La crise de la science française (II)

Foresight in mission-oriented research: The SYSPAHMM foresight method (SYStem, Processes, Clusters of Hypotheses, Micro- and Macroscenarios)

“…Finally, we can observe that analyses of the lack of innovation in France often fault the breakdown of the relationship between the production of ''academic'' knowledge and the use of this knowledge by private business [6], a relationship that we have placed at the core of our representation. A characteristic of this sector in France was the existence of a large number of companies, often family-run, so we therefore built typologies to eventually characterize business dynamics.…”

“…The foresight team, after being provided with an initial representation of the system (static and dynamic), can then, and only then, specify the points that it thinks should be presented to the panel of experts 6 , often through a series of transversal questions. The experts then take a critical look at the representation that they are presented with, that is to say, a construction that has its own coherency, and look for gaps or errors.…”

“….) a memory of all conceivably 6 We do not discuss the status of the expert (see Roqueplo [21], for example), or the different types of experts (see Hatchuel and Weil [22] and the typology given by Roubelat [23], for example). We will only say that it is constantly necessary to make sure to ''decode'' what is said, inferring the necessity of the greatest degree of freedom of speech possible, and to avoid people who represent a biased point of view [24,11].…”

The Rise of the Migration-Development Nexus in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1960–2010

“…Placed under the joint responsibility of the Ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs, the Central Economic Cooperation Fund ( Caisse Centrale de Coopération Economique –CCCE) initiated debates on agricultural training (Laurens 2009:103–7). Its Director-General, André Postel-Vinay, later Secretary of State for Immigrant Workers, commented in the early 1970s that “the poor effectiveness of education” on the continent was “a particularly serious problem for all African countries” and “one of the causes of rural exodus, urban unemployment and emigration” (Postel-Vinay 1972:16). In the first post-colonial decade, debates on development were thus structured by frameworks relying implicitly on a “sedentary bias” that had been developed during the imperial era by European rulers (Bakewell 2008: 1343–45) and which continued to circulate within the French politico-administrative elite due to the sharp rise in post-independence African migrations.…”