab-Muslim background police officers, the author notes existing conflicts related to that process as defined by the theory. Although the internalization of consequences of conflict is possible, the analysis suggests that conflict follows from externalised tensions by these police officers according to four strategies: switching identities, impression management, appropriating stigmas and using of humour.

Keyphrases: Police, Tension
Travailler autrement: critiques et pratiques alternatives

"Social critique" can be understood as the capacity to express, to show and to “live out” one’s difference. Moreover, the capacity to express difference is closely linked to the condition of equality. Social inequalities, however, stimulate homogenization. How can people who are subject to social inequalities escape homogenization and becomes vectors of social criticism and change ? Should we agree with Marcuse that a real questioning of dominant ways of being can only arise from the margin? We could come to the conclusion that this is the role of the community or voluntary sector even if community organizations can be recuperated and transformed in the light of the dominant model into devices for integrating the forces of opposition. Among the people interviewed for this project, there is clearly a critique of work and the development of alternative practices. This is where the margin needs to be considered in relation to the dominant model. The dominant model’s logic is the logic of progress. It promotes consumerism and work while promising freedom from necessity. Thus, the construction of new social relationships, based on greater equality, has to be created in the sphere of everyday social relationships. Refusing to submit to the logic of the dominant model creates the opportunity to conceive a different approach to wealth and poverty.

Keyphrases: Critique
Immigration, origines nationales et marché du travail: la présence en emploi des immigrants de la catégorie des travailleurs sélectionnés

Based on the life course approach, this study focuses on the ethnically-based employment differentials in Québec’s labour market. Using longitudinal data from the Enquête sur les travailleurs sélectionnés (n=1541), random effects regressions have been performed to measure the influence of the region of birth on the employment of immigrants from the skilled worker class during the first four and a half years following their establishment in Québec.  The results show that employment is determined, in part, by the skilled worker’s region of birth. Four major profiles are displayed. First, skilled workers coming from Western Europe and United States, the reference category, have a relatively good situation during the entire observation period. Second, skilled workers coming from the Maghreb, disadvantaged during their first year, will improve their situation as time goes by, but will never reach the same level of employment as the reference category. Third, skilled workers coming from Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR, Eastern Asia and Oceania as well as those coming from Western Asia and the Middle East are disadvantaged during their first year in Québec. This situation will stay at a similar level during the entire observation period. Fourth, skilled workers coming from sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas (except the United States) will be disadvantaged during their first year in Québec. This situation will get worse as time goes by.

Keyphrases: Immigration, Travail, Travailleurs sélectionnés
Les représentations de la pluriethnicité québécoise dans le Mouvement Desjardins: analyse du contenu de la Revue Desjardins de 1998 à 2005

The Desjardins Group is an influential institution in modern Québec characterized by civic nationalism and sustained integration of immigrants into the French-speaking majority. Even today, Desjardins continues to identify strongly with this French-speaking majority. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the social precepts of multi-ethnicity in Québec at Desjardins. An analysis of the contents of the “Revue Desjardins” magazine from 1998 to 2005 allowed the author to understand the Desjardins position and determine a spatiotemporal rupture point in 2003, the year in which Desjardins’ position expanded to include the mostly English-speaking population of western Montreal Island. At the outset, Desjardins focused on integration into the Group and Quebec society, with an underling concern for greater institutional representation among the population. Thereafter, Desjardins adopted a more all-inclusive approach favouring adaptation to potentially lucrative markets. The linguistic categories of “Anglophone” and “allophone” were first used to tone down the specificity of ethnic groups involved. While the initial period was characterized primarily by perceptions and general policy, the inauguration in 2003 of a service centre for the allophone and Anglophone clientele of western Montreal Island was the culmination of a process of social sensitivity to establish policy guidelines. The entire approach was nuanced with obstacles to adaptation to multi-ethnicity, as well as internal institutional shortcomings. The concept of ethnicity was used sparingly, often blanketed by the term “cultural community.” This term embraces communities other than ethnic groups and reduces ethnicity to the simple expression of cultural dimension. The term also avoids pinpointing members of an ethnic group who do not identify with the community. In conclusion, the study confirmed the existence of a position on multi-ethnicity in Québec now solidly anchored within Desjardins and more clearly directed at the institution’s adjustment to offering services in English and other languages.

Keyphrases: Attitude, Communauté ethnique, Immigrant
Au-delà de l'instrumentalisation: une nouvelle identité pour le tiers secteur en France?

This thesis is concerned with the third sector in France as a social and political actor. In numerous countries, relations between the state and mutual organizations, cooperatives and associations of civil society (a heterogeneous set that we refer to here as the “third sector”) have recently been formalized as partnerships. In France, the institutionalisation of this partnership was formalised par the signing of a Charter (CPCA) in 2001. We will explore the hypothesis that, through the institutionalization process, the French third sector has been constructing itself as an actor, with its own identity or identities as well as a relatively well-defined social vision. The dominant perspective in the international literature dealing with the institutionalisation of relations between states and third sectors focuses on the instrumentalisation of third sector organizations to the detriment of their specificity and their autonomy. This perspective seems limited, in our view, since it appears to be blind to these organizations capacity for autonomous action. Therefore, in this thesis, we seek to understand if we can identify an ongoing transformation in the identity of the French third sector, such that it is emerging as a collective social and political actor. To address our hypotheses and research questions on the subject, we undertook an analysis of two sorts of data: texts written by key actors of the sector in which they reflect on the sector’s identity and interviews with certain of these actors in 2003 and again in 2005. We carried out a two-step analysis on the basis of two theoretical inspirations (Hobson, Lindholm, 1997 and Melucci, 1991). The first phase allowed us to identify two cognitive frames through which the actors of the French third sector identify themselves: one is the « associative » frame and the other, the frame of « économie solidaire ». The second phase allowed us to determine if these two cognitive frames might be considered as representing tensions existing within a single collective actor. Our results lead us to conclude that the organizations of France’s third sector do not se themselves as a unified collective actor. None the less, we were able to observe some elements showing that the frames that divide them may be partially reconcilable. This reconciliation is highly contingent on the French, European and international contexts and is also conditional on the construction of a modus operandi that works for them, since the aspirations of the actors are highly convergent.

Keyphrases: Économie solidaire
Les relations entre les grands-parents et leurs petits-enfants au Québec

We have determined that in Québec literature the grand-parents have been forgotten. In fact, whit the changer in family structurer (divorce, step-parent, etc.) the relationship between grand-parents and grand-children need to be researched. The important sociological impact needs to be developed and understood. The carrent relationship is one of triangulation where there is ago between grandparents to parents then parents then parents to children. This triangulation determined the characteritcs of the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren. Based on this, it has been more interesting to study the importance of the mediator role than play the parent as the intersection of the bond grandparents and grandchildren in the transmission of the values in Québec. It also arises from the analysis the report/ratio to large-parentalité through several generations as well as the result of social reproduction of the role of grandparents.

Keyphrases: Grand-parent, Transmission, Parent, Triangulation