Tri-sector partnerships in social entrepreneurship: discourse and practice of the actors from the circles of action and reflection

This article discusses the construction of tri-sector partnerships in three projects conducted in Brazil in different fields of intervention of public policy (access to water, basic education and performance of boards of rights of children and adolescents). Collaborative articulations involving the players from three sectors (the State, civil society and the market) are practices that are little studied in the Brazilian and even in the international context, as tri-sector partnerships are rare, despite the proliferation of lines of discourse in support of alliances between governments and civil society or between companies and NGOs in the management of public policy. As a research strategy, this study resorted to cooperative inquiry, a method that involves breaking down the boundaries between the subjects and the objects of the analysis. Besides working toward a better understanding of the challenges of building tri-sector partnerships in the Brazilian context, the article also tries to show the relevance to public policy studies of investigative methods based on the subjects studied, as a means of developing an understanding of the practices, lines of discourse and dilemmas linked to social action in social programs.

Délire religieux treize ans après traumatisme crânien [Religious delusion 13 years after brain injury].

We report here with a case of religious delusion in a 39 years old woman. She had suffered a head injury with right temporal concussion 13 years before but had no earlier history of psychiatric disorder. In view of the fact that this acute psychiatric state lasted for a short duration of time and that personality and affects were preserved, this incident is compared to the schizophreniform disorder of the type DSM-III-R. The hypothesis of an acquired predisposition due to head injury has been put forward as an explanation.

Discourse Type Clustering using POS n-gram Profiles and High-Dimensional Embeddings

Abstract: To cluster textual sequence types (discourse types/modes) in French texts, K-means algorithm with high-dimensional embeddings and fuzzy clustering algorithm were applied on clauses whose POS (part-ofspeech) n-gram profiles were previously extracted. Uni-, bi- and trigrams were used on four 19th century French short stories by Maupassant. For high-dimensional embeddings, power transformations on the chi-squared distances between clauses were explored. Preliminary results show that highdimensional embeddings improve the quality of clustering, contrasting the use of bi and trigrams whose performance is disappointing, possibly because of feature space sparsity.

Summarization of specialized discourse: the case of medical articles in Spanish

In this article, we present the current state of our work on a linguistically-motivated model for automatic summarization of medical articles in Spanish. The model takes into account the results of an empirical study which reveals that, on the one hand, domain-specific summarization criteria can often be derived from the summaries of domain specialists, and, on the other hand, adequate summarization strategies must be multidimensional, i.e., cover various types of linguistic clues. We take into account the textual, lexical, discursive, syntactic and communicative dimensions. This is novel in the field of summarization. The experiments carried out so far indicate that our model is suitable to provide high quality summarizations.

Between pluralism and majoritarianism: the European Court of Human Rights on religious symbols and education

How is it possible to square the development of a consistent Europeanapproach to religious diversity with the recognition of the sometimes-conflictiveplurality of state-religion models? The Court´s support of the liberalprinciples of separation and neutrality have either been deplored by Christianconservatives as the result of European Christophobia, or celebratedby secularists as contributing to the formation of a Europe free of religion.In contrast, the present chapter argues for a differentiated approach toEuropean jurisprudence, outlining how the Court has been oscillating betweenan appealing liberal-pluralist perspective or framework, and a questionablemajoritarian one. Both perspectives are illustrated by focusing onrepresentative decisions in the area of religious education and symbols.

Discourse, knowledge, power and politics: towards critical epistemic discourse analysis

Although both are fundamental terms in the humanities and social sciences, discourse and knowledge have seldom been explicitly related, and even less so in critical discourse studies. After a brief summary of what we know about these relationships in linguistics, psychology, epistemology and the social sciences, with special emphasis on the role of knowledge in the formation of mental models as a basis for discourse, I examine in more detail how a critical study of discourse and knowledge may be articulated in critical discourse studies. Thus, several areas of critical epistemic discourse analysis are identified, and then applied in a study of Tony Blair’s Iraq speech on March 18, 2003, in which he sought to legitimatize his decision to go to war in Iraq with George Bush. The analysis shows the various modes of how knowledge is managed and manipulated of all levels of discourse of this speech.

The discourse of health managers on aspects related to the delay in tuberculosis diagnosis

The aim of this study was to analyze the discourse of health managers on aspects related to delay in tuberculosis diagnosis. This was a qualitative research study, conducted with 16 Family Health Unit managers. The empirical data were obtained through semi-structured interviews. The analysis was based on the theoretical framework of the French school of discourse analysis. According to the managers’ statements, the delay in tuberculosis diagnosis is related to patient and health service aspects. As for patient aspects, managers report fear, prejudice and lack of information as factors that may promote a delayed diagnosis. Regarding health service aspects, structural problems and lack of professional skills were reported. The discourse of managers should be considered to qualify tuberculosis control actions and to prevent delays in diagnosis.

Migrating concepts: Immigrant integration and the regulation of religious dress in France and Canada

Religion in general, and Islam in particular, has become one of the main focal points of policy-making and constitutional politics in many Western liberal states. This article proposes to examine the legal and political dynamics behind new regulations targeting individual religious practices of Muslims. Although one could presuppose that church-state relations or the understanding of secularism is the main factor accounting for either accommodation or prohibition of Muslim religious practices, I make the case that the policy frame used to conceptualize the integration of immigrants in each national context is a more significant influence on how a liberal state approaches the legal regulation of individual practices such as veiling. However, this influence must be assessed carefully since it may have different effects on the different institutional actors in charge of regulating religion, such as the Courts and the legislature. To assess these hypotheses I compare two countries, France and Canada, which are solid examples of two contrasting national policy frames for the integration of immigrants.