*** PATRICIA NIEDZWIECKI: Le langage au féminin. Les mots pour la dire. Editions Labor (29 quai du Commerce, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2500670 - Fax: 2177197 - E-mail: labor@labor.be - Internet: http: //http://www.labor.be ) and, for France, Castells Editions (20 bis rue de la Boétie, F-75008 Paris). "La Noria" collection. 2000, 189 pages, BEF 649, FF 110, EUR 16.75. ISBN 2-8040-1496-7 and 2-912587-46-8.
Sirs, if you have nothing to give your wife, your daughter or mother for Christmas, this book came at the right time! Those to whom you give it will be grateful. They will see you through different eyes, telling themselves something like this: thus, on the eve of the millennium, after centuries of triumphant partricarchy (regardless, ladies, it is thoughtless for those who benefit from it, well at the end of this century), a man that I love - father, husband, son, grandson or lover (little matter, as long as he is male…) - pushes gentleness to offer me a book that, in the end, calls in favour of a fair balance between reconciled masculine and feminine"… Furthermore, no doubt she will not tell you of her grateful surprise: there are looks that, masculine and feminine, are beyond words and act. However, browsing this book yourself: it will surprise you, maybe irritate you, but will be worth, certainly, a revelation of the cheek imposed by a culture of which we are the more or less consensual depositors. Surprise is guaranteed!
Patricia Niedzwiecki has all the talents. That of accelerated summarise, the writer with a style to make white with envy the (there to!) journalist. Also that of the suffragette who fights the stereotypes held by the tradition to dynamite them with pleasure, with an intellectual power and conviction that, at the very least, troubles. That of a great intellectual, eclectic as are her European roots both Ukrainian, Polish and French: she is at the same time Doctor of literature and human sciences, Doctor in historical literature and simeology of text and picture at the University of Paris 7. Do not be surprised, from now, that she is at the head of the Research institute for the development of the European cultural area and founding President of the French Association and Observatory for feminisation in Paris and Brussels. All this between a tragedy, a novel and a film…
Her book is not to be summarised, on - penalty of betraying the spirit. It does not only address itself to Francophone: the woman is denied in all the languages of the world, the book bears witness to this in nearly every page. However. it is centred on the French language and the rules governing feminine in France, but opens out on to a wider polemic, no doubt universal. In a delicious preface, the great writer Benoit Groult writes: "We will be extremely inspired, 200 years after the Declaration of Human Right, which effectively only concerned males in the human race, to remember that women are not men… and that we must banish in language if we want to be free in the jobs we now do". Ladies, the ball is also in your court: fight for your title to be feminised. Then, men will support you. Signed: a latent misogynist who was unaware and who, as a father of two girls, has started to make amends…
Michel Theys
*** ALESSANDRA BOSCO: Towards a questioning of national social protection systems? Observations on the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice. Notre Europe (44 rue Notre-Dame des Victoires, F-75002 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 53009440/41 - 53009444 - E-mail: notreeurope@notre-europe.asso.fr - Internet: http: //http://www.notre-europe.asso.fr ). "European issues" collection, N° 7. 2000, 31 pages. Available in French, English and German.
Are the judges at the Court of Justice questioning, through competition or the free movement of good and services laws, the possibility, for each Member State, to organise social solidarity in relation to its own methods and its traditions? Or, to put it in a politically incisive manner, are they engaging the Member States in a process of erosion of national sovereignty in the social field? To answer these fundamental questions (which are the staple diet of some newspapers…), Alessandra Bosco very finely analyses, in this study, the jurisprudence relating, on the one hand, to competition regulations (are we witnessing a questioning of the national social protection institutions though this method?) and, on the other hand, free movement (do we live, in the EU, the time of "medical tourism"?). Her answer is unequivocal: no, the Court of Justice plays the card of prudence and has managed to cut, thus observes Jacques Delors in his foreword, "a reasonable dividing line between what belongs to economic freedom and what stems from solidarity". However, the former President of the European Commission is concerned with the multiplication of appeals which, introduced in Luxembourg, bring into doubt "the own constraints of the national social protection systems": the links of solidarity that unite the members of a society constitute a too large a subject for them to be broached on a tangent, around a judicial procedure", noted the founder of Notre Europe who invites, as a result, for a "urgent reflection over the need to define in a more positive and precise manner the notion of subsidiarity", in his eyes "substantial to social protection"
(MT)
*** CORINNE GOBIN: Le programme de la Confédération européenne des syndicats. Les congrès de 1995 et 1999. Centre de recherche et d'information socio-politiques (35 rue du Congrès, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2183226 - E-mail: crisp@cfwb.be). "Courrier hebdomadaire" collection, N° 1675. 2000, 54 pages, BEF 275.
