Social Categorization

Discussions about the proper relationship between humans and animals can easily degenerate into what the Universal House of Justice calls “the all too common tendencies . . . to delineate sharp dichotomies . . . and engage in intractable debate that obstructs the search for viable solutions” (29 November 2017). This paper first uses an exegetical approach to discern a Bahá’í framework governing the treatment of animals, and our relationship to the natural world more broadly. Next, a self-reflexive examination of the author’s own relationship with animals is used to demonstrate how such a framework can directly inform the individual’s way of being in the world, in a manner that is both faithful to the Bahá’í teachings on the subject, and responsive to differences in individuals’ circumstances. Finally, it suggests that by presenting an internally coherent position in which an ethics of kindness and justice flows from underlying ontological principles, this framework hold promise for ...

El acto de nombrar, de asignar una categoria que permita identificar bajo un mismo rubro a sujetos diversos, suele tener importantes implicaciones politicas. En estas actuaciones, encontramos a los especialistas en el estudio de las sociedades humanas (antropologos, sociologos, juristas, historiadores…), a los propios actores identificados por las categorias, y a otros agentes relacionados con diversas instancias estatales o supraestatales que elaboran y aplican estas designaciones, tanto par...

This chapter explores the phenomenon of social essentialism along five conceptual dimensions. Firstly, it investigates the natural domain of living kinds, which serves as a prototype of essentialist thinking. This domain enables us to observe continuity of kind exemplars throughout life spans and across generations, along with the classic characteristics of essentialist thinking. Social essentialism primarily manifests in groups where membership is determined by birth, such as ethnic groups, which develop a strong sense of identity and ethnic marking. Subsequently, the chapter presents two theoretical approaches to the origins of essentialist cognition. The first approach posits that essentialism is an innate feature, while the second suggests that it is an enculturated way of thinking within the cultural niche. Both approaches postulate an evolutionary selection pressure: the former on individuals and the latter on the institution of enculturation. As an aside, the case of aristocracy is discussed as an example of identity formation in 'ontogenetic niches'. The subsequent section examines the function of essentialist thinking as meta-cognition in judgements of resemblance. Finally, this chapter addresses the role of motivated essentialism in societies, which serves political purposes depending on the aims of social groups. Overall, essentialism should be comprehended as a prevalent meta-cognitive feature of the human mind that is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.

En la última década y media, en Sudamérica se desarrollaron diferentes iniciativas y políticas locales sobre migraciones internacionales. El presente artículo analiza, desde los estudios críticos de migraciones y fronteras, estas políticas y su papel en la reconfiguración de la gobernabilidad migratoria regional. Mediante el análisis documental y mapeo de iniciativas locales (basados en la triangulación de fuentes secundarias) identificamos tres tipos principales de intervenciones: programas de organismos internacionales (Ciudades Solidarias/Incluyentes, MigraCiudades), redes municipales (Mercociudades) y mecanismos fronterizos (Comités y Zonas de Integración Fronteriza). A estas experiencias las agrupamos en iniciativas directas, centradas en políticas locales bajo estándares globales, e indirectas, que incorporan lo migratorio en agendas más amplias, reproduciendo lógicas tecnocráticas. Los hallazgos revelan una articulación multiescalar (local-nacional-global) donde sobresalen dispositivos que definen los modos legítimos de “ser migrante”. Las “buenas prácticas” impulsadas por organismos internacionales emergen como eje estructurante, aunque con implementaciones fragmentadas y resultados disímiles.

La Politique Agricole Commune, conçue comme un rempart contre la précarité et un outil de cohésion territoriale, est aujourd’hui le théâtre d’une dérive systémique : des subventions publiques, financées par les contribuables européens, abreuvent des milliardaires, parfois non européens, sans que leur activité agricole réelle ne soit vérifiée. Ce phénomène n’est pas un dysfonctionnement marginal, mais le symptôme d’une capture institutionnelle où les mécanismes de contrôle ont cédé face à la financiarisation de l’agriculture et à l’opacité des montages juridiques.

