As it happens, we are quite well aware of the origin of a group belief. For instance, the history of baseball in the USA is a kind of contemporary myth whose origin, however, is not mysterious. In the US there is a place called the Hall of Fame dedicated to the great figures in baseball history. The spot can be found in Cooperstown, a small American town in the middle of New York state, that is otherwise totally unremarkable. Why was a building put up there to celebrate the sport that is so emblematic of the United States? Simply because the famous baseball is supposed to have been invented there by one Abner Doubleday in 1839. The date is precise but the myth of origins associated with it is no less so. In the early 19th century Doubleday is alleged to have interrupted some children playing marbles behind the shop belonging to the town's tailor. Then he is supposed to have started to teach them the rules of a new, more exciting game which he had just invented (if we adhere to this myth of origins) and which he proposed to call ‘baseball’. So he marked out a small-scale field on the ground: the first game of this typically American sport could now begin.

The author summarizes here the main theme of the papers gathered in the second part of this issue. It describes the dual identities they deal with (linguistic identities,métissages, masked exiles and social intermingling) and places them in the context of an ongoing seminar work carried out at the Maison des sciences de l’homme in Paris.

The author states that the very idea of human dignity lies in human relationships in the form of mutual recognition of one another. She emphasizes the ‘daily’ commitment to dignity as an essential feature of intersubjectivity and insists on the bodily dimension as the fundamental mode of relationships to the other. Thus human dignity is first of all the dignity of the body.

This paper sketches a comprehensive methodology to analyse the elementary structures of prehistoric art. A formal analysis of art is proposed through the distinction between pictograms, ideograms and psychograms. The dynamic between these elements and the thematic contents of the represented scenes is related to the four main types of social organization: early hunters, early gatherers, late hunters, pastoralists and complex economy societies. Cultural patterns of these societies and formal elements of art may appear as sharing the same elementary structures.

Studies of the phenomenon of rumour can no longer avoid paying particular attention to recent transformations of structures in the public sphere. On the one hand, the central role of media in the classification of items of information as ‘rumours’ and in their subsequent publicization and dissemination has become entrenched. On the other, rumours have come to be treated not just as simple pieces of information but rather as a dimension of the political or secular interchange that goes on within larger or smaller groups. These two paradigmatic hypotheses have been recently advanced notably by Pascal Froissart (2002) and Philippe Aldrin (2005). Froissart has shown that our awareness of rumours is very largely moulded by the major place accorded to them in the media, and that many so-called rumours said to have been spontaneously generated from within the body of society in fact find their origin and their channels of propagation effectively within the media itself. For his part, Aldrin would break with the standard interpretation of rumour content as often reflective of the shifting nature of collective psychology, substituting for this, notably for rumours of a political type, a ‘transactional’ approach, by which the rumour is analysed as a form of information that enters circulation in the course of everyday interactions, or ones linked to potential political outcomes.

This is an exclusive interview with the film-maker Nurith Aviv. Her last film Misafa Lesafa, on the plural linguistic identity in Israel, is linked to her former work and analysed through its cultural background, its symbolic dimension and its technical realization.

The author provides an introductory view of the notion of dignity and yen (benevolence) in Confucius’ and Mencius’ doctrines. It compares them with classical Western positions (viz. Plato’s), through an analysis of the Analects and Mencius’ works. It shows that because of a strong emphasis on the importance and dignity of the human person, Chinese humanism has been developing under a specific social and cultural background which is entirely different from that of Western countries.

The very concept of the ‘birth’ or ‘origin’ of art may seem inappropriate, since humans are by nature artists and the history of art begins with that of humanity. In their artistic impulses and achievements humans express their vitality, their ability to establish a beneficial and positive relationship with their environment, to humanize nature; their behaviour as artists is one of the characteristics for selection favourable to the evolution of the human species. Evidence from a huge analysis of rock art and cave paintings and engravings shows that, from their origins, humans have also been Homo aestheticus.

The apparent erosion of public trust has become a defining feature of our age (Fukuyama, 1996; Sztompka, 2000). Collapse of trust in the political process is the subject of intellectual concern and reaction (Warren, 1999; Bentley, 2005). Another important focus for analysis and response to mistrust is science and technology risk management. Sociology is at the forefront of problematizing science and technology risk management, proposing a renegotiation of the relationship between science, citizens and policy (Irwin, 1995; Irwin and Wynne, 1996; Wynne, 2000; Stilgoe, Wilsdon and Wynne, 2005). Science is admonished in the now influential sociological critique for failing to communicate the uncertainty that is central to their endeavours, instead continuing to insist upon a ‘top-down’ process of science communication. Science is presented as having unreflectively brought about a scientific and technological revolution without regard for the consequences that the resulting ‘risk society’ is now struggling to come to terms with (Beck, 1992, 1995). An influential review of specific examples of 20th-century scientific and technological innovations argues the ‘late lessons’ that can be drawn are the failure to heed ‘early warnings’ that could have been detected about potentially damaging impacts (Harremoës et al., 2002). A new, precautionary approach is urged - one that can avoid the mistakes of the past.

This paper traces back the psychological effects of the ‘masked exile’ of a Jewish Tunisian family settled in France. The author provides a rich analysis of a sudden and permanent change of nationality, country, language, urban bustle and family environment, following the ‘tunisification of Tunisia’ launched by President Bourguiba at the end of the 1950s. A comparison with the situation of later migrant workers from the Maghreb countries is sketched in the second part of this paper.

