Régime d'historicité et historiographie en France et au Québec, 1956-1975. Michel de Certeau, Fernand Dumont et François Furet.

L’historien n’écrit pas de nulle part. Ancré dans son présent et participant à la société, il en épouse – ou critique – les projets, les utopies et les grands récits. Nous proposons dans ce travail d’approfondir cet ancrage à travers une histoire croisée et comparée des expériences du temps de deux historiens français (Michel de Certeau, François Furet) et d’un historien-sociologue québécois (Fernand Dumont). Notre objectif est double : il s’agit d’établir, dans un premier temps, les correspondances entre leurs expériences lors de deux tournants, celui des années 1960 et celui des années 1970. Tout en prenant en compte les contextes des auteurs à l’étude, nous élargirons l’échelle d’analyse afin de cerner la contemporanéité d’expériences du temps qui ne se réduisent pas aux seuls cadres nationaux. Nous pourrons ainsi établir les coordonnées des régimes d’historicité à chaque tournant en contribuant à préciser les différentes combinaisons des modes futuristes et présentistes en jeu. Dans un deuxième temps, nous explorerons les liens entre historiographie et régime d’historicité afin de mettre en évidence les jonctions entre les considérations épistémologiques et l’horizon d’attente des historiens à l’étude. En abordant plus spécifiquement la question du rôle de l’historien dans sa société, nous jaugeons les transformations parallèles de son expérience du temps et de ses pratiques historiographiques. Le passage de l’expérience d’une Histoire en marche au tournant de 1960 à celle d’une histoire bloquée au tournant de 1970 affecte considérablement la place et le statut de l’historien. D’éminent passeur du temps à l’écoute du sens du progrès, l’historien voit son statut contesté et marginalisé, ce qui ne veut pas dire que son rôle est moins important. Qu’il débusque des alternatives passées ou court-circuite des téléologies, il est chargé de maintenir coûte que coûte ouverts les horizons du temps. Nous verrons spécifiquement le sens que prenait cette tâche à un moment où la possibilité d’une « société nouvelle », après Mai 68, pointait à l’horizon des contemporains.

Time's Social Metaphors: An empirical research

The article addresses the analysis of time images furnished by a qualitative research made in Spain on the relations of working time and family/personal time. The analysis focuses on three widespread time metaphors used in day-to-day speeches by social agents. The first one is the metaphor of time as resource for action. Its value is equally economical, moral and political. Used in different context of action, it may mean something that can be either invested, donated generously to others, appropriated for caring for oneself, or spent without purpose with others. The second metaphor represents time as an external environment to which action must adapt. This metaphor shows many variants that represent time as a dynamic/static, repetitive/innovative, ordered/chaotic environment. In this external environment, the agents must resolve the problems of temporal embeddedness, hierarchy and synchronization of their actions. The third metaphor shows time as a horizon of action intentionality where the agents try to construct the meaning of their action and identity. Within this horizon the construction of a significant narrative connecting past and present experiences with future expectations is possible.

Temporal construal in advertising : the moderating role of temporal orientation and attribute importance in consumer evaluations

In two experiments, we study how the temporal orientation of consumers (i.e., future-oriented or present-oriented), temporal construal (distant future, near future), and product attribute importance (primary, secondary) influence advertisement evaluations. Data suggest that future-oriented consumers react most favorably to ads that feature a product to be released in the distant future and that highlight primary product attributes. In contrast, present-oriented consumers prefer near-future ads that highlight secondary product attributes. Study 2 shows that consumer attitudes are mediated by perceptions of attribute diagnosticity (i.e., the perceived usefulness of the attribute information). Together, these experiments shed light on how individual differences, such as temporal orientation, offer valuable insights into temporal construal effects in advertising.

A 1H-MRS investigation of the medial temporal lobe in antipsychotic-naïve and early-treated first episode psychosis

Schizophrenia is associated with significant brain abnormalities, including changes in brain metabolites as measured by proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). What remains unclear is the extent to which these changes are a consequence of the emergence of psychotic disorders or the result of treatment with antipsychotic medication. We assessed 34 patients with first episode psychosis (15 antipsychotic naïve) and 19 age- and gender-matched controls using short-echo MRS in the medial temporal lobe bilaterally. Overall, there were no differences in any metabolite, regardless of treatment status. However, when the analysis was limited to patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, schizophreniform or schizoaffective disorder, significant elevations of creatine/phosphocreatine (Cr/PCr) and myo-inositol (mI) were found in the treated group. These data indicate a relative absence of temporal lobe metabolic abnormalities in first episode psychosis, but suggest that some treatment-related changes in mI might be apparent in patients with schizophrenia-spectrum diagnoses. Seemingly illness-related Cr/PCr elevations were also specific to the diagnosis of schizophrenia-spectrum disorder and seem worthy of future study.

Strategic short termism as an issue of top-teams’ temporal orientation

Short-termism among firms, the tendency to excessively discount long-term benefits and favour less valuable short-term benefits, has been a prominent issue in business and public policy debates but research to date has been inconclusive. We study how managers frame, interpret, and resolve problems of intertemporal choice in actual decisions by using computer aided text analysis to measure the frequency of top-team temporal references in 1653 listed Australian firms between 1992-2005. Contrary to short-termism arguments we find evidence of a significant general increase in Future orientation and a significant decrease in Current/Past orientation. We also show top-teams’ temporal orientation is related to their strategic orientation, specifically the extent to which they focus on Innovation-Expansion and Capacity Building.

Functional outcome of transfemoral amputees fitted with an osseointegrated fixation : temporal gait characteristics

The purpose of this study was to characterise the functional outcome of 12 transfemoral amputees fitted with osseointegrated fixation using temporal gait characteristics. The objectives were (A) to present the cadence, duration of gait cycle, support and swing phases with an emphasis on the stride-to-stride and participant-to-participant variability, and (B) to compare these temporal variables with normative data extracted from the literature focusing on transfemoral amputees fitted with a socket and able-bodied participants. The temporal variables were extracted from the load applied on the residuum during straight level walking, which was collected at 200 Hz by a transducer. A total of 613 strides were assessed. The cadence (46±4 strides/min), the duration of the gait cycle (1.29±0.11 s), support (0.73±0.07 s, 57±3% of CG) and swing (0.56±0.07 s, 43±3% of GC) phases of the participants were 2% quicker, 3%, 6% shorter and 1% longer than transfemoral amputees using a socket as well as 11% slower, 9%, 6% and 13% longer than able-bodied, respectively. All combined, the results indicated that the fitting of an osseointegrated fixation has enabled this group of amputees to restore their locomotion with a highly functional level. Further longitudinal and cross-sectional studies would be required to confirm these outcomes. Nonetheless, the data presented can be used as benchmark for future comparisons. It can also be used as input in generic algorithms using templates of patterns of loading to recognise activities of daily living and to detect falls.