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February 25, 2026

Pittsburgh nurses are fighting for better staffing ratios — and the research backs them up

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Anna Mayo, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Carnegie Mellon University

New York nurses went on strike in January 2026, protesting unsafe staffing levels while demanding better patient safety, increased wages, improved working conditions and fairer contracts. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

Since nursing contract negotiations heated up in January 2026 at UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital in Pittsburgh and at UPMC Altoona, the debate shifted from standard wage disputes to a more fundamental question of patient safety: the nurse-to-patient ratio.

The New York State Nurses Association’s approach has become a primary blueprint for nursing labor strategy nationwide. By framing staffing ratios as a nonnegotiable safety standard, NYSNA shifted the focus of contract negotiations from simple wage increases to enforceable clinical mandates. In January, the new union held its first meeting with UPMC management to negotiate a contract. At the time of publication of this article, the NYSNA and the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital had reached a tentative deal, though the provisions of the agreement have not been made public.

In fall 2025, 900 nurses at UPMC’s main hospitals in Pittsburgh voted to be represented by the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.

Anna Mayo, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University, explains the workload and staffing concerns that nurses face both in Pittsburgh hospitals and nationwide.

What are the key concerns in the nursing contract negotiations at Magee?

One big concern relates to nurse staffing, and specifically the nurse-to-patient ratio. Other issues include wages, health benefits, parental and sick leave, work hours and workplace violence mitigation measures. Magee is one of Pittsburgh’s biggest labor and delivery and neonatal centers, and nurses there say they’ve been working with what they describe as “unsafe patient loads.”

Magee nurses held a news conference in January 2026 advocating for more time with their patients by establishing minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. The main issue the nurses want resolved in their first collective bargaining agreement is a cap on how many patients a nurse can be assigned per shift. If Magee were to follow recommended industry standards set by the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, that would be one nurse assigned for every patient in active labor.

An outdoor building shot of UPMC Magee Women's Hospital. — UPMC Magee Womens Hospital is one of Pittsburgh’s biggest labor and delivery and neonatal centers.
AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

Is there evidence linking nursing staffing levels to patient outcomes like mortality, infections or readmissions?

The short answer is yes. There is general agreement that having “safe” nursing staffing levels is related to better patient outcomes, but what exactly constitutes safe staffing is less clear.

These ratios commonly account for a nurse’s workload based on both numbers of patients and patient acuity – a measure of how much time a nurse needs to spend with a patient. Relevant patient factors include the severity of the case and need for medication or other interventions, patient mobility and status as a new admission or being close to discharge. Factors like a nurse’s experience level and the floor layout might also be considered in a measure of acuity. For example, patients who are farther away from each other can require more time for one nurse to monitor.

Even with advances in the use of artificial intelligence and electronic health record data to generate real-time predictions of acuity, current modeling is imperfect.

A 2025 study shows that how busy a nurse feels is often more important than the number of patients they have or current estimates of how much care those patients require. Even if the official numbers look OK, a nurse’s personal experience of the workload is a better predictor of whether they will miss a care task. Because there is not yet a clear and agreed-upon way to measure this, nurses and hospital leadership – who view the problem from their distinct positions – often disagree on what safe staffing actually looks like, which can lead to conflict.

A group of Black nurses gather around a smartboard patient chart. — Having safe staffing is better for patient outcomes, but the definition of ‘safe’ varies at each hospital.
Visual Vic/Moment Collection via Getty Images

As someone who studies the coordination of health care teams, I see a missing piece in the conversation about nurse staffing: the rest of the team. This could include other medical providers, therapists, dietitians, social workers and diagnostic staff.

In reality, you could have two nurses in the same unit with the same number of patients who appear to need the same amount of care. But one might be overtaxed while the other is doing fine, at least in part because of how the broader patient care teams are structured and working together.

When nursing units are understaffed, what happens to other health care workers on their team?

Evidence about understaffing and use of replacement workers is largely focused on patient outcomes, and it is mixed. One 2022 meta-analysis found no difference in patient outcomes during or outside of health care worker strikes. However, a research study using data from New York that focused on nursing strikes specifically suggests an increased risk of both mortality and readmission.

Research on health care teams, though, suggests there is also risk for teamwork breakdowns. Having replacement workers during a strike inherently creates patient care teams where team members haven’t worked together before. This lack of shared experience can negatively affect teamwork.

Are there any solutions?

Negotiations research suggests the key to conflict management is to understand the other party’s underlying interests. Nurses are clearly burnt out, and that should be taken seriously. However, accounting for the bigger picture – staffing decisions at the team level – could reduce the stress on nurses.

Three nurses work on patient charts outside patient rooms in a hospital. — The use of temporary replacement nurses when hospitals are understaffed is a common tactic.
David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

For instance, how care teams are grouped can have serious implications as well. A nurse’s experience will depend on how difficult and time-consuming it is to coordinate and care for each patient. If a nurse has three patients and three different care teams instead of the same care team for all patients, the coordination costs are more burdensome.

There is some evidence of the benefits of team-based staffing in primary care and emergency departments. It could mitigate how drastic the difference in a nurse’s workload feels when comparing a load of one patient to two, three, and so on. Additionally, my research suggests low-cost interventions that spark increased nurse involvement can improve team coordination and patient outcomes, and so might also be a useful lever for affecting a nurse’s felt workload.

Looking at how patient care teams work together – instead of just focusing on nurses – might reveal new ways to help patients and staff. Solving these problems could reduce the need for strikes or protests in the first place and help hospital leaders better support their employees, their patients and the organization as a whole.

Anna Mayo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Pittsburgh nurses are fighting for better staffing ratios — and the research backs them up – https://theconversation.com/pittsburgh-nurses-are-fighting-for-better-staffing-ratios-and-the-research-backs-them-up-274577

February 25, 2026

The cost of casting animals as heroes and villains in conservation science

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Adam Meyer, PhD Candidate in Ecosystem Ecology, Memorial University of Newfoundland

When species are described as ‘destructive’ or ‘harmful’ without sufficient context, it can shape how people perceive and treat them. Beata Whitehead/Moment via Getty Images

Scientists are philosophers, explorers, data collectors and number crunchers. They are also storytellers, placing data within a broader scientific and societal context. How they tell these stories matters.

In our work as ecologists, we find that the “hero-villain” narrative trope is a popular tool in ecology and conservation writing. For example, wild pigs – a hybrid of human-introduced wild boars and domesticated pigs – are often characterized in science articles as “pest animals” that “devastate” or “destroy” ecological communities by preying on “vulnerable” species. One study deemed them the real “big bad wolf.”

This framing does not reflect technical terms but storytelling decisions meant to help readers understand the data and results to come.

But this way of storytelling has costs. In our recent paper, Beyond hero and villain narratives in ecology and conservation science, published in 2025 in the journal BioScience, we demonstrate that simplifying complex ecological stories into good guys and bad guys is limiting the way ecologist and conservation scientists understand and communicate science.

