Healing myths, yoga styles and social bodies: socio-logics of yoga as a health practice in the socially stratified city of Marseille, France.

Drawing on participant observation and interviews in two yoga studios in the highly socially stratified city of Marseille, France, this paper explores the understandings of yoga as a health practice that emerge at the intersections between yoga styles and their social contexts of consumption. Its insights emerge from the comparison of three modern yoga styles that were developed for Western English-speaking cultural contexts - Iyengar, Bikram and Forrest - and which differ in form but also in the chronology of their emergence on the global yoga market and that of their reception in France. These three yoga styles are also branded through contrasting mythologies of transformational healing, and the aim of this paper is to explore how a brand conceptualization of yoga as a health practice relates to or resonates with the embodied experiences of practitioners, and to the socio-cultural contexts in which practitioners and their practices are embedded. The paper contributes a new case study to the global yoga scholarship and to a poorly studied French yoga scene, but more importantly, it cross-examines the discourses through which a yoga style is branded, the way it is transmitted, and the social context and social positioning of the individuals who practice it. Combining perspectives on the body, narrative and rituals, it identifies how yoga healing is construed in relation to gender, ethnicity and class and the points of consensus and dissent that emerge from the encounters between French social bodies and exogenous yoga styles.

The multiple maternal legacy of the Late Iron Age group of Urville-Nacqueville (France, Normandy) documents a long-standing genetic contact zone in northwestern France.

The compilation of archaeological and genetic data for ancient European human groups has provided persuasive evidence for a complex series of migrations, population replacements and admixture until the Bronze Age. If the Bronze-to-Iron Age transition has been well documented archaeologically, ancient DNA (aDNA) remains rare for the latter period and does not precisely reflect the genetic diversity of European Celtic groups. In order to document the evolution of European communities, we analysed 45 individuals from the Late Iron Age (La Tène) Urville-Nacqueville necropolis in northwestern France, a region recognized as a major cultural contact zone between groups from both sides of the Channel. The characterization of 37 HVS-I mitochondrial sequences and 40 haplogroups provided the largest maternal gene pool yet recovered for the European Iron Age. First, descriptive analyses allowed us to demonstrate the presence of substantial amounts of steppe-related mitochondrial ancestry in the community, which is consistent with the expansion of Bell Beaker groups bearing an important steppe legacy in northwestern Europe at approximately 2500 BC. Second, maternal genetic affinities highlighted with Bronze Age groups from Great Britain and the Iberian Peninsula regions tends to support the idea that the continuous cultural exchanges documented archaeologically across the Channel and along the Atlantic coast (during and after the Bronze Age period) were accompanied by significant gene flow. Lastly, our results suggest a maternal genetic continuity between Bronze Age and Iron Age groups that would argue in favour of a cultural transition linked to progressive local economic changes rather than to a massive influx of allochthone groups. The palaeogenetic data gathered for the Urville-Nacqueville group constitute an important step in the biological characterization of European Iron age groups. Clearly, more numerous and diachronic aDNA data are needed to fully understand the complex relationship between the cultural and biological evolution of groups from the period.

Thinking with Montaigne: evidence, scepticism and meaning in early modern demonology.

In 1612 the Bordeaux witchcraft inquisitor Pierre de Lancre (1556­1631), himself linked by marriage to Michel de Montaigne (1533­1592), revealed that the essayist and sceptic was related on his mother's side to a leading authority on magic and superstition, the Flemish-Spanish Jesuit Martin Delrio (1551­1608). De Lancre confounded historians' expectations by using the revelation to defend Montaigne against his cousin's criticism. This article re-evaluates the relationships of De Lancre, Delrio and Montaigne in the light of recent scholarship, which casts demonology as a form of "resistance to scepticism" that conceals deep anxiety about the existence of the supernatural. It explores De Lancre's and Delrio's very different attitudes towards Montaigne and towards evidence and scepticism. This, in turn, reveals the different underlying preoccupations of their witchcraft treatises. It hence argues that no monocausal explanation linking scepticism to witchcraft belief is plausible.

Rendering justice in witch trials: the case of the val de Lièpvre.

The borderland of the val de Lièpvre, with lands in Alsace and in the Duchy of Lorraine, and divided by religion and language, offers a rich collection of sources for the history of witchcraft persecution. The territory sharply reveals what was undoubtedly characteristic of witchcraft trials more widely. The crime of witchcraft was considered abominable before the Christian community and God, and its prosecution justified abandoning many of the safeguards and constraints in legal procedure, whether restrictions on the use of torture, the reliance on dubious testimony or even denial of advocacy to the witches. The action of the judges was nonetheless, as they understood it, the rendering of true justice, by punishing the culprits with a harshness that would expiate their crimes before the community and preserve them from damnation in the face of God's judgment.

Cross-border reproductive care in Belgium.

