NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Le niveau d’autonomie du Brésil durant l’administration Lula (2003-2010) : étude du contexte pour l’action et des stratégies de politique étrangère

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Brazil’s level of autonomy in relation to the United States of America, which is the most powerful country in the western hemisphere. The problematic lies in determining the factors that influenced the level of Brazil’s autonomy during Lula’s administration (2003-2010). These are the proposed hypotheses: first, the context for action may have greatly contributed to an increase in Brazil’s level of autonomy; and second, Brazil's foreign policy strategies may have positively influenced the level of autonomy of the country. The first hypothesis, that concerns the impact of the context for action, will be analyzed in two main parts. First, the international context, which is characterized by the post-9/11 international environment and the emergence of new powers on the international stage, will be studied. Second, the continental context will be analyzed based on the current relationships between the U.S. and Latin America, the latter subcontinent being considered as America’s backyard for a long time. The evaluation of the second hypothesis will be based on three foreign policy strategies established during the Lula administration. The first is the development of South-South relations or, in others words, the horizontalization of relations. The second is the regional strategy of Brazil, which consists of playing a leadership role and promoting political and economic integration in the South American region. The third strategy is to distance itself from the United States by occasionally opposing this powerful nation. We conclude, based on the analysis of our hypotheses, that the level of autonomy of Brazil in relation to the United States increased significantly during the Lula administration.

Keyphrases: Autonomy, Context for action, Power, Emerging powers, Foreign policy, South-South relations, Regional Leadership, Brazil, United States
Les cultures fragiles : l'UNESCO et la diversité culturelle (2001-2007)

Since the ratification of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions – UNESCO (2007) –, cultural expressions are now protected species under the umbrella of international law. Emerging from various negotiations and debates about cultural goods and services in various international fora, a major political mobilization took place at the turn of the millennium. It mostly materialized through the concept of "cultural diversity", which served as a catalyst for the elaboration of a legally binding instrument within UNESCO. Nothing sums up better the argument brought forth than the recurring mantra which could be heard inside and outside UNESCO: “culture is a commodity like no other”. Why? Mainly, it is argued, because of what it expresses – identity, values and meaning. The diversity of cultural expressions is therefore able to better represent the diversity of cultures on an increasingly globalized scene.  The materialization of the issue of cultural diversity was mainly a reaction to the multiplication of multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements in the 80s and 90s. By placing cultural diversity as a counterpoint to a globalization seen as too narrowly economic in its scope, the promoters of the project wanted to emphasize its neglected cultural dimension. "Cultural diversity" had apparently already drawn the necessary traits of a globalization with a human face and it was now important to put them to the forefront.  This research therefore focuses on the emergence of this concept and its international dissemination. An ethnographic approach examines its use, the host institution (UNESCO), the debates surrounding the multiplication of actors in the course of its institutionalization, and of course the established consensus. I attempt to identify some key conceptual issues underpinning the field of an international intervention made on behalf of a cultural diversity that was about to be invented.

Keyphrases: Cultural Diversity, Unesco, Unesco, Ethnography, Anthropology of institutions, Aesthetics, Globalization, International politics
Establishing a recovery orientation in first line mental health teams in Québec : perspectives from social workers and managers

Following the 2005 Mental Health Action Plan most mental health services are offered in primary care teams. This policy called for a paradigm shift away from a biomedical model of care toward a process-focused ‘recovery’ orientation in mental health. Concurrently, it called for the use of a results-orientation that is outcome-focused in order to ensure efficiency. The objective of this research project was to explore the development of recovery-oriented practices among social workers in first line mental health teams in Québec. To do this, I investigated the microprocesses of implementing recovery-oriented services and practices alongside results-oriented management techniques.  In addition, this project explored the saliency of a recovery orientation specifically for first line mental health social workers. This qualitative, exploratory study consisted of 11 semi-structured interviews with social workers and managers in first line mental health teams. The results indicate that certain aspects of work organization, such as flexibility, autonomy, reflexivity, training, and interdisciplinarity can foster a practice that is recovery-oriented. In addition, the results show that the foundations of both the recovery orientation and the social work profession share common values.  However, social workers face constraints to practice that go beyond their know-how and professional base.  Our exploratory study leads us to contemplate the influence of work organization on changing practice. The results suggest that practicing from a recovery orientation was a shared ideal among the participants but that the meaning and expression of this ideal was profoundly shaped by practice contexts. The implications of these results are that recovery-oriented systems will be difficult to develop in a result-oriented paradigm.

