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Transmettre, hériter, succéder, autant de termes désignant la passation des biens, des pouvoirs et des responsabilités d'une génération à l'autre et, en même temps, l'acceptation par les héritiers du destin fixé par la coutume et la loi. Moment délicat en particulier pour les exploitations agricoles. Qui sera le ou les successeurs ? Qui sera le ou les héritiers ? Quand et comment cette désignation et cette transmission s'effectuent ? Quel est le sort des exclus de la succession ? Autant de questions importantes pour qui s'intéresse au passé mais aussi au présent des sociétés paysannes. Cet ouvrage rend compte des recherches les plus récentes concernant les modes de reproduction de la famille rurale en contexte d'urbanisation en France et au Québec du xviiie - xxe siècles. Il rassemble les actes d'un colloque international qui s'est tenu sur ce thème à Veyrier-du-Lac, en 1991.

Introduction Avant même que l'industrialisation ne se soit affirmée, le circuit économique se nourrit à un réseau de crédit susceptible de jeter une passerelle entre le présent et l’avenir. La reproduction familiale vise elle aussi à préparer ce passage de l'aujourd'hui aux lendemains. Mais les études sur ce procès ont mis l'accent sur la transmission des patrimoines sans tenir assez compte des marges de manœuvre que peuvent ménager les réseaux de crédit. La présente communication soutient qu...

Our natural mode is therefore not compromisebut ‘irony’ – the inescapable responseto the presence and pressures of opposites in tension.Irony is the key to our identity.Malcolm Ross (1954) Canada must meet the test of living with three fundamental challenges of twenty-first century society: complexity, new forms of collaboration, and citizen engagement. The new information and communication technologies, and the greater connectedness they have generated, constitute only one of the fa...

Despite all the pleasant rhetoric at the last Houston Summit and the formal negotiations between the United States and Canada regarding acid rain, neither government is resolved to taking a strong stand on the energy and environment issues they face. Both governments welcome additional studies, and negotiated agreements between the two countries are welcome as a progressive approach to the solution of current environmental problems — mainly in response to the intense public concern and media ...

We should not be swayed by our theories to give up common sense too easily.– Karl Popper The structure of the national output of advanced economies has changed dramatically since the Second World War: it has shifted more and more away from the production of material goods toward the production of services and information. Knowledge and information have become both a dominant form of output and a separate factor of production: knowledge differentials have come to be regarded as the new basis o...

Civilization is an achievement in the face of difficulties, a precarious achievement. It is the state of mind of the magician who tremblingly invokes the powers he would use, knowing that if he gets the ceremony wrong what he invokes will destroy him.– Joseph Tussman (1989) The notions of accountability and ethics are poorly understood, and the adequacy of existing frameworks for analyzing them may be responsible for much of our inability to contribute to more effective institutions of public...

The way to regulate well in times of great uncertainty is by learning rather than controlling. Not learning the answers to known questions that serve the intent to control but learning what questions about balancing and optimizing now merit asking and then learning how those questions might be answered provisionally — until the present moment emerges into a new context of questions.– Donald N. Michael (1983) Mathematics and dogma often “serve as a substitute for the usually arduous task of co...

Précisons de plus que le homard n’aboie pas et qu’il a l’expérience de l’abîme des mers, ce qui le rend très supérieur au chien.– Alexandre Vialatte The great buzzword of the 1980s was excellence. Through a perversion ascribable to illiteracy and self-interest, a comparative — excellens — has been transformed into a superlative and used to confer some nec plus ultra status on virtuosity in certain types of activities. This idea of excellence is a modern concept; it was foreign to the Greeks (...

Laisser la loi aux mains de gouvernants élus, c’est confier le pot de crème à la garde du chat.Friedrich von Hayek Il me faut commencer par remercier tous les collègues qui ont participé au colloque d’octobre 1998 de leurs commentaires viva voce, et des réflexions qu’ils ont bien voulu mettre sur papier à la suite de la lecture de mon texte. C’est toujours un privilège que d’avoir des lecteurs attentifs et critiques. À cette aune, j’ai été choyé. Mais je ne suis pas le seul. Étant donné que l...

There is only one excuse for a lecture: to challenge.– Karl Popper It is presumptuous for a career academic to address practical men and women holding important responsibilities in human affairs on the role of their agencies in meeting the needs of changing societies. This borders on temerity when the group of experts represents a wide array of cultural and national circumstances, especially when the academic in question is known to have traveled widely only in Ottawa. It becomes daredeviltry...

May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s sleep.– William Blake The conference “Who’s Afraid of Liberal Education?” was inspired by a wave of concern in Canada and the United States about the decay of cultural literacy, the suggestion that a change in postsecondary curricula might be the answer, and some recognition that the postsecondary enterprise was not doing much to address the problem. It was natural, under the circumstances, to inquire about the occult forces that might stand in ...

