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International audience; This paper sheds light on the role of digital platform labour in the development of today's artificial intelligence, predicated on data-intensive machine learning algorithms. Focus is on the specific ways in which outsourcing of data tasks to myriad 'micro-workers', recruited and managed through specialized platforms, powers virtual assistants, self-driving vehicles and connected objects. Using qualitative data from multiple sources, we show that micro-work performs a variety of functions, between three poles that we label, respectively, 'artificial intelligence preparation', 'artificial intelligence verification' and 'artificial intelligence impersonation'. Because of the wide scope of application of micro-work, it is a structural component of contemporary artificial intelligence production processes - not an ephemeral form of support that may vanish once the technology reaches maturity stage. Through the lens of micro-work, we prefigure the policy implications of a future in which data technologies do not replace human workforce but imply its marginalization and precariousness.

International audience; Designing plausible network models typically requires scholars to form a priori intuitions on the key drivers of network formation. Oftentimes, these intuitions are supported by the statistical estimation of a selection of network evolution processes which will form the basis of the model to be developed. Machine learning techniques have lately been introduced to assist the automatic discovery of generative models. These approaches may more broadly be described as "symbolic regression", where fundamental network dynamic functions, rather than just parameters, are evolved through genetic programming. This chapter first aims at reviewing the principles, efforts and the emerging literature in this direction, which is very much aligned with the idea of creating artificial scientists. Our contribution then aims more specifically at building upon an approach recently developed by us [Menezes & Roth, 2014] in order to demonstrate the existence of families of networks that may be described by similar generative processes. In other words, symbolic regression may be used to group networks according to their inferred genotype (in terms of generative processes) rather than their observed phenotype (in terms of statistical/topological features). Our empirical case is based on an original data set of 238 anonymized ego-centered networks of Facebook friends, further yielding insights on the formation of sociability networks.

International audience; In Madagascar, a country where over 60% of deliveries are not attended by a healthcare professional, late or inadequate responses to complications during childbirth account for a great number of maternal deaths. In this article, we analyse local perceptions of birth-related risks and strategies used to avoid these risks or manage complications of childbirth. We conduct this analysis in light of the social meanings of childbirth and the social expectations placed upon women in a context of socioeconomic vulnerability and a challenged public health system. We conducted two separate studies in the district of Morondava (Menabe region) in June 2014 and March 2015, comprising semi-directive interviews with 111 people (59 mothers, 18 members of their immediate en-tourage and 34 institutional or healthcare stakeholders), and eight focus groups discussions-two with community leaders, and six with fathers. The results show that the social pressure exerted on women to give birth without complications leads them to practices aimed at avoiding a "big" baby including dietary restrictions, physical activity, and refusal of iron supplementation intake. During pregnancy, women are usually accompanied by a traditional birth attendant or matron (reninjaza). Further, they use the public health system by attending antenatal consultations. However, women are reluctant to deliver in a health facility, where the practices of health professionals are in discordance with the social realities of women and local beliefs around childbirth. If complications arise, they are explained by social causes. The parturient woman is only taken to a healthcare facility after carrying out rituals and if the problems do not resolve themselves. These findings support recommendations to reduce the cultural distance between health workers and childbearing women, strengthen the collaborations with reninjazas, and inform women and their decision makers (mother, reninjaza, spouse) about nutrition during pregnancy and signs of complications.

This article highlights, at time of democratic disillusionment, the transformation of the citizenship done by the civil society organizations, related to the Economy of Solidarity, on the Parisian territory. In this context, we analyse, comparatively speaking, NGO's with their root historicaly anchored in the parisian territory and young NGO's, also called "NGO's entrepreneurs". This analysis is based on a large scale empirical survey, mixing observations, focus group and semi-structured interviews. The author questions here four dimensions in the renewal of the "updated" citizenship: how the creator of an NGO tries to find new ways of work, the reinvention of new democratic and extensive way of life, the ambivalence of politization, and the strewing of common democratic values., Résumé L'article s'intéresse, à l'heure du désenchantement démocratique, à la recomposition de la citoyenneté exercée par les acteurs associatifs de l'économie solidaire du territoire parisien. Dans ce cadre, et en prenant appui sur une enquête empirique de grande ampleur et ses premières hypothèses et résultats, mêlant observations, focus groups et entretiens semi-directifs, il analyse de manière comparative des associations de l'économie solidaire, historiquement ancrées sur le territoire parisien et également un sous-ensemble de jeunes associations appelées en l'état «entrepreneurs associatifs» parisiens, ici au coeur de notre exposé. L'auteure interroge ici quatre dimensions de renouvellement de la citoyenneté qui ont pu être mises en évidence: la place de l'entrepreneur fondateur dans la construction de nouvelles formes de travail, la réinvention d'un mode de vie démocratique totalisant, les contours d'une politisation ambivalente et les potentialités de diffusion de ces nouveaux modèles démocratiques.

papier publié dans la cadre d'un interface: Ellis, Geraint, Cowell, Richard, Warren, Charles, Strachan, Peter, Szarka, Joseph, Hadwin, Richard, Miner, Paul, Wolsink, Maarten and NadaÏ, Alain(2009) 'Wind Power: Is There A "Planning Problem"?Expanding Wind Power: A Problem of Planning, or of Perception?The Problems Of Planning--A Developer's PerspectiveWind Farms: More Respectful and Open Debate Needed, Not LessPlanning: Problem "Carrier" or Problem "Source"?"Innovative" Wind Power Planning', Planning Theory & Practice, 10: 4, 521 -- 547; International audience; The paper ventures a view point that insists on the value that could be gained in reversing a perspective on the "planning problem" resulting from a widely shared perspective of procedural efficiency. The way to such a perspective is paved by an as widely shared acception of what is called the "technological potential". The "technological potential" approach has been criticized in the field of energy policy because of the lack of reflexivity in policy making that it favored. At this stage, this potential can be briefly defined as the potential (installed capacity) that we would reach in the absence of social obstacles to the deployment of wind power. It is in some ways the potential of an a-social technology, in the sense of a technology which deployment would leave the social unchanged. No frictions and no social re-composition whatsoever. In short, it is referring to a technologist nirvana. But the problem is that we nowadays know from STS that technologies only exist by being embedded into the social so that there is no technology whatsoever in such a nirvana. Reading the "planning problem" upside down and looking at the innovative dimension of planning processes is a way of flipping the "technological potential" over. It is a way of acknowledging that the social processes at work during the planning process, and more generally during the implementation of wind power policies, are processes that are creating the wind power potential, so that such a potential cannot pre-exist these processes.

International audience; This article analyzes some unintended consequences of the introduction of Scots, Scotland's nonstandardized vernacular, in a primary school. I show that the lack of established definition of the language or standardization entails three different processes: first, indexical links are established between Scots and a number of social properties (amusement, lack of seriousness); second, the pupils are othered in a process that constructs them as speakers of Scots; third, that process is completed by the reversal of this latter proposition: what the children speak is Scots (and not English) because of their geographic (and covertly social) origin, locking them in an identity as speakers of nonstandard/substandard language. This analysis allows me to discuss this case in terms of circulation of linguistic authority within the classroom in view of the indeterminacy of a legitimate or generally accepted version of Scots. I conclude by reflecting upon the nature of standard languages, whose status positions them not as just another linguistic variety on a par with others, but as forms of speech whose legitimacy lies not (only) within speakers' identity but within representative institutions, hence their claim to neutrality and inclusiveness, however sub-verted this may be in reality. [nonstandard, education, Scotland, linguistic authority, legitimate speaker]