Belgian researcher specialised in the trade union world, Corinne Gobin dissects, in this "Courrier" from the CRISP, the European Trade Union Confederation through the resolutions that have been adopted during the ruling congresses between 1995 and 1999. An enthusiastic diagnostic, in fact. For the author, if the ETUC has considerably increased the number of its member organisations (they have risen from 40 to 68 in eight years), this has translated itself into a dilution of its message in long resolutions, development that seems to her "linked with the difficulty of defining the strong axis for calls capable of gaining unanimity within an increasingly composite group". Its speech is becoming "less critical compared to the economic policies used" and borrowed massively from the vocabulary produced by the European Commission, which, for the author, is notably "the sign of a strengthening of its ideological dependence on the European machine (which goes hand in hand with the strengthening of its financial dependence from the same entity)"… Corinne Gobin feels that the lexical permeability shown by the ETUC shows the "great ability" of the EU to "put into symbioses the various organisation that gravitate around it", but also, on the back of the coin, that "the attraction for trade unionism of representation (to be as integrated as possible in the EU institutional procedures) dominates and leads over the thought process over the content of the policies implemented". From where this warning (militant, certainly, but also pertinent…): "one can wonder if, this done, it does not loose sight of the legitimacy of the trade union movement has never been a present given by political power through a pure act of philanthropy or democratic goodness, but that it is based on a relationship of strength built from the ability to mobilise and make calls for trade unionism to transform, or at least limit the capitalism". A good questions that calls for others and that leads to a more fundamental questioning: the institutionalised structures, for one or other, can they still claim to represent our societies? Corinne Gobin knows that she calls for, through her work, even more iconoclast studies?
(MT)
*** The social situation in the European Union 2000. Office for the official publications of the European Community (L-2985) and available from the European Commission representation offices. 2000, 119 pages, EUR 15. ISBN 92-828-9307-3.
Written by the Directorate General for Employment and Social Affairs in the European Commission and by the Community statistical office Eurostat, this publication presents the first annual report on the social situation. In the first part, it gives an integrated view of the demography and social conditions. A second section examines in-depth four issues closely touch the development of society, namely the population, the living conditions, revenue and social participation.
(MT)
*** Third system enterprises and organisations: a strategic stake for employment. European Commission "Third system and employment" pilot action. Ciriec (Université de Liège au Sart-Tilman, bât. B33 - bte 6, B-4000 Liege. Tel: (32-4) 3662746 - Fax: 3662958 - E-mail: ciriec@ulg.ac.be - Internet: http: //http://www.ulg.ac.be/ciriec ). 2000, 144 pages. Also available in French.
This highly researched study by the International centre for research and information on public, social and cooperative economies offers - and this is a first! - a highly complete assessment of the Third system (cooperatives, private insurers, voluntary associations and foundations that remunerate from work) on all the countries of the EU. a segment on economic activity that covers no less than nine thousand people. On the basis of national inventories (around thirty partners from several European scientific networks have been involved in the work), the dynamics of employment working within the third system are analysed while a European definition of this is put forward. In the conclusions and recommendations that punctuate this report, the authors notably underline that the grills of analysis of American inspiration based on the notion of the "non-profit sector" are far from being able to account for the diversity of national experiences in Europe nor even the main common treads to them. A pointed study, but fascinating for all those interested in the dynamics of employment.
(MT)
*** ANNE-MARIE GREEN (Edited by): Les métamorphoses du travail et la nouvelle société du temps libre. Autour de Joffre Dumazedier. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole-Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467920 - Fax: 43258203). "Logiques sociales" collection. 2000, 382 pages. ISBN 2-7384-9288-6.
Eminent French sociologist, Prof. Dumazedier dedicated forty years of his life to studying the problems of leisure in the post-industrial societies in the CNRS. This book pays homage to him by gathering together the communications of the Ninth meeting of sociologists in Besancon which, organised jointly by the social section and the laboratory for sociology and anthropology of the University of Franche-Comté, in December of last year, took place around him and the theme that he chose to study.
The starting point of this thought process, they are the metaphors of work that are… as old as the world. For the outset, Prof. Anne-Marie Green (University of Franche-Comté) thus explains that the gathering of snails by prehistoric societies was not a sign of "scarcity", but the consequence of the invention of the bow: with the new technology, our ancestors where able to hunt faster, which left the time for leisure activities… Joffre Dumazedier goes back just a little less further, to Aristotle who was the first to elevate leisure to a social dignity equal to that of participation in public affairs, however reserving this privilege only to patriarchs. For him, the society of free time started its true gestation around two centuries ago, when industrial society was being born, the annual duration of work was, on average, 3,500 hours, often without a Sunday (…), while, from reduction to reduction, this duration is today between 1,600 and 1,800 hours per year in the post-industrial societies"… This slow but continual progression of freed time from a changed work" lead them to win some 2,000 hours of free time per year over the same laps of time. The evening without work and the weekends without work have not cease getting longer, without including that the ends of year without work have been overturned by the great swath of holidays and that the end of life without work have extended in an even more spectacular manner…
This is not what is important for Joffre Dumazedier: free time will continue to increase, but it will not cast doubt over work which "will still remain for a very long time a necessity to produce our means to live". Thus the act, even if the analysis, in this specific case, no doubt merits being refined. The core, in his eyes and in those of his intellectual fellows, is that our society, two centuries later, remains anachronistic, "the former problems of the binding social times" having conserved, "an exasperating topicality". In short, it lives a deep "social mutation" be manifesting a profound insensitivity to the cultural effects, in the anthropological sense, "from the free time dominated for more than 80% by leisure of self expression". A mutation that appears, however, to be a true revolution since it "forces the family, school, professional, social institutions to transform" in order to leave individuals "more freedom". Freedoms that they do not take advantage of, stupidly, notably for lack of an appropriate education/training, the cultural mutation makes "more and more invalid a certain didactic conception of obligatory education" while a "greater individualisation as well as a less hierarchical socialisation is required". This anachronism is also seen, according to this thinker in the society of free time and its results, in the unsuitability of policies for the development of free areas in the cities and suburbs, the physical and social environment in the wider sense. So many paths for pointed thought to be looked into. Even if we have so little free time...