Keyphrases: Recovery, Mental health action plan, Mental health social work practice, First line mental health care, Results-oriented management
Au-delà des bonnes intentions : réflexions d’intervenants sociaux non-autochtones sur leur pratique auprès des Autochtones au Canada

For a long time, assimilation was the government’s method of choice when integrating Indigenous communities into Canadian society. Non-native social workers’ practices figured predominantly within this ideology, and consequently, they contributed to the oppression of the Natives. Due to these historic events, non-native social intervention has a poor reputation in Indigenous communities in Canada. In fact, even though social intervention is presently evolving, it is still tainted by its history and reinterpreted by the collective and individual memories of the oppressed. It is therefore deemed important to study the way in which non-native social workers situate themselves with regards to these issues. This paper focuses primarily on the fundamentals and the nature of non-native social work in an indigenous context in Canada. The purpose of this research is to understand how non-native social workers situate and perceive themselves during their work with Natives. The data were collected during semi-structured interviews with 11 non-native social workers in various social environments, but all with First Nations people or Inuits of Canada. The social representation theory guided this research to a qualitative analysis of the data collected. During this research, it was found that social workers have a critical representation of social work in a non-native context.  This brings them to perceive themselves differently, even more positively, compared to the perceptions they have of their professions in this Indigenous context. Their professional representations therefore influences the development of a practice situated on the periphery of current dominant Western approaches.

Keyphrases: Intervenants non-autochtones, Canada, Social Intervention, Indigenous, Non-native social workers, Social representations
L’écosystème des crimes de bars de danse érotique québécois

Erotic dance clubs are perceived as being linked to numerous illegal activities. In this study, we describe crimes associated with erotic dance bars in Quebec, focusing on criminal and deviant acts, and aiming to establish their level of organization and structure. This analysis is guided by two theoretical frameworks: the organizing crime approach and Felson’s (2006) crime ecosystem theory. Fieldwork was undertaken by conducting guided interviews with ten female dancers, a shooter girl, a club owner, a doorman and two patrons. A thematic analysis was conducted at two levels. Findings illustrate that crime in such settings are generally linked to the consumption and sale of narcotics, prostitution and pimping, deviances, and various crimes of violence. The analysis also revealed that control mechanisms and management varied greatly across clubs.  The structure and organization of crime could be understood, in Felson’s (2006) crime ecosystem terms, as symbiotic and interdependent relationships between mutualistic and parasitic parties. Overall, the criminogenic environment of erotic dance clubs, offers many opportunities to be seized by individuals motivated to make personal gain. Additional findings suggest that the involvement of criminal group is relatively limited; and the consequences caused by various legitimate and unlawful activities pose a great deal of concerns, in particular for women. In such contexts, situational prevention measures would be adequate to reduce opportunities.

Keyphrases: Prostitution, Violence, Erotic dance bar, Exotic dancing, Strip club, Prostitution, Pimping, Narcotics, Violence, Organized crime, Organizing crime, ecosystem
L'intervention psychosociale dans le sport pour développer des habiletés de vie chez des jeunes à risque de délinquance

The “Bien dans mes baskets” (BdmB) program, implemented in 1999 in a high school of Montreal, uses basketball to reach adolescents at risk of delinquency. The distinctive characteristic of BdmB is that the coaches are also social workers (CSW) who implement strategies to develop life skills among athlete-students (AS) who partake in the basketball extracurricular program. The aim of this study was to examine how the experiences lived through BdmB contributed to the development of life skills in young adults who have participated in the program when they were in high school. We used a retrospective qualitative study design. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 young adults who were involved in the BdmB program during their high school. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. A thematic content analysis of participants' accounts was performed to identify the specific role of team sport involvement with psychosocial interventions on the alumni players’ life skills development. The results suggest that 4 main factors contributed to life skills development in AS: modeling the CSW who epitomize the BdmB philosophy enables AS to emulate their coach’s behaviors; bonding between AS creates a new social network in which AS can find social support; a BdmB culture is internalized by sharing experiences among the BdmB AS and the CSW; BdmB has a protective effect against negative influences from the high-risk milieu in which AS live. The results suggest that team sports combined with psychosocial interventions has the potential to foster life skills development in youth at risk.

