Le concept de " low cost economy " cherche à comprendre la dynamique économique actuelle caractérisée notamment: - par une inflation faible particulièrement dans le secteur industriel ; - et par la mise en oeuvre de stratégies de prix bas non seulement dans le secteur industriel mais aussi dans le secteur des services en utilisant les technologies de l'information. Après avoir étudié la nouvelle dynamique de l'inflation, les stratégies " low cost " de certaines entreprises seront décrites afin de dégager quelques caractéristiques communes. Enfin ...

(14 more words)

Jean Viard, who specializes in how people use their time and how this is changing, is publishing a new book in May 2006 on the impact of increasing leisure time on people's travel patterns, especially in a country like France (Éloge de la mobilité [In Praise of Mobility]. La Tour d'Aigues: éd. de l'Aube, 2006). Here he shares the essence of his findings with readers of Futuribles.
In particular, he shows how the time spent at work has fallen as a proportion of people's lives as a result of changes in the law, and, by the same token, how leisure time has increased, and increased all the more because life expectancy in France has also increased. Jean Viard argues that this rise in free time has led to new ways of spending time with major consequences for the way people move around, their relationships with each other and also with the country. These factors all contribute to a form of cultural revolution - a shift to a mobile and leisured society in which work has a very different place - and probably this will eventually require the definition of a new social contract.

The current trend towards making the European economy more "flexible" (in line with the American model) could well turn out to be counter-productive, according to Richard Layard, a researcher at the London School of Economics, in his book Happiness (New York: Penguin Press, 2005), which is reviewed here by Hedva Sarfati. He maintains that this trend threatens to undermine people's feelings of confidence in their social and economic system; and yet the degree of mutual trust is a key factor in ensuring the well-being of a society and, in turn, its economic progress.
Arguing that effective well-being (both individual and collective) should be taken into account in economics, Richard Layard sets out the basic principles required in order to create happiness in society and formulates some recommendations for ways of implementing them. Hedva Sarfati summarizes them, pointing out that the author should be heeded, in view of the active role that he played in advising the British government between 1997 and 2001.

The author, an expert on the study of values in France and the rest of Europe, analyses here the results for France of the International Social Survey Programme carried out in 2003, in a study of national identities. Over and above the existing philosophical and legal definitions of what constitutes French nationality, this survey makes it possible to understand the criteria used by the French in this regard - in other words, to present a sociological definition of "Frenchness".
As Pierre Bréchon emphasizes, the French are very demanding with regard to the characteristics required in order to "deserve" the label "French" - demands that they do not always meet themselves, for instance with regard to respect for order or for institutions. Their definition of what constitutes a "true French person" thus reveals a certain kind of nationalism in French society, though one that varies according to the respondents' age, level of education and whether they are practising Catholics.

A year ago, the debate on the draft European Constitution was in full swing in France ahead of the referendum on 29 May 2005. As we stressed in these pages (n° 307, April 2005), the discussions sometimes strayed a long way from the issues actually raised by the constitutional treaty. At the end of May 2005, the French voted decisively against the Constitution (almost 55% of the votes cast). Was the cause of this rejection genuine disquiet about the text to be voted on or, more generally, grievances about the European Union; or was the referendum simply an opportunity to express other criticisms which had more to do with the political, economic and social situation in France?
To answer this question, Eddy Fougier has analysed and compared a range of polls carried out after the referendum in France, but also in the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Spain (the three other members of the EU that held a referendum about the Constitution). He presents the results of this exercise here, and finds four main categories of reasons for the French "No": punishment of the government in power, anger about unemployment and social insecurity, rejection of economic ultraliberalism, and opposition to EU enlargement (both already achieved and planned) - these last two aspects combining with a certain degree of apprehension about globalization on the part of many in France.

Le pari de Nicoholas Negroponte (MediaLab du MIT) et de l’association One Laptop Per Child (http://laptop.org/en/) de fournir un ordinateur portable à bas prix aux enfants des pays émergents au travers des écoles, ne concerne pas que le tiers-monde. Les conséquences sont de quatre ordres.