When villains don’t fit the script

In our paper, we show that using the hero-villain trope in ecology and conservation writing has three problems.

First, by definition, a villain is not only doing bad but is morally bad. As a result, villains are judged and held accountable for their deeds. But plants, animals and ecosystems are not morally responsible for their actions because they do not operate within human-constructed moral frameworks. The hero-villain trope therefore invites an inappropriate moral interpretation of nature.
When species are reported as destructive or harmful without careful context, the audience can easily internalize the species as inherently “bad” or “malicious,” which informs how we treat them.

For example, human-introduced predators such as rats and stoats in New Zealand are often villainized in academic literature, described as “disaster on four paws” and pitted against the “fragile populations of unique birds, lizards and insects.”

This framing then can convince people that excessively painful or violent eradication methods, such as slow-acting poison, are justified.

No clear-cut roles

Second, real ecosystems don’t have clear-cut heroes or villains. Rather, species’ roles in ecosystems are complex. For example, white-tailed deer perform ecosystem functions such as helping disperse seeds throughout their habitat, yet their presence can also lead to biodiversity loss due to high levels of plant consumption.

Therefore, reducing a species to “good” or bad” can misrepresent the multidimensional roles of animals in ecosystems, which frequently shift.

An animals with a thick, shaggy coat, standing in a snow-covered landscape. — A musk ox can affect ecosystems in very different ways, depending on its environment.
imageBROKER/Martina Melzer via Getty images

For example, due to the complex interplay between animals and soil properties, in wet tundra environments musk ox can lead to an increase in ecosystem carbon storage, while in dry tundra environments they can lead to a decrease in ecosystem carbon storage.

‘Good’ or ‘bad’ depends on human values

Finally, the hero–villain framing embeds cultural and ethical assumptions without always acknowledging them. These assumptions often reflect culturally specific beliefs about which species and ecosystems are valued.

For instance, many cultures value native species – typically meaning a species that has evolved in and occupied an ecosystem without human introduction. As a result, introduced animals are frequently deemed responsible for native species extinctions, even when evidence is lacking.

But whether a species is “native” is not automatically good or bad. Nonnative species can change ecosystems in ways that people value, such as restoring ecosystem diversity and functioning that was lost from human-driven extinctions. At the same time, nonnative species can also cause changes that people do not value, such as reducing abundance of native species.

The key point is that deciding which of these outcomes is “good” or “bad” depends on human values. When scientists describe species as villains without explaining these values, the framing can present values as objective scientific conclusions.

A different way to tell the story

Our paper highlights alternative narrative structures that scientists can use to engage readers without creating heroes and villains in academic writing and storytelling.

For example, a place-based narrative structure focuses on the description of a place and the characters within – think “Planet Earth,” the BBC’s landmark nature documentary series that immerses viewers in different ecosystems around the world.
This narrative structure guides the audience through a landscape and allows for the exploration of many characters in a nuanced, value-neutral and compelling way. A classic ecological example is Henry Chandler Cowles’ study of the Michigan sand dunes, which frames ecological dynamics through the instability of place itself. “Perhaps no topographic form is more unstable than a dune,” Cowles wrote, as plants must adapt “within years rather than centuries, the penalty for lack of adaptation being certain death.” The drama within the narrative comes from place – its constraints, its pressures, its opportunities.

Another powerful narrative tool we highlight that can be applied to academic storytelling is the “Will they, or won’t they?” structure, the kind of tension you see in “Pride and Prejudice” or “When Harry Met Sally.” This structure can work surprisingly well in ecology.

In our paper, we highlight partial migration – whereby some animals in a population migrate while others don’t – as an example of how someone could use this narrative tool.

Scientists are still figuring out why certain individuals make different choices. Is it driven by food availability, the presence of predators, or behaviors acquired by social learning?

Framing research narratives around that central, unresolved question – will an individual animal migrate or won’t they? – builds suspense and keeps readers engaged, without casting a hero or villain.

There’s no final battle scene in conservation. No singular villain to defeat, no final victory for the hero. Scientists know that understanding nature requires humility and a willingness to revise their stories as new information is gained.

By moving beyond heroes and villains, scientists can tell narratives that make space for nuance, recognize their own biases, and acknowledge conflict without caricature.

Adam Meyer receives funding from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Kristy Ferraro receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

– ref. The cost of casting animals as heroes and villains in conservation science – https://theconversation.com/the-cost-of-casting-animals-as-heroes-and-villains-in-conservation-science-263883

February 25, 2026

Net zero will transform Britain’s economy – our map reveals the most vulnerable places

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ed Atkins, Senior Lecturer, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: even as Britain makes the welcome transition to net zero, some communities will lose jobs and face economic disruption. And the places most exposed are overwhelmingly the same places that were hit hardest by the wave of industrial job losses in the 1980s.

That’s the striking pattern revealed by our new research mapping vulnerability across all 365 local authorities in Great Britain. Many places already struggling after decades of industrial decline are poised to face disproportionately sharp economic shocks as decarbonisation reshapes the employment landscape.

Our research shows this pattern clearly: many of the highest-risk areas sit within what are often called “older industrial towns”. They include the boroughs of Kirklees (largest town Huddersfield) and Sandwell (West Bromwich), along with Wakefield, Rotherham, Walsall, Barnsley and Doncaster.

These communities were once anchored by industries such as steel, chemicals, heavy manufacturing and mining. As those sectors contracted from the 1980s onward, these places experienced deep job losses and long-term economic scarring.

Today, the same areas remain heavily reliant on manufacturing sectors that are once again undergoing radical change – this time driven by climate policy, alongside globalisation, tariffs and high energy costs. In these places, decarbonisation is colliding with existing economic forces, raising the risk of further job losses and industrial decline.

Why old industrial towns are at the sharp end

To map this exposure, we created a net-zero vulnerability index, a tool designed to identify which local economies are most exposed to job losses, restructuring and industrial change triggered by decarbonisation. We draw on measures of economic complexity (how diverse and adaptable a local economy is), relatedness (the ease with which industries can evolve into new ones), reliance on at-risk sectors, and working-age population.

A map of the net-zero vulnerability index:

A higher score indicates greater risk (shaded light green or yellow). Data can be arranged by: LAD, local authority districts; PCON, Westminster constituencies; LEP, local enterprise partnerships; CA, combined authorities. (Source: Tom Cantellow, Ed Atkins, Sean Fox)

What the index shows is not simply that these old industrial towns have carbon-intensive jobs. It shows that many have low economic complexity — meaning their local economies tend to be based on a small number of sectors and workers’ skills are less easily transferable to emerging industries.

For example, in North Lincolnshire, 25% of the working population are employed in manufacturing, compared to a national average of 7%, and often in chemicals or cement production or other high emissions industries. A reliance on these industries risks residents becoming locked into carbon-heavy work, and limits the diversity of skills needed to transition to newer and more green industries.