Cet article propose une analyse multidimensionnelle des scandales liés à l’attribution des subventions PAC, en explorant leurs causes structurelles (failles réglementaires, complicité des États, stratégies géopolitiques), leurs conséquences (distorsion des marchés, précarisation des petits agriculteurs, atteinte à la souveraineté européenne) et les pistes de réforme pour une PAC plus juste et souveraine. Au-delà des chiffres et des cas concrets, c’est une réflexion civilisationnelle qui émerge : l’Europe choisira-t-elle de rester le caissier des oligarques, ou de redevenir le gardien d’un modèle agricole solidaire et durable ?

Un essai sans concession, qui révèle les enjeux éthiques et stratégiques d’un système à bout de souffle, et appelle à une refondation urgente.

En la última década y media, en Sudamérica se desarrollaron diferentes iniciativas y políticas locales sobre migraciones internacionales. El presente artículo analiza, desde los estudios críticos de migraciones y fronteras, estas políticas y su papel en la reconfiguración de la gobernabilidad migratoria regional. Mediante el análisis documental y mapeo de iniciativas locales (basados en la triangulación de fuentes secundarias) identificamos tres tipos principales de intervenciones: programas de organismos internacionales (Ciudades Solidarias/Incluyentes, MigraCiudades), redes municipales (Mercociudades) y mecanismos fronterizos (Comités y Zonas de Integración Fronteriza). A estas experiencias las agrupamos en iniciativas directas, centradas en políticas locales bajo estándares globales, e indirectas, que incorporan lo migratorio en agendas más amplias, reproduciendo lógicas tecnocráticas. Los hallazgos revelan una articulación multiescalar (local-nacional-global) donde sobresalen dispositivos que definen los modos legítimos de “ser migrante”. Las “buenas prácticas” impulsadas por organismos internacionales emergen como eje estructurante, aunque con implementaciones fragmentadas y resultados disímiles.

En  las  últimas  dos  décadas, la  llamada  “perspectiva  de  género”  cobró  protagonismo  en  las instituciones  enmarcadas  en  el  régimen  sudamericano  de  migración  y  fronteras.  Su  creciente visibilidad aconteció en la intersección de dos procesos regionales relativamente independientes: por  un  lado,  la  expansión  de  formas  de  control  humanitario  de  la  movilidad  y  por  otro,  la masificación  de  los  feminismos  en  Sudamérica.  En  este  contexto,  las  narrativas  económicas neoliberales  adquirieron  particular  relevancia  como  forma  de  intervención  humanitaria  hacia migrantes feminizadas. La constelación de actores involucradxs —compuesta fundamentalmente por ONG locales, nacionales e internacionales, y por organismos internacionales, especialmente de  Naciones  Unidas—generó  recomendaciones,  informes,  guías,  grupos  de  trabajo,  políticas, programas y proyectos específicos sobre emprendedurismo, educación financiera y microcréditos destinados  a  mujeres  migrantes  y  población  LGBTIQ+.  El  presente  artículo  tiene  por  objetivo indagar  en la narrativa de la “inclusión financiera con perspectiva de género” en el marco del régimen sudamericano de migraciones y fronteras. El argumento que guía el texto sostiene que la racionalidad económica desplegada en el campo de las migraciones incorpora la “perspectiva de género”  como  un  intento  de  generar  subjetividades  neoliberales  en  las  personas  migrantes feminizadas y convertirlas en sujetxs productivxs. Esta búsqueda de “generar productividad” se produce  mediante  el  despliegue  de  proyectos  de  emprendedurismo,  educación  financiera  y microcréditos enfocados en mujeres y población LGBTIQ+.Palabras clave:género, migraciones, neoliberalismo, inclusión financiera, humanitarismoAbstractOver the last two decades, the so-called ‘gender perspective’ has gained prominence in institutions within  the  South  American  migration  and  border  regime.  Its  growing  visibility  occurred  at  the intersection of two relatively independent regional processes.On the one hand, the expansion of forms of humanitarian control of mobility and the massification of feminisms in South America. In this context, neoliberal economic narratives took on particular relevance as a form of humanitarian intervention  for  feminised  migrants.  The  constellation  of  actors  involved—composed  mainly  of local,  national,  and  international  NGOs  and  international  organisations,  especially  the  United Nations—generated recommendations, reports, guidelines, working groups, policies, programmes, and specific projects on entrepreneurship, financial education, and microcredit for migrant women and the LGBTIQ+ population. This article aims to investigate the narrative of “financial inclusion with a gender perspective” within the framework of the South  American  migration  and  border regime.  The  argument  that  guides  the  text  maintains  that  economic  rationality,  deployed  in  the field of migration, incorporates the ‘gender perspective’ as an attempt to generate neoliberal subjectivities in feminised migrants and turn them into productive subjects. This quest to ‘generate productivity’ is achieved through the deployment of entrepreneurship, financial education and microcredit projects focused on women and the LGBTIQ+ population.Keywords:gender, migration, neoliberalism, financial inclusion, humanitarianism

