Contenu du sommaire : Anthropologie des savoirs

In this article we consider how Information-Communication Science has taken into account the field of inquiry known as the « Anthropology of knowledge ». After a brief historical presentation of the constitution of this field which, distancing itself progressively from a positivistic approach, has turned towards analysis of knowledge from the perspective of meaning, a discussion of methodological positioning points up the importance of reflexive investigative research, which remains sensitive to the construction and the transformation of knowledge, studied through the prism of acts, social practice, and uses of informational and communicational devices. This methodological stance allows the researcher to study knowledge – as it is inscribed in the materializations and transpositions of « cultural entities » – as both product and producer of human relations.

This article explores the implications of considering the body to qualify knowledge in fieldwork research. The place of the body is examined within two approaches that consider the body at the center of knowledge production: the work of François Laplantine in anthropology and the work of Francisco Varela in cognitive sciences. The consequences for a political account of the relations to knowledge are then examined, as well as the importance of the bodily presence – too often neglected – during social interactions in fieldwork.

?In numerous organizational contexts, workers use their bodies and their senses to guide themselves, in the conduct of their everyday activity. Certain studies focus on social interactions through which «sensible knowledge» is generated and shaped by organizational members. Following the work initiated by these studies, our objective in this paper is to analyze and understand how «sensible nowledge» is interactionally constituted and formalized as a means to sustain knowing. To do so, we conducted an organizational ethnography in a firm of land surveyors.

This paper explores how individuals reconfigure social knowledge from interpersonal relations that are rehearsed in forró electronic music parties in Fortaleza city, capital of the Ceará State located in Northeastern Brazil. More specifically, we seek to identify cultural knowledge of gender which is reconfigured within identity construction, and which contributes to the shaping of power relations between male and female within places of popular celebration.

?Each day, votive offerings arrive at the Sanctuary of Aparecida. Inside the sanctuary, an order has been adopted to classify these offerings, and to attribute value to them. The categorization ranges from «discard», «reuse», and «resell» to «musealize». Only a few objects are exposed to the public in the «room of promises» ; such objects receive documentary value when they arrive at this specific place. Taken together, these objects characterize a documentation of faith. The role of such objects is to document the representation of a miracle. This analysis seeks to understand the document and its producers in an anthropological perspective, through a detailed study of this observed reality.

The encyclopedia Wikipedia is an innovative project based on the relationship between a socio-technical system and a community of editors. Throughout its history, the community has developed policies to evaluate and validate the knowledge which is collectively produced. This article aims to describe the evolution of policies about citations in Wikipedia in French and the debates these policies have generated between 2002 and 2008. Our anthropological approach highlights the role attributed to referencing to respond to Wikipedia's lack of epistemic trustworthiness ?.?

The public sphere on the web does not duplicate traditional scales (city, region, nation). A mediological analysis of nations as well as analysis of web sites referring to a specific territory demonstrate that a few signs circulate more than others while displaying a strong attachment to the territory. Their circulation as such constitutes the public sphere. Instituting power is replaced here by a capacity for propagation, and for the circulation of very specific elements.

In the aeronautics industry, manufacturing companies' refocussing on what they define as their core business is combined with increased recourse to subcontractors, resulting in greater coordination complexity. Based on a socio-technical communicational approach, this text studies the equipping of subcontractors with management tools-methods. Such organizational equipment is designed to produce a form of control through indicators and visual configurations which organize manufacturing workplace activity as an architext.

Throughout the contemporary period, the heritage management process of the African cultural landscape has gone through constructions, deconstructions and ruptures in the elaboration of a national identity. Heritage instrumentalization in the interests of power (nation states, colonial empires) serves first as an ideological guarantee and then, for the purpose of development. Museums were the first actors of a political mechanism dedicated to the service of States, before gradually yielding to UNESCO the main role of North-South interlocutor in the cultural sector in order to build peace between nations. The World Heritage Convention (UNESCO, 1972) fosters an inscriptions policy of cultural properties integral to local identity. States concerned by this convention hope for socio-economic advantages for their territory, without always taking into account the local population.