Thematic areas

Research at CY Cergy Paris Université's Maison de la Recherche SHS focuses on three main areas:

Area 1: Knowledge and societies

Abstract

Initiatives in this area focus on how knowledge emerges, disseminates and evolves in a world in transition - climate change, the fragmentation of contemporary societies, the rise of extremism, institutional transformations, and the development of new information and communication technologies.

State of the art and scientific objective

Just as science and technology are helping to meet the challenges of transition and climate change, the social sciences and humanities also have an important role to play in this field. This involves taking a necessary historical and philosophical step back from the issues raised by the evolution of technological and scientific knowledge on societies, in terms, for example, of inequalities - starting precisely with those concerning the dissemination and acquisition of knowledge - democracy, citizenship and social cohesion.

Recent literature in history, sociology, education and didactics, as well as political philosophy and anthropology, has highlighted some of these major issues: the link between humans, scientific progress and nature[1], the way in which scientific and technological knowledge has sometimes been manipulated or hijacked to the benefit of financial and industrial interests[2] and/or through the ideologization of knowledge, the way in which technological and scientific knowledge has been able to ignore, underestimate, mask or deny scientific and social roles, and promote a gendered vision of society[3]; the way in which, under the guise of universalism and scientific accuracy, this knowledge has sometimes taken on an ethnocentric form, still imbued with the colonial experience[4], the way in which knowledge from certain regions of the world, including within Europe, has been systematically ignored, and the way, finally, in which this critique of ethnocentrism can be overcome to refound the epistemology of knowledge[5]. There are also numerous studies on how information and communication technologies (ICTs) and Big Data can threaten democracy or increase inequalities[6], concerns that are corroborated by historical investigations into the growing privatization of scientific knowledge and its link to the rise of neoliberalism[7]. While these works constitute notable critiques of the idea of modernity and scientistic triumphalism, they nevertheless represent an opportunity to improve the situation and reflect on the ways in which scientific and technological progress can lead to greater inclusion and empowerment. They also enable us to rethink the role of the citizen and his or her training, starting at school, in a transformed world in which “digital doubles” are already beginning to have an impact on the role of politics and on the very ethics of politics[8].

We believe that, in the face of these challenges, we need to examine these questions in greater depth, but also, more broadly, to rethink the methodological grids through which we traditionally perceive the separation between knowledge and practice, between ideas, beliefs and knowledge, between science and technology, and between the worlds of school, university and work. Such reflections would also enable us to reconsider the gap that still exists, at various levels, between the humanities and the sciences, even though this division is inherited from a context that should no longer be so relevant today[9]. The aim is to counterbalance the tendency we see today to import into the humanities and social sciences knowledge validation procedures inherited from the natural and formal sciences, leading in particular to widespread randomization of research. Our approach within this area will therefore be resolutely constructivist and externalist, proposing what Jullien defines as a “space of reflexivity [...] where thought unfolds”, as a “figure, not of arrangement, but of disturbance, with an exploratory vocation[10]”.

Here are just a few examples of the themes that could be addressed in this area (which are neither exclusive nor exhaustive).

• The production and circulation of knowledge in international institutions and, more generally, in the field of political decision-making;
• The impact of international conflicts and war on the production and circulation of knowledge;
• The impact of the digital age on political, economic, legal and social knowledge;
• The impact of Open Science on the construction of knowledge;
• The production and dissemination of ignorance (conspiracy, 'fake news', etc.);
• The production of knowledge outside the academic world; 
• The way in which knowledge can be “gendered”, “racialized” or ethnocentric;
• The development of knowledge in the context of North/South exchange;
• Non-Western epistemologies;
• Circulations of urban models from one country to another, in a neoliberal context;
• The place of expertise (all fields, all actors) aimed at achieving the common objectives of "sustainability", "resilience" and "transitions";
• Learning in a disrupted context (adaptations, adjustments, etc.);
• Sociolinguistic analysis of scientific discourse;
• Lay and expert knowledge;
• Knowledge transfer between the academic and professional worlds.

Institutional positioning of the thematic area in relation to the existing system

CY Cergy Paris Université is an institution in which science and technology play a predominant role. Consequently, even if the aim of a Maison des Sciences de l'Homme is to raise the profile of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), we feel it is important that it should also open up a space for exchanges between the latter and the sciences and technologies (ST). By focusing on the historical, philosophical and didactic questions that enable the necessary link to be made between science and technology, on the one hand, and the human sciences, on the other, the “Knowledge and societies” area will provide such a space. In an academic world that is highly compartmentalized by discipline, such a space will not only bring about interdisciplinarity between the human and social sciences and all the other scientific and technological disciplines represented at CY.

