What are families like in contemporary France? And what begins to emerge when we consider them from the point of view of recent theoretical perspectives: (faulty) cohesion, (fake) coherence, (carefully planned or subversive) deconstruction, loss (of love, confidence or credibility), or, even (utter) chaos and (alarming) confusion? Which media revamp old stereotypes, generate alternative reinterpretations, and imply more ambiguous answers? ...]Uneasy contradictions and ambiguities emerge in this bilingual collection of approaches and genre studies. The family plot seems to thicken as family ties appear to loosen. Has the family' been lost from sight, or is it being reinvented in our collective imaginary? This book proposes a new series of perspectives and questions on an old and familiar' topic, exploring the state and status of the family in contemporary literature, culture, critical and psychoanalytic theory and sociology.

""A supertanker goes missing in the Mozambique Channel. A month later, it is rediscovered far out at sea by the Bourbon-Busset family, descendants of thirty kings and at least one pope, who just happen to be yachting in the neighborhood. Over the objections of their own crew and the American government, the Bourbon-Bussets carry the tanker into Mauritius, claim a quarter of its value in admiralty court - and win the case. After the president of Togo disappears from his mistress's bed in the middle of the night and is mysteriously restored to her before morning, he subsequently makes major alterations to Togo's annual budget and foreign policy. Fortunately, he doesn't have to push them through alone. The other key men in his government also appear to have something to hide and thus something to gain by following his lead. Although they may be more forthcoming about exactly what they are hiding with the Chinese ambassador. In central Africa, British reporter Tony Henderson has stumbled onto something unusual: revolutionaries who not only don't want publicity for their cause, they actually go to great lengths to avoid it. He is gently but firmly shooed away from potential hot spots and told to go report on local agricultural complaints instead, much to his chagrin. The Ugandan government may be on the verge of collapse, with a massive popular movement to restore the traditional kingdoms underway, and no one will tell him about it. On the other side of the world, Dr. Robert Saul, a clever biochemist with a beautiful but vapid wife and a taste for ignoring patients and perjuring himself in his spare time, is being courted by a major pharmaceutical firm. His unpleasant personality is canceled out by one very important consideration: he has developed a revolutionary antiviral called VIPER, which not only cures the common cold, but also HIV and everything in between. The clinical trials look promising. In another twenty years, AIDS will have been consigned to the history books. However, the Bourbon-Bussets have other ideas. In their opinion, twenty years is too long to wait, and any price too high to pay for public access to the vaccine. Armed with a ready supply of cash and a creative approach to private property, and with their machinations stretching from Swaziland to Rome to Ciudad Juarez, they go after Dr. Saul themselves. They want him to release the patent for the antiviral into the public domain. And if he proves uncooperative, well, then, they will have to find a way to persuade him."" The price of failure is twenty million dead. Or more.

Will the European Union have its ¿single family - a ¿European family - as it will have a single currency? This is the question at the origin of this book. Studies of family behavior and the organization of private life among European citizens, as well as of family member social status (children in relation to adults/parents, women in relation to men), and of social functions of the family, for example social reproduction, reveal so much convergence among European families that the reality of a ¿European family seems inevitable, and more so if one looks at foreign studies done - in Australia, the United States or Japan - of the family in Europe. However, studies of the different judicial and public policy laws in the different European Union member countries lead one to refine this first impression. The family does not have the same legal meaning in all places, and the ways in which it is defined by law and public policy continue to differ strongly, due in particular to historical factors, cultural traditions, and conceptions of the role of the State. In order for the family to be part of the construction of a European citizenship, the pluralistic nature of its political definitions will have to be recognized. Putting the family into the context of evolving European integration has never been done before. It was made possible in this study thanks to the joint efforts of two editors with long experience in social science studies of the family and as expert advisors to the European Commission, and by the work of the best international specialists in the field. This is a book intended for specialists working in the social sciences, for social and government policy-makers in the fields of family and social policy, and for all those interested in European integration.

The new Edition of the report of the European Commission for the Efciency of Justice (CEPEJ), which evaluates the functioning of the judicial systems in 45 Council of Europe’s member states and an observer state to the CEPEJ, Israël, remains in line with the process carried out since 2002. Relying on a methodology which is already a reference for collecting and processing a wide number of quantitative and qualitative judicial data, this unique study has been conceived above all as a tool for public policy aimed at improving the efciency and the quality of justice. To have the knowledge in order to be able to understand, analyse and reform, such is the objective of the CEPEJ which has prepared this report, intended for policy makers, legal practitioners, researchers as well as for those who are interested in the functioning of justice in Europe.

This book relates the success of a seemingly impossible challenge: to have a group of academics and people living in persistent poverty conduct research together. What conditions can the knowledge drawn from poverty cross with academic rigor? What type of knowledge does this collaboration result in? This is what The Merging of Knowledge presents in terms of the processes of The Fourth World-University program and the result of its five groups of work: history, family, knowledge, work and human activity, and citizenship. The results featured in this book can be appreciated on many levels. At the level of content, this unique collaboration offers knowledge from the very poor regarding their lives that is neglected or misunderstood in fields as varied as history, family sociology, work sociology, and political science. This "voice of the voiceless" is brought to the book by collaborative writing and is presented with the academics' methodological and epistemological contribution. At the level of gathering and understanding the information collected, the very poor are often given the role as "witnesses" of poverty in interviews. Here, as researchers, they contribute to rigorously examined content that illuminates their situations.