Institut Français de Recherche sur l'Asie de l'Est

Abstract Strontium isotopic analysis of sequentially formed tissues, such as tooth enamel, is commonly used to study provenance and mobility of humans and animals. However, the potential of 87 Sr/ 86 Sr in tooth enamel to track high-frequency movements has not yet been established, in part due to the lack of data on modern animals of known movement and predictive model of isotope variation across the landscape. To tackle this issue, we measured the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr in plant samples taken from a 2000 km 2 area in the Altai Mountains (Mongolia), and the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr in tooth enamel of domestic caprines whose mobility was monitored using GPS tracking. We show that high-resolution, sequential profiles of strontium isotope composition of tooth enamel reliably reflect the high-frequency mobility of domestic livestock and that short-term residency of about 45 days can be resolved. This offers new perspectives in various disciplines, including forensics, ecology, palaeoanthropology, and bioarchaeology.

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Over the past decade, China has enhanced its economic presence in Europe. Can this presence translate into a greater influence in recipient countries? This paper looks in particular at four European countries: Greece, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Serbia.

In the absence of trade union freedoms, “NGOs” have emerged to defend migrant workers’ rights. This article takes a close look at the mobilisation of such organisations, assesses their short-term impact, and examines their role in China’s political system. NGOs display a new form of activism based on pragmatic positioning and technical knowhow, especially in legal matters, all the while testing political boundaries. While such organisations act as a real counterweight within the system whose dysfunctions they seek to correct, their mobilisation is struggling to become institutionalised. They thus reflect the growth of a social form of democracy that helps the authoritarian system adapt, and hence contributes to preserving it.

Ten engaging personal histories introduce readers to what it was like to live in and with the most powerful political machine ever created: the Chinese Communist Party. Detailing the life of ten people who led or engaged with the Chinese Communist Party, one each for one of its ten decades of its existence, these essays reflect on the Party's relentless pursuit of power and extraordinary adaptability through the transformative decades since 1921. Demonstrating that the history of the Chinese Communist Party is not one story but many stories, readers learn about paths not taken, the role of chance, ideas and persons silenced, hopes both lost and fulfilled. This vivid mosaic of lives and voices draws together one hundred years of modern Chinese history - and illuminates possible paths for China's future.

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Contemporary European and North American societies have experienced changing demographics due to migration. School classrooms reflect this dynamic. To-date, few studies have examined migration effects on both reading skills and subjective wellbeing from an international comparative perspective. Using the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) dataset, this paper addresses the issue by examining migrant-native gaps in reading, happiness, and life satisfaction among 15-year-old students in four education models. Regression results illustrate that migrant students in general tend to experience a double inequality: they have lower reading performance and report lower life satisfaction when compared to native students (although in some cases they report higher happiness levels). However, such effects are also context-dependent. While a migration background has significant negative effects on students’ reading in Germanic and Nordic schools, its negative effects in Anglo-Saxon systems are above all manifested in students’ level of life satisfaction. In addition, compared to first-generation migrants, being of second generation is positively associated with reading performance in all education models, with the strongest effect in the Nordic countries. Such positive generation effects are statistically insignificant, on the other hand, on students’ wellbeing. Other individual factors such as socio-economic status and gender present mixed correlations with reading and wellbeing. Such findings invite scholars and practitioners to reflect, through the prism of migration, on how reading proficiency and wellbeing can differ in diverse educational approaches, and correspondingly seek context-specific intervention measures.

As US-China global competition continues to intensify, scholars and policymakers are interested in how Chinese influence plays out in different world regions. Much attention has been paid to how China leverages trade and investment, infrastructure or financial support to expand its influence in its immediate neighbourhood – especially Central and Southeast Asia – but also in regions like Africa. Preliminary research on Chinese influence in Europe has identified similar trends. However, such works often overlook the target country’s agency, as well as the internal characteristics of both the target and China. Delving into the interplay between institutional peculiarities specific to the Chinese political economy, and those of European economies, this article zooms in on China’s influence activities in Europe at national and subnational levels. It portrays European countries’ responses to China’s influence as a complex calculation that rests on the institutional asymmetry between China and the target on the issue at hand.

Publisher Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine

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In the Rhône Valley's Middle Neolithic gathering site of Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (France), the positioning of two females within a structure aligned with the solstices is atypical. Their placement (back and prone) under the overhang of a silo in front of a third in a central position suggests a ritualized form of homicidal ligature strangulation. The first occurrence dates back to the Mesolithic, and it is from the Early Neolithic of Central Europe that the practice expands, becoming a sacrificial rite associated with an agricultural context in the Middle Neolithic. Examining 20 cases from 14 sites spanning nearly two millennia from Eastern Europe to Catalonia reveals the evolution of this ritual murder practice.

Qu’on ne s’y trompe pas, ce livre sur le Japon est aussi un livre sur nous. Un des partis pris de cet ouvrage est de rompre avec une vision globalisante et souvent mythique de l’« éducation japonaise », voire de l’« éducation à la japonaise », pour cerner au plus près la réalité et l’évolution d’un enseignement bien précis : celui de la lecture à l’école élémentaire. Pour chaque période considérée (de 1872 à nos jours), sont analysés les directives officielles, les manuels et les méthodes de même que les grandes lignes de la réflexion pédagogique, elle même replacée dans le contexte politique, culturel et idéologique du moment. Ce livre, qui oblige à revenir sur des idées fausses largement répandues, ouvre aussi sur l’avenir car il conduit à s’interroger sur le rapport entre des prescriptions multiples et changeantes concernant la pédagogie et le contexte politique qui les commande. Une question bien impertinente pour les pouvoirs en place, mais les questions politiquement incorrectes pourraient bien se révéler être des questions scientifiquement pertinentes. Toutes choses qui ne sont pas sans enseignement pour notre pays.

