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The last decades have resulted in a strong renewal of the academic interest of the common lands, even more in a context of revaluation of the rural world and the local scale as alternatives to the globalizing process. A renewal which has motivated different ways for approaching the common lands, including the emergence of an archaeology of the common lands, able to generate very strong narratives on the management and appropriation processes as well as their dismantling through the long duration. In this paper we will present, through three case studies located in southern Europe (the Basque Country, Galicia and Italy), a series of reflections on the potentialities and limits of an archaeological approach to the common lands, pinpointing the capacity of material culture to reveal the multifunctional and multitemporal character of these spaces. Spaces that, as we will argue in the text, will play a central role in the future of current rural societies.

As a specialist in communication of public institutions, Caroline Ollivier-Yaniv’s works are embedded in pragmatic and comprehensive sociology, and in discourse analysis. These theoretical and methodological foundations have led her to propose a model called "integrative and configurational", characterized by the central place attributed to the discursive materiality of communication in the relationship between institutions and their audiences. This interview traces the intellectual and academic path that led her to work on health and prevention communication, through fields such as HIV, cancer, smoking and vaccination. Her research includes the particular interest of addressing both discursive productions of institutions (prevention campaigns, public reports, links between political and media actors) and the reception and appropriation of these messages by institutional audiences. The analysis of what audiences do with these productions is the subject of her most recent researches.

This article aims to shed light on the processes by which student teachers change and shape their understanding of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) as a tool for learning. Two types of processes are investigated. One is the process by which student teachers gain a technical proficiency, i.e. how student teachers benefit from their technical skills in a school context. The other process is concerned with how student teachers are able to integrate or combine a technical proficiency with a broader view on how teaching and learning should be conducted. The research reviewed indicates that an isolated technical proficiency is not sufficient for providing new teaching opportunities, and there seems to be a gap between technical knowledge and knowledge on how to employ technology in a learning context. In this light, student teachers need to develop a view on ICT that goes beyond the mere technical aspects. The concepts “mastery” and “appropriation” from Wertsch (1998) are employed to structure the discussion. These two concepts from Wertsch can inform us about the way in which student teachers approach ICT as a tool for learning and can help characterize this approach.

During the eighteenth century, exploration trips became intense public interest for intellectual, commercial and political elites of Europe. Major exploration projects in distant countries became a common endeavor of European empires. Natural history, it will be shown, was a form of appropriation and a key function of state policy. The skills of naturalists would come understanding and eventual mastery not only of nature but also of other cultures.

Services form an important part of the economy today. Innovation for service firms is as important as for manufacturing, but the innovation process for service firms is comparatively little studied. In this paper, I review the literature there is on the innovation process for service firms, and make two suggestions for formalizing that process. The common thought that service firms do not innovate does not hold. Innovation is, however, often ad hoc for services, and it can therefore be difficult to measure firms' innovation efforts. These points are related to issues of appropriability of the benefits of innovation in services. The two issues primarily discussed in this paper — the possibilities of formalizing and appropriating in case of new service development — are central issues for service firms. It is here that this paper offers some contributions to the existing literature; it does not so much present an overview thereof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]