En este trabajo reflexionamos acerca de los aportes teórico-metodológicos que la perspectiva socioantropológica brinda para el estudio de las políticas migratorias y de refugio. Estas políticas se expresan a través de normas, prácticas y discursos, y son parte del instrumental mediante el cual el Estado ordena, clasifica y diferencia a las poblaciones, no solo entre nacionales y no nacionales, sino entre categorías de migrantes. El ejercicio de deconstrucción de las políticas
en clave socioantropológica pone en evidencia la (re)producción de modelos de pensamiento, lenguajes y gramáticas
institucionales por medio de los cuales se despliegan formas
determinadas de problematizar, categorizar e intervenir la
cuestión migratoria. Explorar las políticas desde esta lente
conlleva preguntar(se) qué cuestiones son definidas como
problemáticas, bajo qué tipo de justificaciones se elaboran,
qué objetivos pretenden alcanzar, y a través de qué técnicas,
y para qué fines.

One of the main tasks of jurisprudence is to know the nature of law. There is the widespread idea in jurisprudence that social kinds do not have essences or, if they do, these are completely different from those of natural kinds. This view relies on false presuppositions about essences and social kinds. For this reason, in addition to the lack of extensive examination of the metaphysics of essences in jurisprudence, we need to revisit what a 'nature' or 'essence' is. This is the objective of the paper. This paper offers both a positive and a negative argument. The positive argument is an account of essences that does not discriminate between natural and social kinds. The negative argument debunks the objections against the idea that social kinds, and thus law, have essences in the natural-kind sense of the concept.

The other-race effect is a collection of phenomena whereby faces of one's own race are processed differently from those of other races. Previous studies have revealed a paradoxical mirror pattern of an own-race advantage in face recognition and an other-race advantage in race-based categorisation. With a well-controlled design, we compared recognition and categorisation of own-race and other-race faces in both Caucasian and Chinese participants. Compared with own-race faces, other-race faces were less accurately and more slowly recognised, whereas they were more rapidly categorised by race. The mirror pattern was confirmed by a unique negative correlation between the two effects in terms of reaction time with a hierarchical regression analysis. This finding suggests an antagonistic interaction between the processing of face identity and that of face category, and a common underlying processing mechanism.

The other-race effect is a collection of phenomena whereby faces of one's own race are processed differently from those of other races. Previous studies have revealed a paradoxical mirror pattern of an own-race advantage in face recognition and an other-race advantage in race-based categorisation. With a well-controlled design, we compared recognition and categorisation of own-race and other-race faces in both Caucasian and Chinese participants. Compared with own-race faces, other-race faces were less accurately and more slowly recognised, whereas they were more rapidly categorised by race. The mirror pattern was confirmed by a unique negative correlation between the two effects in terms of reaction time with a hierarchical regression analysis. This finding suggests an antagonistic interaction between the processing of face identity and that of face category, and a common underlying processing mechanism.

