On the origins of a fermier général: Family strategies over seven generations (late sixteenth through the late eighteenth centuries)

Family archives from the French ancien régime period offer the possibility of analyzing complex family strategy in the long term. The present article deals with the Brac family over seven generations, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, as it rose in prominence from a start in leatherworking to eventual high office in regional and Parisian public life. Over the centuries, the family accumulated land (the patrimony); used a combination of marital, geographical, professional, and kinship networks to advance its various members; maintained a policy of economic parsimony in its expenditures; and through various procedures favored a single heir in each generation. Though the various lines of the family were geographically dispersed, their activities in the main continued to focus on the ancestral family lands and the local society of its origins.     

Fast gas chromatography of explosive compounds using a pulsed-discharge electron capture detector

The detection of a mixture of nine explosive compounds, including nitrate esters, nitroaromatics, and a nitramine in less than 140 sec is described. The new method employs a commercially available pulsed-discharge electron capture detector (PDECD) coupled with a microbore capillary gas chromatography (GC) column in a standard GC oven to achieve on-column detection limits between 5 and 72 fg for the nine explosives studied. The PDECD has the benefit that it uses a pulsed plasma to generate the standing electron current instead of a radioactive source. The fast separation time limits on-column degradation of the thermally labile compounds and decreases the peak widths, which results in larger peak intensities and a concomitant improvement in detection limits. The combination of short analysis time and low detection limits make this method a potential candidate for screening large numbers of samples that have been prepared using techniques such as liquid-liquid extraction or solid-phase microextraction.     

Adult Hirschsprung's disease diagnosed during forensic autopsy

We report a case of fatal Hirschsprung's disease (HD) discovered at autopsy. A 20-year-old man collapsed at home. Emergency medical personnel found him in cardiac arrest and all resuscitative efforts failed. He had a past history of chronic constipation since infancy. Forensic autopsy revealed a megacolon full of gas and stools. Microscopic examination showed absence of ganglion cells in a short segment of the rectum and enterocolitis in the left and transverse colon. HD is rarely described in adults. In many cases, patients complained of constipation since infancy but the affection remained misdiagnosed. The relative good tolerance of the disease is usually due to a short aganglionic bowel segment. Enterocolitis is a frequent and severe complication of HD in children but is rarely described in adults. This case suggests the importance of HD diagnosis in childhood in order to avoid fatal complications with forensic consequences.     

‘Communication’ in the era of ‘Empire’ and ‘multitude’

SUMMARY

Politics has been described as “an aggregate of persons in a power perspective of elaborated demands and expectations”. From this the collective nature of politics can be clearly seen. Without communication, however, no collective action is possible and consequently no political action. Based on this politics can be seen as the continuous defining of collective action in the context of mutual power relations in which there are differences (inter alia of objectives and methods) and consequently conflict over the allocation of scarce resources. Even though there has been an early interest in the relationship between politics and communication, e.g. Aristoteles and Julius Caesar with his Acta Diurna, systematic study of the relationship between communication and politics and the generation and regulation of conflict is of recent nature. A review of the literature on the theory and research in the field of political communication indicates it to be of original interest to researchers from fields such as journalism, mass communication, political science and speech communication. Recently, however, political communication emerged as a field on its own worthy of its recognition as a subdiscipline of communication science: it is recognized by professional bodies like the International Communication Association it is a separate area for research, teaching and for publication of journals devoted to it.     

Acknowledging and protecting language rights on SABC TV through the use of subtitles

Abstract

In this article the use of subtitles is proposed as a way by means of which the problem of acknowledging and recognising language rights on SABC TV can be addressed. The concept of language rights is approached in terms of how it is understood in the field of sociolinguistics. Within the South African context the language provisions in the constitution (1996) need to be taken into account. An overview is also provided of multilingual broadcasting and of how this type of broadcasting is realised by SABC TV. Despite legislation and SABC policy accommodating the acknowledgement and protection of language rights, SABC TV favours the use of English. In this article the importance is emphasised of pivot and bilingual subtitles within the South African situation. Finally, this article proposes subtitling as a method through which multilingual broadcasting can be realised and the language rights of the speakers of languages other than English can be acknowledged and protected on SABC TV.     

Unwed mothers in the city. Illegitimate fertility in 19th-century Geneva

The rise in illegitimate fertility in the late 18th and early 19th centuries has often been related to increasing economic and social vulnerability in the urban industrializing world. Many studies using macro-level data or analyzing individual characteristics of unwed mothers have found support for the vulnerability hypothesis. In this article, we investigate illegitimate childbearing in early 19th century Geneva in a longitudinal perspective. Relating events (illegitimate births) to the population at risk (single women), our multivariate analysis shows that the segment of the female population assumed to be most vulnerable – immigrants and maids – did not have a higher risk of illegitimacy. However, the substantially increased risk among women who already gave birth to illegitimate children indicates the existence of a small but highly vulnerable group of women.     

Why do French MPs Focus More on Constituency Work than on Parliamentary Work?

The relationship between French members of the National Assembly and citizens is paradoxical. On the one hand, the French political culture, constitution and history favour a very abstract conception of representation: MPs are supposed to act as trustees and collectively to embody the French Nation. On the other hand, they are deeply involved in their constituencies and express a great level of satisfaction being there. In order to understand how French MPs reconcile the national and local dimensions of their mandate, the data gathered through face-to-face interviews with MPs are described. Then a scale analysis is provided in order to sum up the local–national orientations of the MPs. Using this scale, it is possible to test the impact of several variables on the territorial focus of MPs: electoral incentives, political ambition, ideological factors and working conditions at the local and the national level.