Based on an analysis of the roles assigned to a team of four sociologists working in various settings providing support to people with autism, as part of a program called "Social Skills Training Group", the article highlights three distinct roles that provide a better understanding of the structure of the field of autism. We see the figures of the volunteer researcher in a parents' association-as a symbol of intimate and unprofessional support; the expert-practitioner in a private practice-invited to provide services and monetize skills within a market framework; and the distant observer in a hospital setting, invited to refrain from intervention in a structured space, who must legitimize his own expertise.
This article examines the characteristics of large-scale facilities and their increasing role in scientific activity, while sociologists, for some decades, have rather focused on texts and objects. As (partially) highlighted by the institutional definitions, there are five criteria that can be used to define large-scale facilities: their central role in scientific research, their size, rarity, their partially closed-off nature and the service activity they deliver. However, these institutional definitions, for political and financial reasons, tend to conflate facilities with scientific infrastructures and instruments. To distinguish between them leads us to open up avenues of analysis that have too often been neglected by researchers, such as input from the professions, concern for the territorial impact of facilities, analysis of temporalities and the outputs and outcomes of policy actions.
Cet article se consacre à l’étude de l’activisme digitalisé au Sénégal. Il rend compte des transformations politiques notées dans ce pays, tant à travers la pluralisation de l’espace politique portée par de nouveaux acteurs qu’à travers la médiatisation de l’espace public. Ce contexte est marqué par le développement d’Internet, ainsi que de nouvelles modalités de pratiques informationnelles et de militantisme numérique. Les formes d’engagement citoyen qui en découlent, traduisent une montée en puissance de la société civile, affirmant plus clairement que la politique constitue l’affaire de tout un chacun et qu’une redéfinition même, des légitimités dans l’espace public, s’impose nécessairement. De ce fait, en s’intéressant à l’usage activiste des technologies à travers des modes d’expression divers et pluriels, nous essayons ici d’analyser d’une part, les dynamiques de participation numériques qui ont été décisives dans l’alternance survenue en mars 2024 ; et d’autre part, des limites associées aux TIC en tant qu’outils démocratiques dont se servent les activistes sénégalais. Abstract This article focuses on the study of digital activism in Senegal, relating to the political transformations observed in this country, both through the pluralization of the political arena driven by new actors and the mediatization of the public sphere. This context is marked by the development of the Internet, as well as new forms of information practices and digital activism. The resulting forms of citizen engagement reflect the rise of civil society, affirming more clearly that politics is everyone’s matter and that a redefinition of legitimacy in the public sphere is necessary. Therefore, by focusing on the activist use of technologies through diverse and plural modes of expression, we attempt here to analyze, on the one hand, the dynamics of digital participation that were decisive in the change of government that occurred in March 2024; and, on the other hand, the limitations associated with ICTs as democratic tools used by Senegalese activists. Keywords: Activism; Democracy; FreeSénégal; Participation; Public sphere; Technologies
This article examines how French general practitioners (GPs) navigate suicide-related referrals within a healthcare system strained by austerity. Drawing on repeated interviews with 29 GPs and a mind-mapping methodology, it shows that referral practices are shaped less by formal clinical pathways than by local resource configurations and the workarounds practitioners develop in response to them. The analysis highlights three interrelated dynamics. First, GPs rely on a sense of technical mastery-an embodied, experience-based judgement of what they can manage-which is continually stretched as they assume responsibilities once assigned to specialists. Second, they operate with expectations inherited from a previously better-resourced institutional network, generating tensions between normative ideals of care and limited referral possibilities. Third, in this context, local social capital becomes an essential resource: Personal relationships, informal networks and accumulated local knowledge decisively structure how practitioners deal with patients deemed suicidal. Situating these dynamics within the concept of suicidescape, this article advances a locally anchored sociology of suicide prevention.