In contemporary higher education, language is still
most often treated as transparent—a neutral medium
through which knowledge is transmitted, evaluated, and
certified, as if it merely carries meaning from one mind to
another without altering its structure. This assumption is
so deeply embedded in academic life that it rarely
becomes an object of reflection.

Mirabile et al. (2024) provide evidence that property valence—i.e., the perceived dangerousness of the ascribed properties—affects the endorsement of generics, an effect we did not observe (Cella et al., 2022). To address this difference, Mirabile et al. re-analyzed our Study 3a data, including the responses from a sample of participants we excluded, questioning the rationale for their exclusion. They further used a Bayesian framework and suggested that the frequentist models we used cannot provide stable estimates for the parameters. This commentary addresses Mirabile et al.’s concerns regarding our methodology. We first discuss our recruitment for Study 3a; we then focus on concerns about our statistical models.

En este articulo se toma la visita de la provincia de Trujillo por Gregorio Gonzalez de Cuenca (1566/67) como documento de la historia colonial y como expresion de la busqueda de un nuevo orden en un momento en que el virreinato peruano atraveso una fuerte crisis economica y politica. En este contexto la supervivencia de las instituciones indigenas prehispanicas (es decir, la adopcion deliberada de determinados elementos de las relaciones legales anteriores a la conquista) era considerada como parte de ese nuevo orden colonial que facilitaria un dominio mas eficaz de la poblacion indiana. Dado que el objetivo del visitador Cuenca era crear la base legal de una administracion colonial reformada para la region Norte del Peru, en este articulo se expone como Cuenca manejaba la reorganizacion de la jerarquia social de los cacicazgos, los privilegios de los caciques y la regulacion de la ayuda mutua tradicional (mita y ayni) y de que manera se efectuaba la introduccion del tributo en din...

This substantial introduction constitute the theoretical background of a thematic issue of Annales islamologiques dedicated to social groups and social categorization in the mediaeval Islamic world. The question of the relationship between collective entities and categories used by the actors is at the core of the reflexion. The production of collective identities is considered as a continuous, uninterrupted process, constantly renewed, produced by social interactions that shape these identities as well as they are shaped by them. Basic concepts such as “groups”, “categories” and “categorization” are first discussed. The historiography of social groups and categorization in the mediaeval Islamic world is then considered, with a review of the vocabulary of collective entities in Arabic sources. The article then focuses on the foundations of collective identities in the medieval dār al-islām: religion and belonging to a madhhab, ethnicity, occupation, status. Further research topics are finally suggested: looking for operating categories, internal study of groups, reconsidering inter-group relations. Keywords: social history, social groups, social categories, social categorization, social sciences theory, medieval Islam, ethnicity, collective identities. Cette substantielle introduction pose le cadre théorique du numéro thématique des Annales islamologiques portant sur les groupes sociaux et la catégorisation sociale dans le dār al-islām médiéval. L’interrogation sur le rapport entre les entités collectives et les catégories utilisées par les acteurs afin de répartir leurs contemporains dans différents ensembles est au cœur de la réflexion ; la production des identités collectives y est considérée comme un processus permanent, ininterrompu et sans cesse renouvelé, né des interactions sociales qui modèlent ces identités autant qu’elles sont modelées par elles. L’article s’intéresse tout d’abord aux concepts de base de « groupes », « catégories » et « catégorisation » avant de considérer l’historiographie de la catégorisation sociale dans le monde arabo-musulman médiéval et de poser la question du vocabulaire des entités collectives dans les sources arabes de l’époque. Il porte ensuite sur les fondements des identités collectives dans le dār al‑islām médiéval : religion et appartenance à un maḏhab, ethnicité, activité professionnelle et groupes de statuts. Des pistes de recherche sont enfin suggérées : recherche de catégories opérantes, étude interne des groupes et relations inter-groupes. Mots-clés : histoire sociale, groupes sociaux, catégories sociales, catégorisation sociale, théorie des sciences sociales, Islam médiéval, ethnicité, identités collectives.