Keyphrases: Basketball, Basketball, Psychosocial intervention, Life skills, Delinquency, Qualitative method
Types de famille et ségrégation résidentielle croisée à Montréal, 2006

The main topic of this text is a narrowly defined form of demographic segregation: segregation by family type. However, since the spatial distribution of married, cohabiting, lone-mother, or lone-father families does not depend solely on their structure, we must also consider other aspects of their identity, including their socio-economic and ethno-cultural characteristics. The combination of these factors produces a cross-segregation that we investigate using 2006 census data for the Montreal metropolitan area. We first use segregation indices to highlight a "raw" family type segregation and we then use locational attainment models to determine its "net" effect on the median household income of the neighborhood and on the distance between the neighborhood and the city core. We find a significant interaction between ethnicity, family income and family type which leads us to put in perspective the findings of studies that do not take into account the internal heterogeneity of family types.

Keyphrases: Mariage, Locational attainment, Spatial distribution, Family types, Racial segregation, Single-parenthood, Cohabitation, Marriage, Neighbourhoods, Immigration status, Ethnocultural groups
La cartographie des sites de régulation génétique à partir de données de débalancement allélique

Wilson and King (1975) proposed that evolution frequently operates through mutations affecting genetic regulation. Likewise, it is expected that genetic variation responsible for inter-individual differences will be due to variation in regulatory sites. Identifying such sites is thus important in the genetic and medical research. We have developed a new bioinformatics algorithm to find genome-wide regulatory sites for a big number of genes. Individuals carrying different alleles at a regulatory site will exhibit allelic imbalance(AI) due to differential expression of the two copies the same locus. Our approach consists of searching polymorphic sites (SNPs) in linkage disequilibrium with AI in order to map regulatory regions. We have detected many SNPs associated to the regulation of different genes pointed in previous studies. We have also found regulatory regions far from the transcription start site (TSS). The major advantage of this method is that phased data is not needed. In addition, AI data has the benefit of not being affected by external factors since it is measured in the same cell. The results show that our approach is reliable and it can detect sites far from the gene.

Keyphrases: SNP, Allelic imbalance, LD, AI, Linkage disequilibrium, Regulatory Region, eQTL, Regulation
L’insertion professionnelle des Haïtiens de deuxième génération

This thesis focuses on the integration of second-generation Haitians on the job market. Integration on the job market is the main condition for social integration as being employed has impacts at the economical, social and psychological levels. The literature has shown that young people, particularly those belonging to visible minorities have more difficulty in entering the labor market. With this in mind, we examined the status of second-generation Haitians. The literature reports of multiple social and economic difficulties faced by this segment of the population. We are therefore interested in the characteristics of the experience of these second-generation Haitians in the workforce. Our main objective was to analyze the general trajectory of insertion of this population in the labor market.  Our qualitative approach was based on a series of interviews conducted in the winter of 2010 with men and women of Haitian origin. Topics discussed during these interviews led to different results from those identified in the academic literature on second-generation Haitians. Indeed, we have met men and women who have encountered some obstacles and continue to face difficulties related to their experiences as individuals with an ethnic background different from that of the majority. These difficulties manifest themselves in their experience on the labor market. However, this has not prevented these children of Haitian immigrants to overcome obstacles and succeed in their integration at the professional, economic and social levels.

Keyphrases: Second-generation Haitian, employment, integration, professional integration, workforce
Réseaux de neurones à relaxation entraînés par critère d'autoencodeur débruitant

Machine learning is a vast field where we seek to learn parameters for models from concrete data. The goal will be to execute various tasks requiring abilities normally associated more with human intelligence than with a computer program, such as the ability to process high dimensional data containing a lot of variations. Artificial neural networks are a large class of such models. In some neural networks said to be deep, we can observe that high level (or "abstract") concepts are automatically learned. The work we present here takes its inspiration from deep neural networks, from recurrent networks and also from neuroscience of the visual system. Our test tasks are classification and denoising for near binary images. We aim to take advantage of a feedback mechanism through which high-level representations, that is to say relatively abstract concepts, can influence lower-level representations. This influence will happen during what we call relaxation, which is iterations where the different levels (or layers) of the model can influence each other. We will present two families of architectures based on this mechanism. One, the fully connected architecture, can in principle accept generic data. The other, the convolutional one, is specifically made for images. Both were trained on images, though, and mostly images of written characters. In one type of experiment, we want to reconstruct data that has been corrupted. In these tasks, we have observed the feedback influence phenomenon previously described by comparing the results we obtained with and without relaxation. We also note some numerical and visual improvement in terms of reconstruction performance when we add upper layers’ influence. In another type of task, classification, little gain has been noted. Still, in one setting where we tried to classify noisy data with a representation trained without prior class information, relaxation did seem to improve results significantly. The convolutional architecture, a bit more risky at first, was shown to produce numerical and visual results in reconstruction that are near those obtained with the fully connected version, even though the connectivity is much more constrained.