Places you might not expect

The findings also highlight less obvious cases. Rural and coastal authorities such as Shropshire, East Suffolk and Dorset rank highly because their economies rely on low-paid, less complex sectors — including hospitality, retail and seasonal work — which offer limited resilience to broader shocks. If workers need to adapt quickly to new green jobs, these labour markets offer fewer pathways.

packed Weymouth Beach on a hot day — Workers in Dorset might struggle to find new green jobs.
Andrew Harker / shutterstock

Meanwhile, major hubs traditionally seen as vulnerable — Aberdeen, for example — do not rank as highly as public debate might suggest. That’s partly because the risks of oil-and-gas decline are distributed across commuting patterns and supply chains, and partly because the region has already begun diversifying into offshore wind and energy services.

Discussions of economic shocks often focus on headline job losses. Our index instead looks at the proportion of working people in each area who are exposed, highlighting where disruption will have a greater impact on the local economy.

This distinction matters because an area can have highly vulnerable industries yet employ relatively few people in them. By analysing industrial risk alongside workforce exposure, we identify places where the scale of potential disruption — not just its intensity — is greatest.

The result is a list of 32 local authorities most in need of support to navigate the transition. Most sit in England’s Midlands and north, along with several in Wales and Scotland. What unites them is not current emissions levels, but long-standing economic fragility.

An uneven playing field

Net zero will bring vast economic benefits to many. Yet, our work exposes a crucial tension at the heart of the net-zero transition: its impacts play out in a landscape already shaped by 40 years of uneven growth. Many communities identified as vulnerable have been grappling with low wages, declining opportunities and outflows of young talent for decades.

Net-zero policies are not causing these challenges, but they risk intensifying them if they ignore the geography of vulnerability. This helps explain why climate policy has become politically contentious in some regions.

Wakefield Theatre Royal and Opera House — Wakefield in West Yorkshire is joint top of the net zero vulnerability index.
Go My Media / shutterstock

Overall, the British public still supports the goal of net zero, but there is often far less support for the policies needed to get there. Capitalising on this tension, Reform has pledged to scrap “net stupid zero” policies and suggested the revival of coal mines, while the Conservatives have vowed to do away with the 2050 net zero emissions target, claiming it is impossible “without a serious drop in our living standards or by bankrupting us”.

At the core of the anti-net zero message is how “green” policies will make people and communities poorer. Such claims have an important resonance in the wake of a cost-of-living crisis, spikes in energy bills, and an increased sense of economic precarity for many – particularly in already-struggling regions.

Continued public support for net zero depends on acknowledging where its costs will fall. Confronting these risks is essential to making climate policy more durable.

What next?

The net zero transition can create new, secure, well-paid jobs and help the UK establish itself as a “clean energy superpower”. But without targeted intervention, the benefits and costs will always be shared unevenly.

Our research highlights a clear opportunity: many of the most vulnerable local authorities sit within parts of the UK which have devolved powers over skills, transport and local economic strategy. Devolved governments in Scotland and Wales, and regional bodies such as the Greater Manchester Authority can play key roles by funding retraining, improving infrastructure, and creating new types of jobs for those who will be negatively affected by net zero.

Our net zero vulnerability index gives policymakers a map of where support is most urgently needed. The challenge now is to use it — to ensure the transition to a green economy becomes a story of national renewal rather than a replay of uneven decline.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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Ed Atkins receives funding from UKRI.

Sean Fox does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Net zero will transform Britain’s economy – our map reveals the most vulnerable places – https://theconversation.com/net-zero-will-transform-britains-economy-our-map-reveals-the-most-vulnerable-places-275604

February 25, 2026

Everything can be a bet now – the rise and risks of prediction markets

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah Mills, Professor of Human Geography, Loughborough University

The final result in November’s New York City mayoral election was more like 51% for Zohran Mamdani and 41% for Andrew Cuomo. rblfmr/Shutterstock

Yes or no? It’s a simple question that now drives more than US$13 billion (£9.7 billion) a month on prediction markets – companies like Polymarket, PredictIt and Kalshi.

These firms run digital platforms that use blockchain technology to let anonymous users gamble on uncertainty and place “predictions” rather than bets. Users can buy a yes or no “event contract” on anything from strikes on Iran to the most popular show on Netflix and the return of Jesus.

Politics and popular culture have merged, with reports that Kalshi and others are becoming a new “stock market for trends” in the so-called “attention economy”. Everything is now monetised.

However, several incidents have brought the politics of prediction markets into sharp relief. These include large volumes of predictions (or bets) placed in the hours before election results in Portugal, the presidential coup in Venezuela, and in Israel, where two people have been charged on suspicion of using classified information to place bets about military actions.

In the US, where Polymarket has its headquarters, the platform has been controversial since its launch a few years ago. The website has been blocked there for most of its short life, including during the country’s 2024 presidential election. But it recently relaunched in its home country – with President Donald Trump’s support. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, serves in advisory roles at both Polymarket and Kalshi.

One advertising slogan for Kalshi states: “The world’s gone mad, trade it”. However, not all the world can trade.

As a geographer, I’m fascinated by how online gambling is now a global game, in many cases bypassing national legislation on gambling laws via VPNs. My latest project charts how traditional political gambling – through licensed bookmakers or online gambling companies – is now simultaneously bordered and borderless. National laws on gambling remain important, but there is increasing fluidity with the rise of VPNs and digital platforms. This trend is creeping into prediction markets too.

Polymarket is banned or geo-blocked in several countries including the UK, France and Belgium due to regulatory and licensing challenges (and now Portugal after the election incident). And its blockchain technology and use of cryptocurrency are complex and hard to regulate. The space between gambling and gaming is proving to be a grey area for many countries to legislate in.

Even if countries don’t allow their citizens to access prediction markets, the world is still betting on those nations and their next election or leadership contest. This could be the future of election betting – and possibly the future of geopolitics – if world events can be influenced by prediction market activity.

Insider dealing?

One of the key questions in the debate is whether this is gambling. Or is it simply users drawing on their expertise, perhaps more akin to playing the stock market? There have been suggestions that prediction markets offer a loophole for gambling restrictions. The controversies all come down to whether there is insider information, a very serious legal minefield and especially in the context of military or classified information.

Increasingly, viewers see prediction market “odds” appearing on the rolling coverage or infographics of major US news channels such as CNN and CNBC. These are not pollsters’ or even bookmakers’ odds, but rather the current yes or no trends. So is this really data, or just vibes?

The increasing professionalisation of prediction markets embedded into news infrastructures is significant. Indeed, people have argued that the websites of prediction markets themselves are now consumed like live news channels. As a result, these platforms are driving huge amounts of revenue, with Polymarket alone valued at US$9 billion (£6.7 billion) in October 2025. There are forecasts that together these platforms will reach a trillion dollars in trading volume by 2030.