Research Interests Cultural and social history of the medieval Middle East Social and urban history of medieval Iraq during the Buyid and Seljuq periods (11th-12th centuries) History of medieval Baghdad (sources and methods, topography and urban societies) Medieval Arab historiography, biographical and autobiographical literature Sound history of medieval Arab-Muslim worlds

This introductory article introduces the concepts of misfit and misfitting as a relational prism for analysing social life in conditions of uncertainty and indeterminacy. Drawing on ethnographic materials from ‘in-between’ places in a multipolar world, it examines how elements that no longer – or not yet – fit dominant orders generate awkward relations that reverberate across cognitive, affective, spatial, and temporal domains. Engaging critically with anthropological debates on categorization, liminality, affect, and repair, the article argues that the in-between is neither unstructured nor merely transitional, but textured by power, historical afterlives, and anticipations of uncertain futures. Misfit/misfitting, we argue, is not simply about being ‘out of place’, but a quality that can reveal how social and political fabrics are strained, realigned, rejected outright, or restitched. Thus, attending to moments of misfitting allows us to see society as an ongoing patchwork constantly made and remade through rupture and repair.

Stereotypes play a fundamental role in social judgment and interaction, particularly because they are socially shared across groups of people . Communication is key in perpetuating stereotypic beliefs (Beukeboom & Burgers, 2019;, as interpersonal and mass-media communication contribute to consensualization of (negative) social stereotypes . Biased language use in communication about categorized individuals plays an important role in this process. Variations in language features like abstraction

Research on linguistic biases shows that stereotypic expectancies are implicitly reflected in language and thereby subtly communicated to message recipients. Research on the Negation Bias shows that the use of negations (e.g., not stupid vs. smart) is more pronounced in descriptions of stereotype-inconsistent compared with stereotype-consistent behaviors. This article reports a replication study of the original research conducted in Dutch, using newly developed materials, and in five different languages: English, Dutch, Hungarian, Finnish, and Serbian. The results validate the existence of the Negation Bias in all five languages. This suggests that negation use serves a similar stereotype-maintaining function across language families.

This article focuses on the role of language in social-stereotype formation through interpersonal communication. We conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 423), in which participants were exposed to differential remarks about (members of) an unknown social group. Remarks varied in two linguistic devices: (a) label type, by distinguishing between generic and specific labels and (b) behavior descriptions, by contrasting negations and affirmations in descriptions of competent (e.g., not stupid vs. smart) and incompetent behaviors (e.g., not smart vs. stupid). Generic (vs. specific) labels increased perceived entitativity (“groupness” of category members), stereotype content (perceived competence) and perceived essentialism of described behaviors. Compared with affirmations, only the communication pattern with negations in descriptions of competent behaviors (e.g., not stupid) decreased perceived competence of group members, and increased perceived essentialism of incompetent beha...

Affective faces are important stimuli with relevance to healthy and abnormal social and affective information processing. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of brief presentations of affective faces on attention and emotional state across the time course of stimulus processing, as indexed by startle eyeblink response modulation. Healthy adults were presented with happy, neutral, and disgusted male and female faces that were backward masked by neutral faces. Startle responses were elicited at 300, 800, and 3500 ms following stimulus presentation to probe early and late startle eyeblink modulation, indicative of attention allocation and emotional state, respectively. Results revealed that at 300 ms, both face expression and face gender modulated startle eyeblink response, suggesting that more attention was allocated to masked happy compared to disgusted female faces, and masked disgusted compared to neutral male faces. There were no effects of either face expression or face gender on startle modulation at 800 ms. At 3500 ms, target face expression did not modulate startle, but male faces elicited larger startle responses than female faces, indicative of a more negative emotional state. These findings provide a systematic investigation of attention and emotion modulation by brief affective faces across the time course of stimulus processing.