Keyphrases: Artificial intelligence, Machine learning, Neural networks, Denoising autoencoder, Recurrent neural networks
La pensée des femmes violentes : les théories implicites liées au comportement violent

Implicit theories are defined as underlying and interconnected beliefs that influence conscious thoughts and their related behaviors (Ward, 2000). Implicit theories have been investigated in male and female sexual offenders and male violent offenders, but never in female violent offenders. Research shows that male violent offenders’ cognitions can be organized into four implicit theories: 1) Beat or be beaten; 2) I am the law; 3) Violence is normal; and 4) I get out of control (Polaschek, Calvert & Gannon, 2008). The aim of this study was to examine the implicit theories of violent female offenders. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 convicted violent women. In the analysis, participants’ cognitions were extracted using the discourse thematic analysis method (Angers, 2005). These cognitions were then thematically organized into implicit theories using the Grounded Theory method (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Results show that women hold six categories of implicit theories. To of them are neutral, because there were also found in the male offender’s study: 1) Violence is normal and 2) I get out of control. The four other are gender-specific: 3) Those who act unfairly deserve to be beaten, 4) I need to protect myself and others, 5) I am not a violent person, and 6) Life is too hard on me. In addition, results suggest that there are two distinct groups of female offenders that differ in their cognitions: the “antisocial offenders” and the “classic offenders”. Implications and theoretical explanations of are results are discussed.

Keyphrases: Female Violent Offenders, Violence, Violence, Implicit Theories, Cognitive Schemas, Distortions cognitives, Cognitive Distorsions
Patrons de distribution des crustacés planctoniques dans le fleuve Saint-Laurent

The research aims to determine the distribution patterns of crustacean plankton along the longitudinal (west-east) and transversal (north shore - south shore) axes of the St. Lawrence River between Lake Saint-François and the estuarine transition zone, during two hydroperiods in May (high discharge) and August (low discharge). The zooplankton samples and the environmental data were collected at 52 stations distributed along 16 transversal transects in 2006. In chapter 1, we present the theoretical concepts of river ecosystem models, and a synthesis on the generative processes driving zooplankton spatial patterns in rivers. We also present our research objectives and hypotheses. In chapter 2, we describe spatial patterns of the zooplankton community structure in three biogeographic zones of the St. Lawrence and 6 longitudinal habitats, together with the relationships between zooplankton spatial structure and water masses spatial distribution and environmental characteristics. In chapter 3, we perform a variation partitioning procedure on spatial variables AEM (based on water masses spatial distribution) and environmental variables in order to assess how much of the zooplankton variation is explained by hydrological processes (AEM variables) and local conditions (environmental factors). The salinity-conductivity gradient related to the fluvial-estuary discontinuity determines the large-scale spatial patterns of the crustacean zooplankton. In the fluvial zones, the zooplankton distribution patterns are more influenced by the water masses spatial structure than by local environmental factors. The spatial distribution of the water masses explained more of the spatial structure of zooplankton communities in August than in May.

Keyphrases: Asymmetric eigenvector maps (AEM), Ecological modeling, Directional hydrological network and water quality, Redundancy analysis (RDA), River spatial complexity, St. Lawrence River, Water masses, Zooplankton spatial distribution patterns, Variation partitioning
Chronique, enquête et silence : autopsie de la présentation du conflit interne par la presse de Lima jusqu’au massacre d’Uchuraccay, 1960-1983

In 2003, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Peru published a report on the internal war and violence that tore the country apart from 1980 to 2000. The report studied those two decades in order to shed light on the events, investigating the involvement of different sectors of society, so that Peruvians would be able to come to peace with their recent history. In its report, the TRC had a section on the media – including the written press. The report underscored the “important” role the media had played, but also stated that their coverage of the war might not have helped bring peace and may have even at times worsened the situation. This thesis aims to study the coverage of the internal war by the three daily newspapers with the largest circulation, Expreso, El Comercio and La República. It focuses on the period between the start of the war on May 17, 1980 and the massacre of eight journalists in the Andean village of Uchuraccay on January 26, 1983. It also considers the evolution of Peruvian journalism since the 1960s, when a democratic government was elected and a military junta subsequently took power and held it for 12 years. Beyond the ideological differences that characterize the three papers studied, this rocky period accounts for, at least partially, the initial lack of interest shown by the newspapers towards the first guerilla actions of the Shining Path and its popular war.

Keyphrases: El Comercio, Expreso, La República, Caricature, Photography, Caricature, Journalism, Shining Path, Peruvian internal conflict, Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Peru), Peru