Pour réagir à ce sujet volontairement provocateur, était invité Éric Le Boucher, auteur d’un ouvrage « politiquement incorrect, mais économiquement pertinent » selon Hugues de Jouvenel. Incorrect, provocateur, pertinent : autant de qualificatifs pour décrire une situation française préoccupante. Les frontières françaises ou européennes agissent comme des prismes, ou des retardateurs, sur la vision de nombreux Français sur le monde actuel. La perception française de l’économie est une image tronquée et vieille de 20 ans qui ignore le monde tel qu ...

(16 more words)

By looking at contemporary dietary choices François Ascher shows how societies are becoming increasingly modern or indeed "hypermodern", i.e. modern in more advanced and multifaceted ways. He argues that eating habits strongly reflect social dynamics and enable us to have clearer insights into the way that each person combines individualism with social relations.
As he shows here, individuals have highly eclectic eating habits that reveal both genuine independence, a real freedom of choice, and also new patterns of social relationships, personal convictions, restrictions (individual or collective), and new manifestations of social inequalities... These trends are not limited to food, but can also be observed in other aspects of social life, thus conveying an idea of the changes occurring in modern societies.

Belief (religious or otherwise) is a subject of debate at the start of the 21st century, what with Islamist terrorism (Al Qaeda), a religious revival that is sometimes close to fundamentalism in the United States and Latin America, but also the decline in religious observance in Europe and excessive faith in some aspects of scientific progress (transhumanism, for example). Jean-Claude Guillebaud, observing the return or the potentially threatening appearance of certain dogmatisms and clericalisms (religious, but also in economics, science and politics), has devoted his most recent book to the question of belief. "What can we believe in?", he asks, or in other words how do we distinguish blindly held beliefs from reasonable convictions? Benjamin Delannoy has read this essay for Futuribles and summarizes its main points.

In the last five years or so there has been a sharp rise in property prices in France and this is now making it difficult for young couples and middle class families to afford to buy housing, and indeed more and more people are having to live in whatever housing they can find rather than what they would choose. Four factors are responsible for this shortfall, according to Jean-Paul Lacaze: the failure of the authorities to make land available for house-building, the (unpredictable) sharp decline in the average size of households, the refusal by decision-makers to allow the expansion of private housing on the outskirts of towns, and finally the "aberrations" of land-use forecasting that led to the development of "malthusian" planning (based on underestimates of population growth in large urban areas).
Lacaze presents a detailed description of these factors and the consequences of their interaction for the housing situation in France. He emphasizes in particular the typical cases of the Paris region (the Île-de-France) and the Mediterranean coast, and he calls for a major effort to forecast housing needs because he argues that, even if the rate of house-building in the Paris region is doubled, it will take between 10 and 15 years to restore equilibrium. This effort will require the creation of a permanent team within central government specifically charged with forecasting supply and demand for housing in the medium to long term; at present, this does not exist.

L'un des grands problèmes de l'analyse générationnelle, c'est que l'on a toujours cru que les générations étaient une espèce de maillon neutre dans la chaîne du changement du long terme. On doit cette hypothèse à Emmanuel Kant pour qui chaque génération travaille - sans le savoir - à faire en sorte que la génération (ou les générations) qui vont suivre bénéficient de plus de choses. Dans cette optique, la croissance économique, le fameux 2 pour 100 par an ...

(248 more words)

Faits : Les Européens vont effectuer 11,3% de leurs achats de voyages en ligne en 2006 (9,5 % en 2005), selon le Center for Regional and Tourism Research danois. Les Américains ont déjà en 2005 dépensé 65,4 milliards de dollars US pour réserver 30% de leurs titres de voyage en ligne (+25,5%/an) d’après PhoCusWright. L’influence d’Internet dépasse ces chiffres car beaucoup d’achats conclus par les voies traditionnelles sont préparés en ligne. Selon une ...

(29 more words)

Cette sixième édition annuelle d'une enquête réalisée pour le CGTI (Conseil général des technologies de l'information) l'ARCEP (Autorité de régulation des communications électroniques et des postes), actualise le panorama de la diffusion des technologies de l'information et de la communication (TIC) dans la société française. L'équipement en TIC des Français Le double équipement téléphonique fixe-mobile concerne une majorité de personnes : 83 % des adultes. La baisse de l'équipement en téléphone fixe entamée depuis 2000 semble ...

(encore 696 mots)