Polymarket is trying to increase awareness of its brand.

The rise in prediction markets raises critical questions for the future of democracy. In order to ensure that trust and democracy can be upheld in the era of prediction markets, regulations and safeguards must be strengthened for an industry that is now both bordered and borderless.

One of Polymarket’s advertising slogans invites users to “answer some of the world’s biggest questions”. Perhaps the single biggest question concerns the political and ethical implications of predicting the future for money in this way.

Sarah Mills has received funding from The British Academy, ESRC, AHRC, Royal Geographical Society and DCMS.

– ref. Everything can be a bet now – the rise and risks of prediction markets – https://theconversation.com/everything-can-be-a-bet-now-the-rise-and-risks-of-prediction-markets-276464

February 25, 2026

Want to understand Honoré de Balzac? Try Dungeons & Dragons instead of literary theory

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Harsh Trivedi, Teaching Associate French, School of Languages, Arts and Societies., University of Sheffield

Most people think originality comes from endless freedom. The role playing game Dungeons & Dragons suggests the opposite. It gives players a small number of races, classes and backgrounds and somehow produces characters that feel endlessly distinct. A half-elf paladin might be an immediately recognisable type, yet no two half-elf paladins ever feel the same once play begins. This is because identity in Dungeons & Dragons is not created by escaping structure, but by working through it.

Nineteenth-century readers encountered something strikingly similar in the novels of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac. His vast fictional project, The Human Comedy (1829-1848) is built on a limited repertoire of social “types” that recur as characters across nearly 100 novels and short stories.

There are provincial newcomers arriving in Paris (Father Goriot, 1835), ambitious social climbers seeking rapid ascent, journalists willing to trade principles for influence (Lost Illusions, 1837-1843), dandies whose elegance masks insecurity (The Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans, 1838-1847), courtesans navigating power through intimacy (Cousin Betty, 1846), speculators driven by risk (The Firm of Nucingen, 1837), and the many “30-year-old women” seeking to break out of provincial monotony (The Muse of the Department, 1843). These figures are immediately legible, yet the characters who emerge from them feel uncannily alive. Far from producing stereotypes, Balzac’s work generates individuality through combination, overlap and circumstance.

This article is part of Rethinking the Classics. The stories in this series offer insightful new ways to think about and interpret classic books and artworks. This is the canon – with a twist.

Balzac was explicit about his “typological” method. In the preface to An Historical Mystery (1841), he defines a “type” as a character who “summarises in himself certain characteristic traits of all those who more or less resemble him; he is the model of the genre”. Such a figure is not a stereotype but a point of condensation, gathering shared traits without erasing individuality.

The Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukács later developed this insight, claiming that Balzac’s characters synthesise the individual and the universal. He argued that they embody broad social forces such as ambition, speculation, artistic aspiration and political calculation, while remaining fully embedded within their social world.

What makes Dungeons & Dragons an especially useful lens here is that character creation does not stop with race and class. Players must also roll a 20-sided dice for attributes such as strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. These values introduce chance into the system and ensure that no character ever perfectly conforms to an ideal model. Two characters can share the same class and background yet differ radically because one lacks charisma, another has fragile constitution, or a third possesses unexpectedly high intelligence. Chance does not undermine the system. It activates it.

A Dungeons & Dragons character sheet.
Dodotone/Shutterstock

Balzac understood this logic perfectly and made it explicit in the preface to The Human Comedy where he sets out the philosophy and structure of the entire project.
Reflecting on how fiction produces lifelike characters, he wrote that “chance is the greatest novelist in the world; to be prolific, one need only study it”.

For Balzac, social types alone are never enough. What gives life to his characters is the way fixed positions collide with contingency, accidents, misjudgements and missed opportunities. A career turns on a chance encounter (Lost Illusions). A reputation collapses because of a rumour (Cousin Bette). A letter arrives too late (Eugénie Grandet, 1833). An ordinary life is overturned by a pact with supernatural forces (The Wild Ass’s Skin, 1831). These elements do not cancel typology; they work through it.

Seen across The Human Comedy, Balzac’s characters do not exist as isolated portraits but as part of a vast and carefully organised system. Figures recur across novels, reappear in new contexts, and are reframed by shifting social and historical pressures. A journalist encountered early in the corpus returns later compromised or triumphant. A provincial social climber resurfaces as a hardened social operator. A writer becomes a commercial failure or an institutional success. This recurrence is not repetition for its own sake. It is how individuality is forged.

A painting of Balzac in a dressing gown — A portrait of Balzac by Louis Boulanger (1836).
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours

The contrast between the characters Lucien de Rubempré and Eugène de Rastignac makes this logic especially clear. Both enter Paris as provincial newcomers (in Lost Illusions and Father Goriot). Both are ambitious, socially alert and acutely aware that success depends on visibility, patronage and strategic alliances.

Typologically, they occupy a similar position within Balzac’s social universe as aspiring provincial social climbers. Yet their trajectories diverge dramatically. Rastignac learns to read the system accurately and adapts himself to it with increasing success. Lucien mistakes recognition for belonging and talent for protection. Their difference emerges from how similar components interact with chance over time.

This pattern repeats throughout Balzac’s work. In each case, the type remains legible, but the personal trajectory is never fixed in advance. This is a crucial difference from other large-scale cyclical works of the 19th century, most notably Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart (1871-1893), where characters are ultimately governed by heredity and biological determinism. Balzac’s world is structured, but it is not closed. His characters are shaped by chance and choice, not locked into destiny by bloodlines.

Thinking about Balzac through Dungeons & Dragons helps make visible a logic of character creation that is often taken for granted.

Great novelists do not produce individuality by abandoning structure, but by working through it. Balzac’s insight was to recognise that social life is already organised into roles, hierarchies and expectations, and that fiction becomes most powerful when it shows how people navigate (and sometimes rebel against) these constraints.

The Human Comedy begins with a finite set of social types and generates endless variation through combination, chance, and choice. Far from limiting his characters, Balzac’s typology is precisely what allows them to feel so enduringly alive.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Harsh Trivedi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Want to understand Honoré de Balzac? Try Dungeons & Dragons instead of literary theory – https://theconversation.com/want-to-understand-honore-de-balzac-try-dungeons-and-dragons-instead-of-literary-theory-274688

February 25, 2026

The worse your mental health problem, the less sympathy you get – why?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Robin Bailey, Assistant Professor in Clinical Psychology, University of Cambridge

Some mental health conditions, such as anxiety, depression and ADHD, have become more accepted in society. People can now talk about them at work, at home and online and often be met with understanding.

This change matters. It makes it easier to ask for help and harder for employers and institutions to pretend mental health problems do not exist.

Public sympathy is uneven. Some conditions are widely understood, while others are still judged harshly.

As some conditions become familiar, they set the template for what mental illness is supposed to look like. Presentations that do not fit that picture are more likely to be perceived differently.

