Contenu du sommaire : Anthropolgie de l'espace habité

Augustin Berque, Tatami as Ecosymbol The tatami, which characterizes Japanese habitation, is an element of culture that valorizes nature and the unity of the senses. It is expressive, thusly, of a uniquely Japanese cultural matrix where the social and spatial, postures and things, and the corporeal and the spiritual are intimately intertwined. In particular, this structural dynamic achieves a veritable "moral geometry" in the tea ceremony.

Alain Delissen, Dragons in the Korean Landscape The dragon is central to the Korean system of fengshui geomancy. On the one hand, it is a nature metaphor symbolizing the power of resurgence, renaissance ; it evokes the unforeseeable but tameable. On the other hand, it is an aesthetic and conceptual form permitting an apprehension and differenciation of reality ; beyond the complexities of existence, there is coherence, detectible by humankind.

Nicole Beaurain, Oh, how My Village was Pretty ! In less than twenty years, Spain has become an industrial and highly urbanized country. This socio-economic evolution involves an unprecedented modernization of agriculture and the countryside. How have such transformations of the Spanish economy affected rural areas and life-styles in the countryside ? The example of a small agricultural village reveals these changes. Especially, it poses the question of the urbanization of the countryside and of its inhabitants and its relation to the urbanization of the entire planet.

Corinne Davault et Élisabeth Pasquier-Merlet, The H.L.M. and the Local Mission : Two Examples of Social Rehabilitation Often seeming to be unstructured and disordered, the populations of the H.L.M. and of the Local Missions are seen as needing outside assistance towards greater integration. However, recent studies indicate that such communities are far more heterogeneous than imagined and that they are actively involved the processes of restructuration and identity formation. As such, these communities are characterized by their own internal conflicts in which innovations are opposed in the name of established collective values and codes of honor.

Monique Sélim, An H.L.M. in the Vortex of Change : Representations of Space and Power A two-years study of an H.L.M. north of Paris begun in 1977 revealed that such communities are fraught with social and cultural devastation that goes beyond the healing capacity of local organizations. The implications of this development cannot be considered as excluding social disturbances amounting to a generalized social war.

Gérard Althabe, The suburbs of Buenos-Aires. Private house and politico-religions salvation A micro investigation was done in a quarter of a suburb of Buenos-Aires, looking at the patterns of integration into urban society from a massive migration to town from rural areas and with a specific emphasis on the self building of private houses as a near strategy. The way in which these migrants are constructing their relations with the society is analyzed through political representations using peronism and the continuity in the religious fields.

Philippe Haeringer, Sao Paulo. The sécuritarian fragmentation of a megalopolis Megalopolis : 'To show the town to compare it" is a group for comparative researches looking at visible signs of the town. One objective is to identify specific residential models, their evolution and the context of urban policies challenges in the future. The group is now looking at the securitarian reflex deeply involved in the urban morphology in the case of Sao Paulo.

Maïté Clavel, Urban Ethnology in France : Exotic Societies in Contemporary Urban Space Urban ethnology in France has not taken the path indicated by the "classical" ethnologists who addressed the question of urbanization. Otherness remains a source of fascination, But, compared to other types of urban studies, neither the city, cut-up into micro-groups and considered as an abstraction or a hostile milieu, nor the methods that favor the prolonged observation of the private life of social or ethnic groups that are sometimes more difficult to approach than in foreign countries, bring truely new knowledge about the relations between city dwellers and their environments.

Pierre Lantz, Henri Lefebvre : The Poiesis of Praxis Henri Lefebvre's project concerning the critic of everyday life analyzed the substance of everyday existence without becoming seduced by it and maintained a high level of conceptualization without fetichizing the oppositions between different systems. Human activity, the link between all determinisms, appropriates human and physical nature. Metaphilosophical poiesis approaches symbolism, and sociology rediscovers the poetry of praxis. These two directions are, in fact, linked ; political practice fails if the anthropo-cosmological symbolism decomposes into political totems. The theme of revolutionary romanticism must be understood from this perspective.

Maria Villela Petit, Time in Hopi Language and Culture Study of the writings of B.L. Whorf, Helmut Gipper and others permits a consideration of the concept of time in the language and culture of the Hopi. More generally, the "case" of the Hopi reveals significant aspects of a cosmic apprehension of time that is essentially religious and nonparametrical.