In this article, the author explores the cooperative aspects of mound construction in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Arguing against the outdated but widely held view that only centralized rule could organize monument construction, he investigates how participation in mound construction affected the people of Sør-Fron in south-eastern Norway. He contends, first, that repeated participation in mound construction helped create a sense of belonging and shared identity, which was maintained through centuries of major environmental and political turmoil. Second, mound construction was part of an active and conscious strategy to limit aggrandizement and prevent centralization and concentration of power. Rejection of Christianity arguably worked in similar ways. The author concludes with considerations of approaches to Iron Age monuments, emphasizing the importance of consensus and community-building and the role of communal opposition to centralized rule.

Intergenerational transfers are the essence of societal continuity, and yet not at all well conceptualized or analysed. Intergenerational transfers are also at the core of the welfare state concept of redistribution of resources and hence, of current social policy changes/challenges. In making a difference to policy choices and in linking research to policy, attention to intergenerational transfers focusses on the fundamental policy questions of guiding belief systems, family (or private) transfers versus public transfers among generations, and issues of intergenerational and cohort equity in the short and longer terms. This paper has four objectives: (1) Situating intergenerational transfers in socio-historical, international comparative, and current social policy contexts; (2) Developing a typology of intergenerational transfers that could provide the basis for answering thus far unanswerable key policy questions, such as whether the situations of seniors into future generations will be like those of seniors today; (3) Encouraging the collection of more complete and integrated data on intergenerational transfers in Canada, which would provide for more informed policy choices; and (4) Enumerating key policy questions that emerge from research and remain to be addressed. From analysis of what is known about intergenerational transfers and what remains to be known, an agenda for an information system, for future research and for addressing policy questions is outlined.

L’Union des artistes a conclu des dizaines d’ententes collectives avec des producteurs dans le cadre de la Loi S-32.1. En vertu des Règlements généraux de l’Union, il est interdit aux membres d’accepter un contrat de travail en marge de ces ententes sous peine de sanction disciplinaire. Pour l’artiste rarement sollicité, soit la grande majorité des membres, ces offres de travail posent un dilemme : privilégier son intérêt individuel à court terme ou respecter la collectivité. Dans ce contexte, le discours des artistes est marqué par une certaine ambivalence dans leur sentiment de solidarité. Le présent article tente de dépeindre cette ambivalence par le biais d’un monologue théâtral qui étaye ce vécu. Après avoir exposé le contexte juridique et la méthodologie retenue, inspirée de la création, l’article présente un monologue afin de faire vivre au lecteur ce que les artistes ont exprimé et leurs émotions telles que la chercheure les a interprétées.

This paper aims to show how insurance mechanisms that historically propelled a conception of fairness based on solidarity and a collective approach shifted along the 20th century towards an idealistic adjustment to individual risk. Insurance originally assumed that, while individual hazards remained unknown, risk could be measured and managed on the aggregate. An examination of the proceedings of the American Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) during the 20th century demonstrates the slow crystallization of another conception of fairness, that aims at a scientific adjustment of insurance premiums to actual “individual risks.” I argue that this conception of fairness deconstructs the one based on solidarity. Big data technologies have further radicalized this shift. By aiming at predictive individual risk scores rather than average costs estimated on the aggregate, the algorithms contribute to replacing fairness as solidarity by the correctness of a computation.

We analyze a network of 3,590 interpersonal credit ties among Renaissance Florentine elite households to determine how Florentine personal credit was socially structured. We assess the network in light of various social and economic motivations Florentines might have had to exchange credit with each other. We explore the extent of participation by people from different categories, such as neighborhoods, factions, and guilds, and we determine whether loans flowed primarily within or between such groupings. We observe considerable homophily within families and neighborhoods, but also extensive circulation of credit among the most commercially and politically active Florentines. The overall connectivity of this network of interpersonal credit transactions resembles the social structure of other contemporaneous Florentine networks, such as marriage and business, suggesting that interpersonal credit was an important and distinct domain in which elite membership was confirmed and elite social solidarity achieved.

This article studies Durkheim's views on altruism and selfishness and, therefore, on modern individualism. In contrast to Comte and Spencer, Durkheim used these concepts in his empirical work on suicide and then as intellectual tools for explaining his view on the professional and political organization required in a modern democracy. Finaly, the article examines how Durkheim's views were modified by the Durkheimian, notably with Marcel Mauss’ emphasis on interested/desinterested behaviors in gift-giving processes which are the empirical and symbolical roots of social solidarity.