The recent Baftas Tourette’s incident showed how quickly behaviour can be moralised when it breaks a social rule.

Research on Tourette stigma finds public understanding is often limited and stereotypes continue to shape how the condition is perceived. Tics can be mistaken for deliberate misbehaviour, especially when they are seen as offensive or involve taboo words or racial slurs.

Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and some personality disorders, including borderline and narcissistic personality disorder, tend to attract less empathy and more suspicion. A big part of the difference is familiarity, whether the behaviour fits a story people already understand. When it does not uncertainty can tip into fear.

Fear is the driver

That difference shows up in research. In a study testing stigma across nine diagnoses – measured by how much people wanted to keep their distance from someone with each condition – depression and anxiety drew the least stigma, while schizophrenia and personality disorder drew the most. Across diagnoses, fear was the most consistent driver of stigma.

Part of the sympathy gap can be recognition. People often sense something is wrong without knowing what to call it. When experiences or behaviour cannot be named, it becomes easier to explain it as “mad, bad, or dangerous”.

A cross-cultural study asked people to read short vignettes and name the condition. Around seven in ten correctly identified ADHD, but only around a third correctly identified bipolar disorder.

That is where the hierarchy of sympathy does its damage. Anxiety and depression can be recognised as suffering.

Other presentations are morally reinterpreted as defective personality. Mood swings are seen as selfishness, suspicion as nastiness, hearing voices as dangerousness and rapid shifts between closeness and anger as manipulation.

Personality disorder labels are especially vulnerable to this moralising. They are often heard not as descriptions of distress but as verdicts on character.

Borderline personality disorder, for example, is often misread as attention-seeking or manipulation rather than recognised as a pattern of intense fear, instability and emotional pain. That misreading can contribute to people being dismissed, not taken seriously, or even denied care.

A woman sitting on her own while a group of people her own age chat happily in the background. — People with personality disorders can be viewed as having a defective personality.
fizkes/Shutterstock.com

Narcissistic personality disorder is routinely stigmatised and used as shorthand for cruelty or selfishness. Clinically, it is typically conceptualised as a rigid coping style that can mask underlying insecurity and fragility.

This split shows up online. A study analysing tweets about several mental and physical health conditions found mental health terms were more likely to be used in stigmatising or trivialising ways, and schizophrenia was the most stigmatised mental health condition examined.

On social media, anxiety and ADHD are more likely to be met with sympathy, but “psychotic” is used as an insult, and “bipolar” as a joke about someone whose mood has changed.

Personality disorder terms get used similarly: “narcissist” becomes a throwaway label for a bad relationship, and “borderline” a smear for being too much. Diagnosis turns into name calling.

Trivialisation and stigma are different, but they converge. They turn illness into a social weapon and make it easier to respond with ridicule or fear than with care.

The term “trauma” adds another twist. When distress is framed as trauma, it often attracts more sympathy because it fits a clear story something bad happened, and the person is suffering – for example, surviving a natural disaster.

But public attitudes are more complicated. A multi-study paper found many people still hold negative views of trauma survivors, including beliefs that they are permanently damaged, unpredictable, or dangerous.

Many diagnoses that attract suspicion, including psychotic disorders and some personality disorders, are also strongly linked to trauma histories. The difference is not just cause. It is whether the label makes distress look like an understandable injury, or a frightening personality.

There are parallels in physical health too, where severe illness can equate to more sympathy. Cancer, stroke or dementia are often seen as serious and largely outside a person’s control, so they attract support.

But blame changes the picture. When illness is seen as linked to behaviour, such as smoking, sympathy can fade.

In mental health, the pattern can look reversed. The most severe conditions, including psychotic disorders and some personality disorders, are often treated as if they reflect character or choice, even though they are strongly linked to factors beyond control such as biology and development. People who have the least control over their symptoms often receive the least sympathy.

Much has been done to raise awareness. But until empathy and understanding extend to forms of distress that are often perceived as frightening, disruptive, or hard to make sense of, the hierarchy will persist.

Robin Bailey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The worse your mental health problem, the less sympathy you get – why? – https://theconversation.com/the-worse-your-mental-health-problem-the-less-sympathy-you-get-why-274651

February 25, 2026

Smartphone photos may be misleading doctors and putting patients at risk – new research

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rebecca Payne, Clinical Senior Lecturer, Bangor University

It’s an increasingly common scenario. You fill in an online form to request an appointment with a doctor, and back comes a link asking you to upload a photo of your ailment. You pick up your phone, a couple of clicks and it’s sent. While you wait for a call back, your GP is studying your image.

But do you look pixelated? Have the colours been adjusted? Has the phone erased a rash or smoothed your skin? Does the doctor see you as you really are, or as your phone camera thinks you should be?

New research from our team suggests the answer is often the latter. Smartphone cameras and software routinely alter images in ways that can mislead doctors, and in some cases, put patients at risk of misdiagnosis.

Remote consultations are now routine in many health systems. No longer an emergency pandemic stopgap, general practice is increasingly offered in a “hybrid” way, with patients receiving care in different ways, some in person, many remotely.

Across Australia, North America and parts of Scandinavia, video appointments are commonplace. In the UK, patients are often asked to upload photos through online platforms. Photos are used to diagnose conditions such as eczema or warts, assess responses to treatment and assess how unwell someone appears, informing decisions about if, and how urgently, they need to be seen in person.

For many people it’s a quick and convenient way to receive care, reducing travel times and avoiding time spent waiting for a call to be answered or hanging around in a germ-packed doctor’s waiting room.

Doctor working with laptop computer in medical setting. — Smartphones were not designed for the purposes of medical accuracy.
everything possible/Shutterstock

Safety incidents in remote consultations remain relatively rare. But previous research by members of our team showed doctors sometimes miss important clinical signs, leading to misdiagnosis or delayed care. Examples include mistaking a malignant skin lesion for something benign, or failing to recognise colour changes, like jaundice or the blue tinge of low oxygen levels (cyanosis).

Doctors often blame themselves when this happens. Our latest research suggests something else is at play. We found that automatic image processing and compression on smartphones can distort clinically important visual information. Colour signals shift. Fine detail disappears. Subtle changes in the skin become harder to detect.

In other words, it isn’t just human error. It’s the technology.

Smartphones are designed to make photos look good, not to preserve medical accuracy. They automatically adjust exposure, balance colours, sharpen edges and compress files. These features are perfect for social media, but problematic for healthcare.

Lighting conditions in people’s homes add another layer of uncertainty. So does the quality of the screen at the doctor’s end. Night-mode settings, poor quality displays and poor calibration can all change how an image appears. Together, these factors can make people look healthier than they really are, flatten rashes, soften swelling or alter the colour of lesions.

Some patients are particularly vulnerable. We already know that some medical devices, such as pulse oximeters, perform less accurately in people with darker skin. Image distortion risks compounding those inequities as those with darker skin are more likely to have clinical findings missed.

