TESTIFYING

Michel Crozier, a sociologist in a countercurrent

Interview with Dominique Vellin

Michel Crozier, 82 years old, has just published the second volume of his memoirs. This provided us with the opportunity for a meeting to ask him about a few special moments in his intellectual itinerary and about his view of the social sciences as they have evolved in France over the last few decades.

New menaces and governance: Barriers to overcome, paths to open

Patrick Lagadec

Our times are a period of ruptures in relation to risks and collective security on all fronts: the environment, climate, public health, technology, social trends, geostrategy and violence. The events 11 September haunt our mind; but they do not represent the only threat. We must address these vast, tangled questions, which often seem beyond the scope of thought, in order to protect ourselves, of course, but also, with nobler ambitions, to draw up collective projects in this tormented world where the unintelligible mixes up with the menace of a sudden collapse or a positive, inconceivable rebound. To do this, we have to recognize the new horizons of risks and, above all, overcome the deep, multiform resistance that often blocks our thinking, actions and visions

 
The paradoxes of “emerging indicators”: The case of forest management in Belgium, France and Luxembourg

Benoît Bernard

Indicators clarify the objectives to reach and the ways to reach them. They also enable public managers to account for their acts, which user-consumers can then evaluate. However the public utility of “emerging indicators” must be assessed in the light of their paradoxical effects, which might leave a tepid impression about their usefulness for collective actions. The so-called “emerging indicators” draw their force from the delicate course they steer between being opened and closed. They are both unquestioned (so that actions can be pursued) and, nonetheless, questionable (so that actions can change direction).

WHILE READING

 Women, the subject of innovation

Hervé Dumez

The theorists of innovation usually talk about computers, automobiles, aeronautics, medicine or biotechnology. Teresa Riordan, a scientific journalist specialized in the study of patents who writes for the New York Times in particular, has taken up the challenge of writing the missing book about innovation in techniques in relation to women and their bodies. The result is a gripping surprise with an original, discrepant view of innovation, of its nature and processes.

OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACES

 The metamorphosis of a public transportation firm in Hanoi

Walter Molt

Privatization is usually presented as the solution to problems in public transportation. The history of Hanoi Public Transport tells a different story. Take notice, however, that competition with the private sector will be necessary to keep the public enterprise on the road to success.

MOSAICS

Claude Riveline: Globalization in the feminine gender: On Claudie Bert’s S'expatrier en famille.

Frédéric Kletz: Management under consideration : On Gilles Garel and Éric Godelier’s (eds.) Enseigner le management: Méthodes, institutions, mondialisation.
Dominique Tonneau: Communicating in Europe : On Fritz Nies’ (ed.) Europa denkt mehrsprachig [Europe thinks in several languages].

OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACE

Jean‑Louis Peaucelle

The interchangeability of mechanical parts was a keystone in the development of modern industry. It was not put in place till the 19th century, following several innovations. To achieve what initially seemed to be but a supplementary quality required of products, work methods had to be changed; new tools, introduced; new machines, built; hydraulic energy, put to use; strict controls, set up. These transformations affected social relations. Home work disappeared; and polyvalent worker-farmers began specializing. Machine adjustments and maintenance became identified activities performed daily at the workplace, independently of the hierarchy. All these characteristics of modern industry emerged during the quest for interchangeable parts, a story told herein…

 
 
TRIAL BY FACT

 
The push-button inferno: Thoughts about an ordinary man-machine interface

Christian Morel

Machines — those we use day after day — tell us something. But we poor human beings do not always understand what they are saying. Who is to blame? Is this to be set down to the incomprehensible jargon that engineers taught the machines when they were invented? Or to the ergonomists and designers who pay little heed to our expectations? Or to users’ slight patience with their mechanical servants or, more simply, to the consumer’s intellectual sluggishness? Whatever the explanation, this incommunicability between living and nonliving beings often turns into a nightmare! A push-button inferno is opening its maw in front of us.