C’est pas toujours le capitaine qui voit premier venir le vent.– Gilles Vigneault The globalization of production, the dematerialization of economic activity, and a wave of democratization, together with sweeping demographic changes and much social upheaval have generated growing complexity, turbulence, and interdependence in the world’s socioeconomic environment. This has led to a loss of the stable state. The foci and substance of the governance process have been modified dramatically (Scho...

Government is the most precious of human possessions; and no care can be too great to be spent in enabling it to do its work in the best way: a chief condition of which is that it should not be set to work for which it is not specifically qualified, under conditions of time and place.– Alfred MarshallOur politics are Greek, but our administration is Roman.– Dwight Waldo The Canadian state is in crisis — at a point of decision. On the external front, the ground is in motion. Canada lives in an...

The slenderest knowledge that may be obtained of the highest things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge obtained of lesser things.– Thomas Aquinas There is a high degree of fuzziness surrounding the word “culture.” The use of the word “cultural” is even more licentious. If one adds that the notion of governance is itself less than limpid, one is led to conclude that, of necessity, the very notion of “governance of culture” is bound to be somewhat opaque. Yet there are many reaso...

Valorisons les obstacles entre les hommes... non pour qu’ils communiquent moins, mais pour qu’ils communiquent mieux.– Jean-Pierre Dupuy Multiculturalism is a label for many things in Canada: our multi-ethnic cultural mosaic, a policy of the federal government, and an ideology of cultural pluralism (Kallen 1982a). As a Canadian policy, it is one of the most daring initiatives of the last 25 years, but it has been assessed in varying ways, ranging from “enlightened” (Jaenen 1986), to a “manipu...

We need a new “declaration of interdependence.”...– Warren Bennis We already know much about the most important challenges that public management in Canada is likely to face over the next decade. Further, we have good reason to believe that administrative restructuring, technological fixes or gadgets, and soft-headed sloganeering about total quality or client-orientation will not provide an adequate answer, but, at the same time, we appear to be unwilling to engage in the difficult task of en...

Je ne crois pas aux choses mais aux relations entre les choses.– Georges Braque Over the past 10 years, I have worked on the problems raised by the governing, the governance, and the governability of complex organizations and socio-economic-political systems. This terrain has been explored by many researchers. Indeed, over the last 10 years, these themes have become the centre of important debates on every continent (Kumon 1992; Kooiman 1993; Castells 1996). However, governance studies are st...

The obverse of hope is trust.– James O’Toole Québec-Canada constitutional carpentering has become a national cottage industry. For years now, aficionados have met in different forums in different weeks of the year to debate slightly different versions of the same basic scenarios. After a while, these ballet-like exchanges have ceased to generate excitement because they are the re-enactment of the same constitutional charades. Yet failure at this game is exacting a heavy toll on the country, a...

In this collection of essays some of Canada's foremost writers and thinkers, including John Ralston Saul and Margaret Atwood, call for equilibrium among economics, culture, and technological change. While promoting the dynamism and change possible in Canadian society, they also call for a re-examination of Canada's past in order to chart its future.

“Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before,” Bokonon tells us. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.– Kurt Vonnegut From time to time, major issues of public interest provide an opportunity for social scientists to unpack their gear and show what new insights their “outillage mental” can generate and what new solutions their analyses suggest for tackling ur...

Governance not by the best among all of us but by the best within each of us.Joseph Tussman Introduction Le mot « gouverner » connote toutes les activités des agents et de groupes sociaux, politiques, économiques, administratifs, qui contribuent par des efforts ciblés à influencer, orienter, guider ou contrôler certains aspects ou certaines dimensions particulières d’un système ou d’une socio-économie. Il s’agit d’une réalité justiciable de ce que Karl Popper nomme le Monde 2, le monde subjec...

Pour le profane, la gouvernance fait d'abord penser au fonctionnement des organisations, ou des institutions, et à la distribution du pouvoir dans ces structures. Le jargon dans ce domaine nous vient des spécialistes de la gestion des organisations, des sciences administratives et de la sociologie urbaine. Toutefois, en devenant de plus en plus un domaine privilégiant tant les analyses du politique que de la société, le thème de la gouvernance se révèle porteur d'une nouvelle ambition : celle de se présenter comme une solution de rechange à l'organisation du pouvoir. Le projet d'une nouvelle gouvernance distribuée se présente dorénavant comme une réponse aux transformations en cours du politique dans les sociétés démocratiques. La démocratie à l'épreuve de la gouvernance propose une réflexion dynamique et innovatrice sur l'idée de la gouvernance. Regroupés autour d'un texte central de Gilles Paquet, treize chercheurs émérites apportent des perspectives variées et stimulantes qui invitent le lecteur à mener une réflexion riche et nuancée.

Commentary on Anatole Romaniuk (2017), Stationary Population, Immigration, Social Cohesion and National Identity: What are the Links and the Policy Implications? With special attention to Canada. A Demographer’s point of view

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