Other cases where findings may be missed are where clinical findings are subtle, or when AI-based filters are used. People with lower digital literacy, or those who struggle to communicate their symptoms clearly, are also at greater risk when something is overlooked.

So, what can be done?

As patients, there are simple steps that help. Turn off filters. Use good lighting, daylight if possible. Check that the photo resembles what you actually see before sending it. Include a written description alongside the image. And if it seems your doctor is seeing something different from you, say so.

Medical teams also need to be aware of the limits of patient-generated images. That means checking back: “I can’t see any changes here. Are you noticing something different?” And when there’s doubt, arranging an in-person review.

Screens should be large enough and of sufficient quality. Night-mode settings should be switched off. Image uncertainty should be treated like any other clinical uncertainty.

But is it fair to leave all this to patients and already stretched medical teams? There’s a strong case for wider change. Smartphones could include a dedicated healthcare mode that disables filters and warns users when image quality is too poor for clinical decisions. Video platforms and upload systems could flag inadequate lighting, low resolution or excessive compression before images are sent.

As digital consultations become embedded in everyday care, image quality needs to be treated as part of patient safety infrastructure, not just a technical detail. Smartphones were built to make us look good. Medicine requires something different: accuracy.

If the health service is going to rely on smartphone cameras for clinical decisions, how those cameras are designed, regulated and used may need a rethink. Because convenience should never come at the cost of care.

Rebecca Payne receives funding from a University of Oxford Clarendon-Reuben Scholarship and works on a project funded by Health and Care Research Wales

Zengbo Wang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Smartphone photos may be misleading doctors and putting patients at risk – new research – https://theconversation.com/smartphone-photos-may-be-misleading-doctors-and-putting-patients-at-risk-new-research-276119

February 25, 2026

Elite gymnasts are no longer retiring after pregnancy – sport science needs to catch up

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gabriella Penitente, Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Science, Sheffield Hallam University

When Olympian Alice Kinsella talks about returning to elite competition after giving birth, she isn’t simply planning a comeback; she’s pushing into territory that gymnastics has rarely explored.

Increasingly, athletes are returning to training and competition after childbirth, often sooner, stronger and with greater public visibility. This challenges the long-held expectation that women must retire to have a family. Although this shift is now becoming well established in several sports, such as long-distance running and team sports, others remain constrained by narrow ideas about when peak performance should occur.

Women’s artistic gymnastics sits at the sharp end of this debate. For much of the modern Olympic era, the sport became synonymous with “little pixies”:
exceptionally young champions, lightweight bodies and careers that peaked
early then ended quickly.

Over the past 20 years, the age at which gymnasts reach peak performance has slowly risen from teenage years to early 20s, bringing elite success into overlap with the years many women plan to have children. When these timelines overlap, athletes may feel pressured to choose between motherhood and peak performance. This is because research in gymnastics has not yet properly studied what happens to the body during and after pregnancy. That imbalance highlights a wider gender gap that has shaped sports science.

As gymnasts themselves begin to stay in the sport longer, return after maternity leave and challenge these assumptions, science has a responsibility to respond.

We still don’t know what it takes to return to elite performance in sports like gymnastics, where power, precision and impact tolerance are non-negotiable.

Unlike endurance sports, where training load can often be increased gradually, gymnastics requires athletes to perform highly technical skills under significant mechanical stress and to face substantial psychological demands related to fear regulation and confidence.

In elite gymnastics, the margin for error is tiny. Performance depends on strength, fine coordination and the ability to control the body under extreme physical and psychological demands. Even small changes in how a gymnast moves or lands can dramatically affect performance and increase the risk of injury.

Gymnasts generate a spring-like push in a fraction of a second through their feet and hands, striking the vault with forces of up to three times their body weight. Then, they land with 15-20 times body weight through their legs and spine, all while balancing on a beam no wider than a smartphone.

They make danger look graceful. In fact, even though gymnastics has no physical contact, almost all elite gymnasts (90%) are injured each season, putting gymnastics in the same risk range as football.

When mothers fly

Pregnancy-related changes in body mass distribution, joint loading and neuromuscular control influence how gymnasts land, generate force and regulate movement. For example, changes in core and pelvic stability can alter how forces are absorbed during landing, while small shifts in balance or timing can affect take-off accuracy and rotation in flight. These changes can affect injury risk, confidence and technical consistency.

In 2018, the International Olympic Committee published for the first time guidance on returning to exercise after pregnancy, but it offers little insight into how performance-critical capacities are rebuilt.

In artistic gymnastics, examples of return post-pregnancy have historically been rare and often overlooked. One of the earliest and most striking cases is Uzbekistani artistic gymnast Oksana Chusovitina. She gave birth to her son in 1999 at age 24 and returned less than a year later to compete at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. In the years following childbirth, she won World Championship gold on vault in 2003 and went on to compete internationally for more than two decades. Chusovitina showed how narrow gymnastics’ ideas about age were, but for years she was treated as a one-off.

Real change began in the mid-to-late 2010s. Gymnasts stayed in competitive career longer and average ages rose. Changes to the International Gymnastics Federation, which governs competitions in all disciplines of gymnastics, code of points rewarded experience. Between 2003 and 2016, elite female gymnasts became an average 3.3 years older, shifting from about 17 years old to 20–21. Gymnasts like Simone Biles (US, 28), Rebeca Andrade (Brazil, 26), Becky Downie (UK, 34) and Ellie Black (Canada, 30), to name a few, were winning medals in their late 20s and early 30s.

British Olympian Alice Kinsella represents something new. Her planned return after childbirth isn’t just about coming back. It’s about how she’s doing it, with structured scientific support, tracked as part of an academic case study. Kinsella’s approach turns a risky return into something that can be understood, supported and repeated by other gymnasts.

Not all attempts have been successful. Aliya Mustafina, a Russian double Olympic champion, gave birth to her daughter in 2017 at the age of 24 and returned to competition within 16 months, aiming to re-establish herself at the highest level during the next Olympic cycle. Despite her experience and determination, persistent injuries limited her ability to compete, and she ultimately retired in 2021. There is no evidence these injuries were caused by pregnancy, but her experience shows how fragile post-pregnancy pathways in gymnastics still are.

More recently, gymnast Jade Barbosa provides further evidence of this shift. A three-time Olympian and a member of Brazil’s historic bronze-medal winning team at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Barbosa welcomed her first child in late 2025. During pregnancy, she publicly shared aspects of her training and has stated her intention to return to competition.

These stories show that attitudes are changing. More gymnasts are pushing back against the idea that they have to choose between performing at their best and becoming a mother.

Why this matters

For years, performance research has focused mostly on men, partly because women’s bodies change more over time due to hormonal fluctuations, making results harder to compare. Pregnancy and recovery after birth add further challenges, alongside ethical concerns and limited funding. That is why case studies like the one planned around Kinsella are vital.

