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For several years in France, flood risk management policy has focused on the preservation and even the restoration of flood expansion zones in areas where the stakes are low in order to better control hazards upstream of urbanised areas. Projects for the development of water retention areas (also called flood expansion zones) are multiplying. In 2003, a public utility easement known as «over-flooding» was created and tends to become a tool used by watershed managers to ensure the proper implementation of their operations. Nevertheless, the question arises as to the future of the activities, particularly agricultural, already present on these sites and the conciliation methods to be envisaged on a larger territorial scale, with regard to the effects of this instrument of environmental public action. These developments are most often designed to protect relatively vulnerable urban areas located downstream of the impacted agricultural sectors. In the field of spatial and urban planning, and drawing more specifically on references from the sociology of public action, this article reviews the application of this easement under the Environmental Code, its rules of application and the initial questions that institutional actors using it are now facing. Based on the case of the easements established in recent years in the Oudon catchment area (Mayenne/Maine-et-Loire), we show how this easement is an important tool in the land strategy of flood risk managers, but that its implementation requires time for consultation with potentially affected owners and occupants, as well as the formalisation of local arrangements or memoranda of understanding negotiated between the various parties and allowing for the constraints suffered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Since the 1960s, there has been a change in the portrayal of older people. This change has resulted in the promotion of an active way of life that led, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to the development by international bodies of standard guidelines relating to active or healthy ageing. This article examines the place of guidelines on physical activity in the perception of ageing reflected in French public policies developed in accordance with international directives. After explaining how healthy and active ageing are defined in different international and national plans and official guidelines, the growing importance of physical activity is highlighted. From a very general invitation to remain active, precise instructions for physical activities were established addressing the detrimental effects of ageing. Finally, this study points out how the increasing focus on physical activity has contributed to the creation of a frame of reference in public policy that emphasizes the responsibility of each individual for their own health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé De nombreux travaux ont montré que les activités scientifiques sont, aujourd’hui plus qu’hier, sujettes à des demandes de justification de leur utilité sociale et économique. Rares sont cependant les enquêtes qui interrogent la façon dont ces injonctions à l’utilité prennent forme dans les dispositifs d’évaluation. Cet article propose d’éclairer la construction d’un critère évaluant les liens entre science et société à l’Agence d’évaluation de la recherche et de l’enseignement supérieur (AERES), en France. Initialement intitulé « impact » de la recherche, ce critère a fait l’objet de controverses entre les membres de la profession académique qui l’ont forgé. Deux facteurs se complètent pour expliquer la polarisation du débat. L’influence disciplinaire oriente la critique ou la défense de l’« impact » comme critère d’évaluation scientifique, mais les effets de position dans l’AERES sont également centraux pour comprendre comment l’évaluation d’activités à la frontière de la science a pu être inscrite comme critère légitime d’évaluation de la recherche. Much research has shown that scientific activities, more now than in the past, are under pressure to justify their social and economic utility. There have, however, been few studies that explore the form that these demands for utility take in the evaluation processes. This article seeks to cast light on the formation of a criterion used to assess the links between science and society at AERES (research and higher education evaluation agency) in France. Initially titled “impact” of research, this criterion has aroused controversy between the members of the academic profession who forged it. Two factors combine in explaining the polarisation of the debate. The influence of academic disciplines affects whether “impact” attracts criticism or support as a criterion of scientific evaluation, but position effects within AERES are also crucial in understanding how the evaluation of activities at the frontiers of science has been able to become a legitimate criterion of research evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysing the inner workings of the judicial sphere in Venezuela is a way to grasp the State transformations that have taken place during the Bolivarian Revolution (1999-2022) and to understand the mechanisms which guarantee the continuity of Chavista political power. From a macro and micro perspectives, this essay presents the first results of an ongoing research and projects us into a hermetic social world, that of the administration of justice, in order to better understand the iron-clad nature of the Venezuelan state in the last decade.