(MT)
*** EUROPEAN COMMISSION. Eurydice, le réseau d'information sur l'éducation en Europe. Vingt ans au service d'une meilleure compréhension des systèmes éducatifs. L'Unité européenne d'Eurydice (15 rue d'Arlon, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2383011 - Fax: 2306562 - Internet: http://www.eurydice.org ). November 2000, 105 pages.
In 1976, the Education Council adopted, on the initiative of the European Commission, the first European educational programme. Following this, the Commission proposed to coordinate its national actions, which would lead to the creation of EURYDICE in 1981. This brochure analyses the EURYDICE action from four points of view. First, the expertise of EURYDICE. This programme makes available to actors in education, information that meets their needs, reason for which it is also an integrating part of Socrates, the Community action programme in terms of education. Other obligation: - address to the political leaders in their diversity, notably through regular contacts with the Education Committee. EURYDICE must also observe the education systems of 31 countries, build a specific know-how that answers to the criteria of scientific validation, as well as diversify and turn down approaches. A second point of analysis: a network that has adjusted to the needs of cooperation, thanks to close interaction between the national units and a European unit. EURYDICE also set up a documentation network (multilingual press review, Internet, reviews, etc.). Third aspect: a human dimension network. The national and European units gather twice a year. Between the meetings, close ties are maintained thanks to e-mail. Forth and last aspect: the aims of tomorrow. In March 2000 the Lisbon summit set out an ambitious project: make Europe the most dynamic economy in the world, thus benefiting from an improvement in employment and forging better social cohesion.
*** EUROPEAN COMMISSION. A better environment for an enlarged Europe. Directorate general for the Environment (Office for the Official Publications of the EC, L-2985 Luxembourg). Available from the European Commission representation offices. October 2000, N° 4, 13 pages.
Over the next decades, the EU will stretch from the Atlantic to the Russian border. This review looks at the ecological consequences of this territorial expansion. It assesses the potential impact of the enlargement requiring economic investment that is respectful of nature when observing that the candidate countries will have to modernise and develop their environmental infrastructures while industry will have to modernise its production. Example of success: Poland whose economic growth progresses at 6% per year without the emissions of atmospheric pollutants increasing. Other challenges to be take on, according to the European Environment Agency: the drafting of European legislation strengthened in terms of radio protection and the promotion of rational policies for the pricing of water.
*** Europarecht. Nomos (Verlagsgesellschaft, Postfach 10 03 10, D-76484, Baden-Baden. Tel: (07221) 21040 - Fax: 210427). March-April 2000, N° 2, 308 pages.
In summary: The analysis of Doctor Weyer Hartmut with regards to the Community Directive on civil rights, the right of companies to settle in Member States, the European Directive in concrete information in the environmental field, some ruling cancelling and a referral ruling concerning the cosmetics group Estée Lauder.
Humanitarian review in short
*** Libertés. Afrique Australe: les maux du développement. Brussels. In summary: "Israel/Palestine: the bicycle on the path of the meeting", "the Ivory Coast: a blood for blood alternative", "Southern Africa: South Africa, racism not dead?", the awakening of Mozambique, Angola sick of the earth and of its leaders, Amnesty in Southern Africa, the French in the face of torture and a campaign in China. *** DGCI-CONTACTS. Marche mondiale des femmes contre la violence. Brussels. More than fifteen thousand people have taken part in the European demonstration for the closing of the world march by women against poverty and violence in Brussels last 14 October . Projects are born in Niger, Peru and Vietnam. *** Le monde des droits de l'homme. Nov.-Dec. 2000, Brussels. In summary: useful warning from Council of Europe to EU, the fast track of Mr Kostunica in Yugoslavia, child soldiers in Colombia, the exemplary stakes of the Israeli-Arab conflict, The Democratic Republic of Congo and the future of democracy in Asia. *** Choix. La revue du développement humain. March 2000, New York. This special edition looks at the promotion of governance to favour human development. Other themes broached: strengthening democracy in Moldova, revolution in Nepal, Mali on the path to good governance….