Elite sport influences how people think about women’s bodies. If returning to sport after having a baby is always described as exceptional, it can make staying active after childbirth seem unrealistic for most women.

If post-pregnancy return becomes normal rather than exceptional, the timeline of female performance changes permanently, and so do the expectations placed on women in sport.

Gabriella Penitente does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Elite gymnasts are no longer retiring after pregnancy – sport science needs to catch up – https://theconversation.com/elite-gymnasts-are-no-longer-retiring-after-pregnancy-sport-science-needs-to-catch-up-275167

February 25, 2026

Comment les excréments d’oiseaux ont alimenté l’essor du puissant royaume chincha au Pérou

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Jo Osborn, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Texas A&M University

Le guano est un engrais naturel très riche en azote, phosphore et potassium, constitué principalement d’excréments d’oiseaux marins ou de chauves-souris. Jo Osborn

Bien plus qu’un simple engrais, le guano a façonné l’économie, la culture et les alliances politiques du royaume chincha. Une nouvelle étude montre comment cette ressource naturelle a soutenu l’émergence d’une puissance majeure du Pérou préhispanique.

En 1532, dans la ville de Cajamarca, au Pérou, le conquistador espagnol Francisco Pizarro et un groupe d’Européens prirent en otage le souverain inca Atahualpa, préparant ainsi la chute de l’Empire inca.

Avant cette attaque fatale, le frère de Pizarro, Pedro Pizarro, fit une observation curieuse : en dehors de l’Inca lui-même, le seigneur de Chincha était la seule personne à Cajamarca transportée sur une litière, une plateforme de transport portée à bras d’homme.

Pourquoi le seigneur de Chincha occupait-il une position aussi élevée dans la société inca ? Dans notre nouvelle étude, publiée dans PLOS One, nous mettons en évidence une source potentielle de pouvoir et d’influence aussi surprenante qu’inattendue : les excréments d’oiseaux.

Une ressource puissante et précieuse

Chincha, dans le sud du Pérou, est l’une des nombreuses vallées fluviales situées le long de la côte désertique et alimentées par les eaux des hautes terres andines, essentielles depuis longtemps à l’agriculture irriguée. À environ 25 kilomètres au large se trouvent les îles Chincha, qui abritent les plus grands dépôts de guano du Pacifique.

Le guano d’oiseaux marins, c’est-à-dire leurs déjections, est un engrais organique extrêmement puissant. Comparé aux fertilisants terrestres comme le fumier de vache, le guano contient des quantités bien plus élevées d’azote et de phosphore, essentiels à la croissance des plantes.

Au large de la côte péruvienne, le courant océanique de Humboldt (ou courant du Pérou) crée des zones de pêche extrêmement riches. Ces ressources halieutiques soutiennent d’immenses colonies d’oiseaux marins qui nichent sur les îles rocheuses au large.

Des rochers couverts de déjections — Les oiseaux marins utilisent les îles côtières pour construire leurs nids et trouvent leur nourriture à proximité, dans les zones de pêche riches alimentées par le courant du Pérou.
Jo Osborn

Grâce au climat sec, presque dépourvu de pluie, le guano des oiseaux marins n’est pas emporté, mais continue de s’accumuler jusqu’à atteindre plusieurs mètres de hauteur. Cette combinaison environnementale unique rend le guano péruvien particulièrement précieux.

Notre recherche combine l’iconographie, des sources écrites historiques et l’analyse des isotopes stables de maïs (Zea mays) retrouvé sur des sites archéologiques pour montrer que les communautés autochtones de la vallée de Chincha utilisaient le guano d’oiseaux marins il y a au moins 800 ans pour fertiliser leurs cultures et accroître la production agricole.

Nous suggérons que le guano a probablement contribué à l’essor du royaume de Chincha et à la relation qu’il a ensuite entretenue avec l’Empire inca.

Les seigneurs de la côte désertique

Le royaume de Chincha (1000–1400 de notre ère) était une société majeure qui comptait environ 100 000 habitants. Elle reposait sur une organisation structurée en communautés spécialisées, notamment des pêcheurs, des agriculteurs et des marchands. Le royaume domina la vallée de Chincha jusqu’à son intégration dans l’Empire inca au XV^e siècle.

En raison de la proximité des importants gisements de guano des îles Chincha, l’historien péruvien Marco Curatola a avancé dès 1997 que le guano d’oiseaux marins constituait une source essentielle de la richesse du royaume. Notre étude confirme fortement cette hypothèse.

Un test biochimique

L’analyse biochimique constitue une méthode fiable pour identifier l’usage d’engrais dans le passé. Une étude expérimentale menée en 2012 a montré que les plantes fertilisées avec du fumier de camélidés (alpagas et lamas) et du guano d’oiseaux marins présentent des valeurs isotopiques de l’azote plus élevées que les cultures non fertilisées.

Des épis de maïs issus de sites archéologiques de la vallée de Chincha ont été prélevés pour une analyse isotopique.
C. O’Shea

Nous avons analysé 35 échantillons de maïs retrouvés dans des tombes de la vallée de Chincha, documentés dans le cadre d’une étude antérieure sur les pratiques funéraires.

La plupart des échantillons présentent des valeurs isotopiques de l’azote plus élevées que celles attendues pour du maïs non fertilisé, ce qui indique qu’une forme de fertilisation a été utilisée. Environ la moitié affichent des valeurs extrêmement élevées. À ce jour, ces résultats ne sont compatibles qu’avec l’utilisation de guano d’oiseaux marins.

Cette analyse chimique confirme l’usage du guano pour fertiliser les cultures à l’époque préhispanique.

Images et sources écrites

Le guano – et les oiseaux qui le produisent – occupait également une place plus large dans la culture des Chincha.

Notre analyse des artefacts archéologiques montre que les Chincha avaient une compréhension profonde des liens entre la terre, la mer et le ciel. L’utilisation du guano et leur relation avec les îles ne relevaient pas seulement d’un choix pratique ; elles étaient profondément ancrées dans leur vision du monde.

Pagaie en bois sculpté, décorée de peinture rouge, verte et jaune, présentant une rangée de petites figures en partie supérieure et des motifs d’animaux sculptés le long de la partie centrale — Cet objet en bois décoré provenant de Chincha, interprété soit comme une pagaie cérémonielle, soit comme un bâton à fouir, représente des oiseaux marins et des poissons aux côtés de figures humaines et de motifs géométriques.
The Met Museum, 1979.206.1025

Cette vénération se reflète dans la culture matérielle des Chincha. Sur leurs textiles, leurs céramiques, leurs frises architecturales et leurs objets en métal, apparaissent de manière récurrente des représentations d’oiseaux marins, de poissons, de vagues et de maïs en germination.

Ces images montrent que les Chincha comprenaient l’ensemble du cycle écologique : les oiseaux marins se nourrissaient de poissons, produisaient du guano, le guano fertilisait le maïs, et le maïs nourrissait les populations.