Indeed, many researchers at our institution are already interested in these issues, and have individually acquired a solid international reputation. Research into the construction of knowledge and its circulation is already present in most of CY's HSS research centers, where it sometimes constitutes an identified area of research. The Knowledge and Societies area will give this work greater visibility, both within and outside CY, as well as initiating new cross-disciplinary research programs, which could be joined by researchers in science and technology interested in the epistemology and history of their scientific fields, or more generally sensitive to the question of the political, social and moral consequences of technological and scientific progress. Under this heading, the Maison de la Recherche SHS will be able to organize and support scientific events (symposia, seminars and study days) on the subject, welcome guest researchers and act as an incubator for cross-disciplinary projects dealing with the social construction of knowledge. Some of these initiatives could also support doctoral training - in all the disciplines represented at CY, not just HSS - adding to or reinforcing existing ones, for example the “Political Ideas in the Digital Age” (FE2I department), “Editorial Engineering and Communication”, “Master Journalism” or “Cultural Development and Heritage Valorization” (LSH department) masters programs, and the “Market, Globalization and Multilateralism” research seminar (AGORA and ED AHSS).
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[1] Latour, Bruno. Où atterrir ? Paris : La Découverte, 2017.
[2] Proctor, Robert N. Golden Holocaust - La conspiration des industriels du tabac. Éditions des Équateurs, Paris : 2014 ; Conway, Erik M., et Naomi Oreskes. Les marchands de doute - Poche. Paris : Pommier, 2014.
[3] Rossiter, Margaret W. "Women Scientists in America". Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 36, n° 6 (1983) : 10-16 ; Jordanova, Ludmilla. "Gender and the Historiography of Science". The British Journal for the History of Science, vol. 26, n° 4 (1993) : 469-83.
[4] MacLeod, Roy. Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise. Chicago, Ill : University of Chicago Press, 2001.
[5] De Sousa Santos, Boavantura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. Boulder : Paradigm Publishers, 2014.
[6] O’Neil, Cathy. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York : Crown, 2017; Zuboff, Professor Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Londres : Profile Books Ltd, 2019 ; Tominato, Aurélie. Le recours périlleux aux algorythmes prédictifs, Paris : Hémisphères, 24, 24-29, 2022.
[7] Mirowski, Philip. Science–Mart – Privatizing American Science. Cambridge, Mass : Harvard University Press, 2011.
[8] Bernard Stiegler. The Age of Dusruption. Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism. Cambridge : Polity, 2019.
[9] Par exemple, Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Mansfield Centre, Conn. : Martino Fine Books, 2013 [1959].
[10] François Jullien. L’écart et l’entre. Ou comment penser l’altérité. Paris : FMSH-WP-2012-03, February 2012, p. 7.

Area 2: Cultural objects and imaginaries

Objects

This area aims to consider, from the angle of actions and feedbacks, transmissions and tensions, all cultural productions at the crossroads of their objects - both tangible and intangible - and the imaginaries they generate and underpin, as well as the epistemology of relationships to cultural objects in the sense of value-bearing objects imagined and constructed for third parties.

These research objects are examined/studied from the angle of the methodological issues that also drive Area 2.

More specifically, the project for Area 2 lies at the methodological and reflexive crossroads of three conceptual fields:

• scientific research, whose aims of advancing knowledge will be fully shared and whose validity criteria will be rigorously respected;
• the practices and discourses of conception/ideation, planning/creation, as the result of human thought and action in the perspective of its cultural productions;
• a heuristics of praxis, which considers practice or action as a privileged source of knowledge.

Context

As is the case for the other two areas, the project supported by area 2 benefits from a favorable and relevant institutional environment: Graduate School Arts et Humanités, EUR Humanités, Création et Patrimoine, CY Alliance partner schools, experimental science laboratories involved in various projects within the Fondation des Sciences du Patrimoine (FSP), the Institute for Digital Humanities (IDHN), etc. On a scientific level, reflections in these fields are already being conducted in existing laboratories.

From a scientific point of view, these areas are already being explored in existing laboratories, and the Maison de la Recherche SHS will have the advantage of working across/within laboratories, across/within axes, and not in silos.

It has become conventional to refer to a ternary typology of concepts to which research in the arts and humanities can be linked, which can be reduced to the methodological distinction between “research on”, “research for” and “research through”. Far from conceiving of these ternary typologies as absolutely differentiating mutually exclusive practices, the research favoured here includes all three modalities. It is based on the state of the art, and thus seeks out pre-existing productions from various disciplinary fields, likely to shed light on the understanding of the research object and the research situation. It aims to inform and guide future practices. This dimension is intrinsic to the requirement for reproducibility and transferability, which is one of the criteria of scientific work.

