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This paper aims to analyze how and to what extent the transformations of practices, temporalities and research organization in the field of history are generated by the changes in the way public funds are allocated. In view of the two theses confronted in this matter, stressing on one hand the hypothesis of researcher’s de-professionalization and loss of autonomy, and on the other hand the reorganization of academic professions, the survey conducted in three History labs highlights the fact that there is no single model for adaptation when research teams and academics deal with the rising power of project-based funding. In order to assess these patterns, considering the organizational level turns out to be crucial. Besides, unlike the disciplines requiring expensive experimental equipments, the fact that research in History demands a moderate level of resources, leads historians to make a limited use of project-based funding, which can be considered a strategy of avoidance. This position is also reinforced by the specific system of academic quality evaluation related to the discipline, where individual work and long term investment are significant.

A scientific research project tends to crystallize various tensions linked to time constraints. When studied as a characteristic set up, as a device in its own right, we notice that it transforms research practices and more specifically, communication practices. In the particular case of ecology, field experiment (the sign of a modernized ecology) brings along difficulties linked to the manageability of natural phenomenons and their own temporality. We examine time management practice - as well as communication about this practice - during the Inbioprocess project, in order to understand how scientists deal both with field experiment and planning constraints. Data include ethnographical and discursive material as well as interviews. Action B of the project consisted in diverting the water away from one branch of a river, during which scientists had to face delays and changes due to technical difficulties. This paper stresses the function of discursive production as a record of temporality as well as an attempt to control natural phenomenons. While scientists naturalize time criteria for evaluation, writing allows them to turn unpredictability into a narrative account. Moreover, document circulation gives the different temporalities in action a necessary complementarity. We stress the importance of adjustment practices and the risks of organizing temporalities into a hierarchy that gives more visibility to the short time of the project, rather than to the team’s longer temporality. The communicational management of temporalities appears as a central issue when pursuing a scientific project.

This article focuses on the research activities conducted in both industrial institutions and and academic laboratories and in certain intermediary organizations (joint laboratories, spin offs etc.). Punctual observations done over the last twenty years in chemistry and biology labs evidence an increased exposure to competition between academic and industrial institutions, but also between individuals globally. First, the hypothesis of this paper is that this overexposure to competition among firms, academic laboratories and scientists led to the development of strategies targeting the specific reduction of the presciber’s reserved time (“official time”) and to the rationalization of scientific work, in order to accelerate the release of the products onto the market to reduce production costs. To reflect this evolution, the organization of working time as “operations research” will be compared to the one called “project-logic” which seems to be prevalent nowadays. Secondly, these new constraining standards affect the “temporal availability” of research workers, making it therefore necessary to question the role of researchers within the wage earners system.

The paper offers a literary and temporal exploration of the Gospel of John to demonstrate the creation of forms of (a)temporality. The analysis is outlined along three temporal modes (narratological, historical and theological/spiritual) to define the manners in which the Gospel constructs different conceptions of time (linear and cyclical) that it tends in turn to negate and transcend. Constructing time serves its negation, which founds the literary genius of the word of Christ becoming text. The article first elaborates upon the linear frequency of signs whose function is to enlighten the identity of Christ and the reality of the kingdom. Secondly, one needs to explore the temporality of the celebration of the Christological Ego, especially in the farewell speeches (Jn 14-17). Finally, these precedent stages allow us to define the possibility for the word to become text as inherent to the nature of Jesus’ speeches understood as spirit and life. This passage from word to text, of writing becoming spirit and life defines what I term a textual incarnation. Once consumed, this textual incarnation opens new horizons of (a)temporality.

While breaking with a perception of the serendipity as the product of a hazardous luck relative to the “scientific mind”, this paper aims to highlight how the serendipity results from a structural concordance of “temporalities of fields”. As the latter refer to an agency of times relative to the habitus, activities and institutions specific to each field, they serve as a concordance standpoint among fields, from which conditions of production and identification of a discovery by serendipity are defined. Such an approach allows fulfilling a relative lack in the literature – the central function of temporality in the structuration of fields – and crafting a structural analyze of the discovery process by serendipity, in which the latter can be apprehended as a “coordinated practice of institution”.

My aim has been to grasp the dynamics of small groups and personal networks from their genesis to their disappearance. To this end, since 2011, I have conducted ethnographic surveys in three student residences located in France, the United States and Canada. In the present paper, I develop a two-tiered analysis: 1) between the three residences and 2) between several groups studied simultaneously during each of these fieldworks. In addition, I have built a graphic, qualitative representation of personal networks. This social network analysis enables us to define the concept of “affinity relationships”, as well as to specify the degree of linkage intensity. It also highlights the evolution of personal networks during the residents’ stay. Ethnographic descriptions, on the other hand, reveal residents’ reflexivity concerning their personal networks and the evolution thereof. Lastly, our analysis allows identifying four phases during the process of formation and transformation of small social groups. Despite the plurality of the configurations studied, these four phases were to be found in the process of formation of all the groups Thus, I make the assumption that every social group goes through the same phases. Consequently, this research contributes to the study of personal networks, providing a novel ethnographic and micro-sociological approach.