Community studies face a persistent dilemma: weak definitions of community avoid groupism but sacrifice analytical precision, while strong definitions maintain precision through problematic assumptions of social closure, value cohesion and collective agency (i.e., groupism). This article resolves this tension with a theory of communities as social systems, which reproduce as they create and organize a communication mode that establishes a principle of social identity based on a shared similarity. The formation of communities is then explained by the co-occurrence of three processes: distinction, generalization, and structuration. By shifting the focus from questions of belonging ("who is in or out?") to questions of symbolic boundary-making ("what distinguishes a community?"), the approach rehabilitates the concept without presupposing high solidarity, or social closure. The theory then positions communities in the meso level of society, above interactions, besides social movements and organizations, and below institutional/functional systems. It also demonstrates the analytical difference and empirical usefulness of "community" if compared to the concepts of network, group, and category. The discussion provides, in sum, a framework to observe how communities maintain symbolic distinctiveness while accommodating graduated participation, varying solidarity, and fluid social boundaries within a complex society.

Questo elaborato analizza Barbie e Ken come icone culturali, esplorando come le loro figure riflettano e influenzino le identità di genere e le aspirazioni sociali contemporanee. Attraverso l'esame di campagne di empowerment e la recente analisi cinematografica del 2023, viene evidenziata la decostruzione dei ruoli tradizionali e l'emergere di concetti quali la mascolinità subordinata e l'identità relazionale. La ricerca approfondisce inoltre la transizione da canoni estetici irrealistici a modelli inclusivi e diversificati , inquadrando infine il successo del brand entro le logiche marxiste del capitalismo globale e del feticismo della merce. Barbie e Ken emergono così come complessi strumenti di negoziazione culturale e specchi critici della società moderna.

This paper presents an analysis of interviews of participants in a political manifestation in Indonesia about the reasons for the rally and the resulting riot. The rally was held in the middle of the Jakarta gubernatorial election, against a non-Muslim incumbent who was accused of having insulted the Quran. We argue that there is a deep relationship between social identities and religion, which has implications for societal togetherness and political freedom. Using a snowball technique, we interviewed 16 Muslims who had participated in this rally. The findings suggest that 1) even though the rally was held in the middle of an election, the demonstrators denied that the rally was politically motivated; 2) Those demonstrators who thought that intruders had infiltrated the rally, maintained that the intruders are to be held responsible for any violence, but not the 'actual' participants. 3) Interviewees claimed that their actions were not motivated by anti-Chinese prejudice, although traces of racist thinking can be found in their statements. The findings are discussed before the background of social representations, social identity, theories of collective action, and the black sheep effect.

1. Ou encore, de façon plus complémentaire, la prise de sang, pour éliminer un éventuel processus atypique. 2. Les données ont été fournies par le professeur Lionel Lamehaut et le docteur Alice Huttin, du SAMU de Paris dans le cadre du projet : « Interaction et médecine : les catégories dans la sous-détection des infarctus »(Im-CASDI) financé par le RnMSH 2020 (Réseau national des Maisons de sciences de l'homme) ; voir Bonu (à paraître).