The author raises the problem of the presence of terror in contemporary life. He analyzes the continuous dynamic between fear, terror and hopes of peace in contemporary societies. Dignity appears as a blueprint of the ubiquitous presence of terror and fear.

Over the last twenty years the debate over the origin of modern Man has broadened, the supporters of a theory of regional diversification of Homo sapiens being often opposed by those holding to the single source theory (the ‘Out of Africa’ model). At the same time, the idea of Homo neanderthalensis as a separate species was being resurrected, supported by bone classification typology and drawing on arguments derived from palaeogenetic analyses, which buttressed the case for the existence of distinct species and for privileging an African origin for modern humans. The prospects offered by palaeogenetic research to find answers for the questions concerning the relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals throw up numerous questions and all the obstacles have not yet been removed. Palaeoanthropology, from its point of view, casts major doubt on the thesis according to which man has always evolved in the same direction.

Bits and pieces of a fragile, fragmented discourse. Messages that traveled from cell to cell, cellblock to cellblock, even from one prison to another. Scrupulously and copiously analyzed, discussed and, on occasion, transformed during recreation periods and family visits, they were capable of inspiring both hope and fear, depending on the circumstances. But most importantly they were vehicles - spontaneous, improvised vehicles - for combating misinformation and uncertainty. Political prisoners had a name for them: bembas. Often the sole topic of conversation and argument among political prisoners, bembas always elicited a broad array of opinions and reactions: skepticism, blind faith, humor, meticulous examination, scorn and, most often, expectant, painstaking analysis.

The author provides a rich plethora of examples of a heterology, a knowledge of the multiple, which alone is able to recognize the richness of life. Philosophical, sociological and literary analysis of different authors, mainly from the 20th century, are provided.

It is hard to define cultural modernity. Nonetheless, apparently there is no match between biological and cultural evolution, between biological and archaeological data. The features of cultural modernity cannot be seen as a direct consequence of the biological origin of our species. A second crucial aspect is that the subsistence strategies, technological and symbolic traditions of Neanderthals are not significantly different from those of modern humans living in Africa and the Near East at the same period. Europe, at the level of human evolution, was a cul-de-sac and not a disseminating centre. Bifaces reached Europe a million years after their invention in Africa. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals thus evolved in parallel, even though speed and cultural forms varied from one population to another. It now seems clear that the features we recognize as ‘modern’ appeared in different regions and in different human groups. It would be the same later with the invention of agriculture, writing, state societies, which appeared separately at several points on the planet.

This paper describes the cultural circumstances of the ‘crisis of the working-class suburbs’ that shattered France at the end of 2005. The self-representation of the young suburban bands, their need for social differentiation, the legitimacy of their own social existence are presented as factors of the unprecedented social rebellion known by France.

As an addition to the papers brought together in this special issue here is an informative dossier, which we have tried to make comprehensive, on recent research work (published since 2001) connected with the field of rumors and urban legends.

This dossier includes reviews of eight French publications.

In 2002 came the second edition of Jean-Bruno Renard's Que Sais-je volume Rumeurs et légendes urbaines; the book by Véronique Campion-Vincent and Jean-Bruno Renard De source sûre; and Pascal Froissart's study La Rumeur, histoire et fantasmes.

In 2003 there was Gérald Bronner's L'Empire des croyances.

The year 2004 saw the publication of a more marginal work by Yves-Marie Bercé, A la recherche des trésors cachés, du XVIe siècle à nos jours, which highlighted a whole complex of rumors and legends around this universal theme.

In 2005 the following were published: Philippe Aldrin's Sociologie politique des rumeurs; Véronique Campion-Vincent's La Société parano. Théories du complot, menaces et incertitudes; and finally Frédéric Dumerchat and Philippe Veniel's Forêt de Chizé: attention puma! focusing on the group of legends about mystery big cats.

There is no direct, constant relationship between the anthropological and cultural aspects of modernity. Anthropologically modern peoples display a certain heterogeneity that is not unconnected with earlier peoples, and the culture produced by modern humans, which is also heterogeneous, is differentiated diachronically and according to territory. Though paleogenetic research seems to point us to a single, African source for modern peoples, who had replaced the pre-sapiens populations in Eurasia, this view is not completely proven or accepted. On the other hand, paleo-genetic research has contributed to our relinquishing the hypothesis of a multiregional ‘total continuity’ of local pre-modern populations in the Old World. Indeed the theory of a partial replacement, by a migration ‘out of Africa’, appears to be getting increasingly plausible. This article deals with the problems of the origins of modern man from the points of view of anthropological, paleogenetic, paleoenvironmental and cultural approaches.

This chronicle is a review of a collective publication commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of W. V. O. Quine’s most influential paper. The author, a prominent epistemologist, discusses these contributions in a way that sheds a particular light on the importance of Quine’s work for the ongoing epistemological debate.

One of Paul Ricoeur’s last conferences, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Italian Institute of Philosophical Studies, was pronounced at Unesco in November 2002. He presents the intellectual model represented by the Institute as being both liberal and transversal, and considers these two features as summarizing the task of philosophy.