This chapter explains why, although the Chinese state has no. granted an institutionalized space for civil society. It examines the Xi Jinping leadership&s;s multi-fold endeavors to reformat the space allotted to social organizations, religious associations, the media, and academics according to the state&s;s goals, underlining a common logic across different sectors. During the Hu-Wen era, civil society was hence performing a functional role in the way the Chinese regime was operating, namely by acting as an ad hoc and flexible counter-power integrated into the system exempting the Party from formally implementing institutional reforms. Following on the heels of sustained crackdown on domestic civil society and ratcheting up of pressure on international non-governmental organisation (NGOs), the legal framework in 2016 governing the third sector has shifted dramatically. The Overseas NGO Management Law, which came into force in January 2017, establishes procedures for foreign-based organizations, but also organizations from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao, to register formally and conduct activities in China.

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Plus que quantitatif, le bilan de l'époque d'Edo en matière d'éducation est avant tout qualitatif et tient en trois points : l'existence d'un réseau d'écoles couvrant tout le pays, l'acceptation par une grande partie de la population de la nécessité de l'éducation, l'existence de pratiques pédagogiques et d'ouvrages à finalité scolaire utilisés plusieurs siècles durant. La présentation de l'instruction scolaire durant cette période souffre trop souvent de généralisations ou de simplifications qui empêchent notamment d'appréhender correctement la réalité des pratiques pédagogiques. Ne retenir, par exemple, que les oppositions écoles de fiefs/écoles du peuple (hankô / terakoya) ou études classiques /études pratiques n'est pas suffisant : non seulement il existait d'autres types d'institutions scolaires, mais à l'intérieur même d'une même catégorie d'écoles les enseignements dispensés pouvaient être très différents en fonction du lieu et de la période de l'époque d'Edo considérée. L'objectif de cet article est donc d'essayer de donner une image un peu plus précise du paysage éducatif de l'époque d'Edo en présentant les différents types d'institutions scolaires qui existaient à la veille de la Restauration de Meiji, ainsi que les ouvrages qui y étaient utilisés en tant que manuels scolaires.

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Archaeology, at least at its very beginning, in Europe as well as elsewhere, has always been one of the cornerstones of a Nation's past inquiry process. As an academic discipline, it is part and parcel of a Nation-state rising context and therefore matches the same purposes of national identity determination and national legitimacy recognition. Japan is no exception in this respect. This paper specifically deals witn archaeology before archaeology, with the archaeology ol archaeology. It indeed appears crucial, as a preliminary reflexion about « national archaeology » in Japan during Meiji, Taishô, and Shôwa periods, to lay emphasis upon the Edo period's first returns to the past history. Within such a context, we focus our attention on IIIr to Vil1 centuries' keehole shaped mounds (kofun), which had been studied by confucianist scholars of Edo before the rise of social sciences and archaeology during Meiji. We try to determine the status and the pre-modern meaning or these tombs frequently related to the imperial image, as well as their role in the imperial image crafting process, even before the rise of a « national archaeology » in Japan.

Rationale Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope time series performed in continuously growing tissues (hair, tooth enamel) are commonly used to reconstruct the dietary history of modern and ancient animals. Predicting the effects of altitudinal mobility on animal δ 13 C and δ 15 N values remains difficult as several variables such as temperature, water availability or soil type can contribute to the isotope composition. Modern references adapted to the region of interest are therefore essential. Methods Between June 2015 and July 2018, six free‐ranging domestic horses living in the Mongolian Altaï were fitted with GPS collars. Tail hairs were sampled each year, prepared for sequential C and N isotope analysis using EA‐IRMS. Isotopic variations were compared with altitudinal mobility, and Generalized Additive Mixed (GAMMs) models were used to model the effect of geographic and environmental factors on δ 13 C and δ 15 N values. Results Less than half of the pasture changes were linked with a significant isotopic shift while numerous isotopic shifts did not correspond to any altitudinal mobility. Similar patterns of δ 13 C and δ 15 N variations were observed between the different horses, despite differences in mobility patterns. We propose that water availability as well as seasonal availability of N 2 fixing type plants primarily controlled horse hair δ 13 C and δ 15 N values, overprinting the influence of altitude. Conclusions Our study shows that altitudinal mobility is not the main factor that drives the variations in horse tail hair δ 13 C and δ 15 N values and that seasonal change in the animal dietary preference also plays an important role. It is therefore risky to interpret variations in δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of animal tissues in terms of altitudinal mobility alone, at least in C 3 –dominated environments.

During the Edo period, IIIrd to VIIth centuries burial mounds were initially the stake of a duty of memory towards forgotten sovereigns — emperors of the past whose "trace" was kept only in the texts of vmth to Xth centuries. In the second half of the xixch century, the concrete presence of these mounds became part and parcell of a more political purpose aiming at "giving back" the imperial figure a very actual place. The interest, through xviith to xixth centuries, for these vestiges of the archipelago's « national past », made the Japanese context of Meiji favourable to the establishment of an academic archaeology. But after the Restoration of Meiji, in a country deeply involved in its own national construction, which fate was going to be that of the archaeology of burial mounds to which the authorities already linked the imperial figure and tradition ?