The scientific project of Area 2 does not aim to establish a standardized research methodology, but on the contrary to specify, characterize and experiment with different research practices, expressing their conditions of implementation and their respective interests. In concrete terms, Area 2 is also developing a “go towards” scientific approach, seen within Area 2 from the perspective of a relationship with the reproducibility of science, of sciences, in an approach to a shared methodological commonality within the future Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (MSH), using objects as a field of investigation.

Thematics

The researchers and research units involved, due to their training and research subjects, will thus be likely to implement research strategies adapted to their subjects and tending to differentiate and complement each other.

Among the themes of this research area, we can note:

• The question of cultural assets in the broad sense: tangible and intangible, visual (shows, performances, etc.), audio (speech, music, song, etc.), tangible and intangible, etc.;
• Research on utopias (imaginaries of mobility, critical look at utopias in urban planning: hygiene, functionalism, 15-minute city, transitions, etc.);
• Research on the imaginary and representations of socio-technical objects, such as so-called "imaginary" literature (fantasy, science fiction, fantasy), and youth cultures, which can be analyzed at the intersection of cultures transmitted by adults, in the family, school, or institutional setting (libraries, etc.), and cultures chosen by young people;
• The epistemology of research, particularly in the field of metalexicography, by proposing, for example, diachronic and synchronic studies of dictionaries;
• Etc.

Within the scientific community of Area 2, the confrontation of scientific positions, the comparison of protocols and results, will be a source of advancement of scientific work. The Maison de la Recherche SHS in general and Area 2 in particular are intended to support rich and constructive debates, mutually beneficial. Clearly positioned by their objects and their formulation registers, the academic advances produced will contribute to strengthening the identity and international reputation of CY Cergy Paris Université and partner institutions.

The actions carried out at CY Cergy Paris University in the areas of research training and training through research in Masters and PhDs will naturally resonate with the projects/programs supported, developed by Area 2 of the Maison de la Recherche SHS.

Area 3: Social practices, developments and tensions

Area 3 aims to question social practices linked to individual or collective behaviors which are interested, through the prism of the fields of education, the city, media communication and digital spaces, in the processes of construction of knowledge, citizenship, conflicts and otherness in the social space.

Should institutions deal with the advent of more horizontal and active relationships, which challenge the verticality of established discourses in favor of an intensification of the relationship to oneself that characterizes contemporary individualism? The discourse of actors based on registers of knowledge constructed on the basis of scientific research is confronted with competition from "proximity" recommendations that arise from all sides, particularly in space and in the digital age, through the use of social networks that prescribe behavior. However, data sharing can allow for greater adaptability of societies and territories. How do new digital tools and the new practices linked to these tools impact all decision-making and transmission processes? The new forms of individuation and expressive singularization that accompany them require us to rethink the issues of combating all types of social inequalities and issues of justice (particularly socio-spatial, disciplinary, educational, etc.). Interdisciplinary approaches should enable us to better understand the dynamics of the production of scientific knowledge, as they attempt to understand and respond to these contemporary challenges.

The development of the city, that of citizenship and education are some of the contexts (internal, external, nano, micro, macro and tool for describing the situation), which are more precisely questioned in this area.

Will the cities of tomorrow offer an increasingly fragmented social landscape, with affinity-based groupings (social, community, etc.) contributing to the development of internal or external marginalization processes (social, spatial, generational, educational, parental, school, etc.), to further exclude those who do not have the appropriate "profile," or will new forms of fluidity emerge, allowing the overcoming of initial situations in a game of permanent social recomposition opening up to new forms of engagement, mobilization, and participation? What citizenships would be deployed in these conditions, and with what markers of transformation? How do the processes of teaching, training, learning, and school-university socialization participate in the construction of these dynamics? How do material and digital spaces and the practices deployed there reinforce these processes of fragmentation, transition, or marginalization? How do digital spaces impact mobility and the dissemination of information?

Several scales, from local to global, can be used to examine these processes. First, at an individual level, the study of the nature and development of cognitive mechanisms in context makes it possible to grasp a certain number of conditions favorable to learning processes and the evolution of behaviors throughout life. Then, understanding individual and collective behaviors – in schools, in cities, in digital spaces – allows us to grasp the processes of socialization, choice and decision-making at work in order to understand the tensions, forms of resolution and compromise that the expression of the individual and collective worlds in place requires. Finally, the exploitation of traces in the digital space, like the expression of individuals on the transformations at work, aims to characterize a vast diversity of practices and behaviors. Provided that the technical and legal obstacles associated with their exploitation are overcome – and that HSS approaches are pooled in the field – it is thus possible to conduct large-scale studies on the behaviors and practices of the individuals who evolve there. They constitute an interesting playground for interdisciplinarity. Indeed, while a certain technicality is necessary for the exploitation of traces – computer science and statistics, for example, play a central role when we want to think on a large scale – the human sciences and the tools they develop are essential when we want to interpret, from a qualitative point of view, the behaviors they reflect.