BACKGROUND: Cross-border reproductive care indicates the cross-border movements made by patients to obtain infertility treatment they cannot obtain at home. The problem at present is that empirical data on the extent of the phenomenon are lacking. This article presents the data on infertility patients going to Belgium for treatment. METHODS: A survey was conducted among the centres for reproductive medicine that are allowed to handle oocytes and create embryos (B-centres). Data were collected on the nationality of patients and the type of treatment for which they attended during the period 2000-2007. RESULTS: Sixteen of 18 centres responded to the questionnaire. The flow of foreign patients has stabilized since 2006 at approximately 2100 patients per year. The majority of foreign nationals seeking treatment in Belgium were French women for sperm donation. The next highest group was patients entering the country to obtain ICSI with ejaculated sperm. CONCLUSIONS: There are clear indications that numerous movements are motivated by the wish to evade legal restrictions in one's home country, either because the technology is prohibited or because the patients have characteristics, which exclude them from treatment in their own countries.

Genetic predictors of depressive symptoms in cardiac patients.

Numerous studies suggest that the prevalence of depression is greater among cardiac patients than in the general population. However, little attention has been paid to the possibility of genetic contributions to depressive symptoms in cardiac patients. We conducted a candidate gene study focusing on genes related to inflammation, platelet aggregation, endothelial function and omega-3 fatty acid metabolism as predictors of depressive symptoms among 977 participants with established cardiovascular disease. Results suggested that genetic variation related to endothelial dysfunction is predictive of depressive symptoms and that endothelial dysfunction may be a novel mechanism contributing to depressive symptoms among cardiac patients.

Clinical and neuropathologic study of a French family with a mutation in the neuroserpin gene.

Familial encephalopathy with neuroserpin inclusion bodies is a recently described neurodegenerative disease that is responsible for progressive myoclonic epilepsy or presenile dementia. In a French family with the S52R mutation of the neuroserpin gene, progressive myoclonic epilepsy was associated with a frontal syndrome. The typical cerebral inclusions (Collins bodies) were abundant in the frontal cortex and in the head of the caudate nucleus but spared the cerebellum.

Sorcery and publicity: the Cadière-Girard scandal of 1730-1731.

The Cadière-Girard trial of 1730-1731 is an early example of a sensational, nationally publicized French trial in which the major parties were private individuals. Cadière, a female penitent, accused Girard, her Jesuit confessor, of bewitching and raping her; Girard claimed that Cadière was guilty of slander. It was to be the last witchcraft trial in the francophone world. Another notable feature of the trial was its publicity, in which the contesting parties almost immediately became stand-ins for the Society of Jesus and for its Jansenist adversaries. This paper argues that certain anti-Jesuits, particularly Cadière's defence team and in the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence, acted to prolong the trial with the aim of creating as much bad publicity as possible for the Society of Jesus; it also shows how Jansenist publicists took advantage of the lengthy process, creating literature that "burned Girard in spirit," and with him, the Jesuits as a whole.

[Attitudes regarding the delivery of formal and informal care: comparison of French and Chilean adolescents]. / Attitudes à l'égard des soins formels et informels: comparaison d'adolescents français et chiliens.

The representations that youth have of health professionals and young people's demands in terms of the operation and administration of services create an original and complex problematic. Clearly, this originality implies the important differences from one culture to another. For this very reason, it seemed that a comparative study relating the representations and attitudes confronted when care is sought by young people from countries with different cultural contexts would assist in comprehending why adolescents have such particular ways of using--or not using--formal and self-administered health services. An original open-ended response questionnaire was jointly designed and validated by a French and Chilean team. A mutually agreed upon sample of 957 school children, adolescents aged from 14 to 19, participated in the study in France and in Chili. The following correlations were found. In the event of a sleeping problem (or other general worry that is physically manifested), the mother is the privileged confidant, and in the specific case of a relationship or emotional problem, it is usually one of the adolescents' friends. The general practitioner is the favoured professional person in the event of a purely physical problem. When confronted with an emotional problem, one-third of adolescents say that they would not consider going to a consultation. The expectations of the French toward health professionals are more often within the "emotional" arena than those of the Chileans which generally concern the "medical/technical" field. The practice of self-administered care is qualitatively similar but the French prefer taking medication whereas the Chileans prefer the "little home remedies". The use of natural medicine is more widespread among young Chileans, but the types of medicine used are similar, namely herbal teas and other plant-based remedies and homeopathy. These results have a variety of implications, especially in terms of the need for training health professionals in the consideration of emotional and relationship problems. It is desirable that the official health care sector considers the care delivered outside of it as being complementary resources, which respond to the adolescents' need for autonomy, and then integrate those contributions into its own area of financial responsibility.

The origins of French boxing: bare-knuckle duelling, savate and chausson, 1820-45.

Savate, also called chausson, or French boxing is a combat activity characterized by kicking and punching. Its inception reaches back to the Restoration and the monarchy of Louis-Philippe (1818-48) although it was not recognised as a combat sport until the twentieth century. This article, based on a variety of rich sources (police reports, newspapers, books, etc.) demonstrates how, on the one hand, the origins of savate can be traced back to the bare-fisted duels of the Restoration and, on the other hand, its emergence corresponds to the mutation of structural order as put forth by M. Foucault.