Este artículo propone un enfoque integrador entre la perspectiva jurídica del refugio y la visión crítica de la migración forzada, a fin de repensar la gobernanza de la movilidad internacional desde  una perspectiva multidimensional. Mediante  un análisis teórico  y  una revisión histórica de ambos marcos, se argumenta que, aunque el sistema de asilo/refugio, basado en documentos como la Convención de Ginebra de 1951, se limita a situaciones específicas de persecución, el concepto  de  migración  forzada  amplía  la  comprensión  del  desplazamiento  humano, considerando    causas    estructurales    como    las    políticas    neoliberales    y    los    conflictos internacionales.  El  artículo  destaca  que  la  intersección  de  estos  enfoques  es  no  solo  posible, sino necesaria, para abordar las desigualdades estructurales en la protección de los migrantes y  para entender la movilidad internacional como un proceso  complejo impulsado por factores políticos, económicos y sociales. Los hallazgos principales incluyen la necesidad de replantear las soluciones jurídicas yla urgencia de integrar ambos marcos para una mayor comprensión de las realidades migratorias contemporáneas.

Villarreal Cabello, V. (2025). Del refugio a la migración forzada: análisis de las perspectivas jurídicas y críticas en la gobernanza de la movilidad internacional. Cuadernos Del Ciesal, 2(24), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.35305/cc.v2i24.164.

The way in which leaders and their teams perceive organizational dynamics is not typically a subject of analysis in the workplace. Nevertheless, such perceptions play a decisive role in shaping how both leaders and team members make decisions. The purpose of this article is to examine the key aspects that define these perceptions, so that through effective leadership we may arrive at more informed and constructive decisions.

If the concept of communication implies a passage of a message from a sender to a receiver, then that message must be encoded in a shared language to ensure mutual understanding between the sender and the receiver.
Similarly, intercultural communication implies “a negotiated understanding of meaning in human experiences across social systems and societies” (Arent, 2009:2).
Braslaukas (2023) exemplifies this point by stating, “Every culture is a set of signs with defined meanings. In decoding these meanings, a representative of a foreign culture encounters a problem of identity of the meanings” (256). The process of decoding these meanings constitutes the primary objective of intercultural communication.
In the decoding process, the human mind will relies on categorization as a cognitive strategy. As Suryandari (2020) notes, individuals often simplify “the abundant and complex information in an intergroup encounter through the cognitive process of categorizing” (25).
This process is commonly referred to as stereotyping.
Scholars, however, do not unanimously agree on the quality of the function of stereotyping. Some view it negatively, as it implies a preconceived judgments about reality, while others consider it a neutral or even positive phenomenon, as people just generalize on the basis of prior knowledge.
The present article, embedded in the framework of the absence of a trait associated with stereotypes (not negative or positive, just normal and inevitable), argues that the more a person knows the reality of others, the more can reduce the uncertainty and assumptions typically associated with stereotypes. Through a series of popular examples, the article will demonstrate how intercultural communication works effectively when there is genuine openness and flexibility rather than relying on knowledge, which is unavailingly limited within the human mind.

La vulnérabilité dans le dire : de la mise en mots du stigmate à sa construction sociale Résumé Cette contribution analyse des dispositifs de mise en scène de la parole pour améliorer la qualité de l'aide publique, dispositifs qui ont émergé en France dans les années 1990 ; nous travaillons sur un corpus constitué de 30 conversations qui se présente sous la forme de webchat extrait d'un corpus plus large de 10 ans d'archives d'une association qui lutte contre le suicide. Le webchat est un espace qui permet à toute personne d'exprimer et de partager avec un écoutant bénévole ses préoccupations, ses malaises et les aspects problématiques de son existence. L'objet de cette contribution consiste à la fois à étudier la mise en mots du statut d'acteur faible, et la dynamique de la vulnérabilité dans le déroulé de l'échange. Nous aborderons ces conversations sous le prisme de l'analyse du discours en nous focalisant sur la présentation de soi chez des appelants et sur la construction de l'interlocuteur chez les écoutants par la mise en scène énonciative et différentes formes de reformulation par les appelants. Cette contribution permet de montrer comment l'ambivalence de la notion d'acteur faible a un impact sur le dispositif technodiscursif du webchat en rendant audible la parole vulnérable mais tout en contribuant au maintien du statut social de la personne vulnérable.