Cette relation se retrouve peut-être encore aujourd’hui dans certains toponymes péruviens. Pisco dérive d’un mot quechua signifiant « oiseau », et Lunahuaná pourrait se traduire par « peuple du guano ».

Le pouvoir du guano

En tant qu’engrais à la fois efficace et extrêmement précieux, le guano a permis aux communautés chincha d’augmenter leurs rendements agricoles et d’étendre leurs réseaux commerciaux, contribuant ainsi à l’expansion économique du royaume.

Nous suggérons que des pêcheurs se rendaient en mer jusqu’aux îles Chincha pour collecter le guano, qu’ils fournissaient ensuite aux agriculteurs ainsi qu’aux marchands maritimes, qui l’échangeaient le long de la côte et jusque dans les hautes terres andines.

La productivité agricole de Chincha et l’essor de sa puissance commerciale ont renforcé son importance stratégique aux yeux de l’Empire inca. Vers 1400 de notre ère, les Incas intégrèrent le royaume chincha à la suite d’une capitulation « pacifique », donnant naissance à l’une des rares alliances de ce type.

Bien que les termes de cet « accord » entre Chincha et l’Empire inca restent débattus, nous suggérons que le guano d’oiseaux marins a joué un rôle dans ces négociations, l’État inca s’intéressant particulièrement au maïs tout en ne disposant pas d’un accès direct aux engrais marins. Cela pourrait expliquer pourquoi le seigneur de Chincha jouissait d’un statut si élevé qu’il était transporté sur une litière, comme l’avait observé Pedro Pizarro.

Les Incas accordaient une telle valeur à cet engrais qu’ils en réglementèrent strictement l’accès sur les îles à guano pendant la saison de reproduction et interdirent de tuer les oiseaux producteurs de guano, sur les îles comme en dehors, sous peine de mort.

Notre étude élargit l’étendue géographique connue de la fertilisation au guano dans le monde préinca et apporte un soutien solide aux travaux qui avaient anticipé son rôle dans l’essor du royaume de Chincha. Il reste toutefois beaucoup à découvrir sur l’ampleur réelle de cette pratique et sur le moment où elle a commencé.

Notre étude élargit l’aire géographique connue de la fertilisation au guano dans le monde préinca et confirme avec force les travaux qui avaient anticipé son rôle dans l’essor du royaume de Chincha. Il reste toutefois à déterminer dans quelle mesure cette pratique était répandue et à partir de quand elle a été mise en œuvre.

Les auteurs ne travaillent pas, ne conseillent pas, ne possèdent pas de parts, ne reçoivent pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’ont déclaré aucune autre affiliation que leur organisme de recherche.

– ref. Comment les excréments d’oiseaux ont alimenté l’essor du puissant royaume chincha au Pérou – https://theconversation.com/comment-les-excrements-doiseaux-ont-alimente-lessor-du-puissant-royaume-chincha-au-perou-276208

February 25, 2026

La crise des vocations enseignantes, un défi récurrent dans l’histoire de l’école ?

Source: The Conversation – France (in French) – By Sébastien-Akira Alix, Professeur des universités en sciences de l’éducation et de la formation, Université Paris-Est Créteil Val de Marne (UPEC)

Les difficultés à recruter des enseignants reviennent régulièrement dans l’actualité. Mais sont-elles si récentes ? Autour de quels enjeux s’articulent-elles ? Publié en février 2026 aux Presses du Septentrion, sous la coordination de Sébastien-Akira Alix, l’ouvrage Crises dans et hors l’école en France. Éclairages socio-historiques (des années 1960 à nos jours) nous aide à replacer dans une perspective historique le sujet, ainsi que d’autres questions comme la « baisse du niveau » des élèves, la dilution de l’autorité, les violences scolaires. Les analyses qui suivent sont extraites de l’introduction de l’ouvrage.

D’une manière générale, les recherches sur l’histoire de l’enseignement en France interdisent de penser que ce qu’on appelle communément dans le débat public « la crise des vocations enseignantes », « la crise d’attractivité des métiers de l’enseignement » ou « la crise du recrutement des enseignants » serait un phénomène d’origine récente et le signe d’un malaise propre au XXI^e siècle. À cet égard, dans son ouvrage la Formation des maîtres en France, 1792-1914, l’historien Marcel Grandière a bien mis en lumière les importantes difficultés de recrutement que rencontrent les écoles normales primaires en France à partir de 1887, période pourtant souvent présentée dans le débat public comme un « âge d’or » de l’École sous la III^e République.

À l’époque, ces écoles normales primaires, en charge de la formation des instituteurs et des institutrices du primaire, connaissent une baisse notable d’admissions alors que de nombreuses places sont disponibles et que les besoins de recrutement demeurent importants. Pour pallier ce manque, « les inspecteurs d’académie puisent largement dans le vivier des brevetés, sans formation ». Cette situation s’inscrit, à l’époque, dans la durée puisqu’en 1911, « une moyenne de 2 500 instituteurs et 3 200 institutrices sont recrutés chaque année, sur lesquels les normaliens ne comptent que pour 1 500, et les normaliennes 1 800. Les moyens manquent pour faire mieux ». Dans ce contexte spécifique, la crise devient, d’après Marcel Grandière, un problème public :

« Car, pour ajouter à la difficulté, les écoles normales souffrent, à partir de 1888, d’une sensible et durable crise des vocations. À partir de 1890 surtout, les revues spécialisées, puis la presse, s’en émeuvent : la crise du recrutement devient un problème public. À la chambre des députés, on parle de “péril primaire” en évoquant la difficulté du recrutement : “Le nombre de candidats à ces écoles normales, qui était inférieur de beaucoup à ce qu’il était antérieurement, s’est à peine relevé, si bien que la sélection n’a pu opérer comme on était en droit de le penser, et qu’on peut craindre que l’avenir ne révèle entre ces dernières promotions et celles qui les ont précédées une différence marquée. […] Il y a là pour l’avenir de nos écoles publiques un danger qui constitue ce qu’on a appelé le péril primaire.” »

À l’époque, cette baisse sensible du nombre de candidats – il y en avait 6 000 en 1882 contre 2 848 en 1888 – s’explique, en partie, par des raisons économiques, la loi du 19 juillet 1889 n’ayant « pas donné aux instituteurs les améliorations de revenus qu’ils attendaient depuis longtemps ».

D’autres travaux, comme ceux de Frédéric Charles sur les instituteurs entre 1955 et 1984, ont cherché à expliquer, à partir de « l’étude de l’évolution et des transformations du recrutement des normaliens et normaliennes des deux Écoles normales de Paris », la crise de recrutement que connaît l’enseignement primaire français au début des années 1980, en particulier en 1986, année où « l’Éducation nationale n’a pas réussi à recruter tous les instituteurs dont elle avait besoin : sur 5 000 postes, seulement 4 700 furent pourvus ». D’après Frédéric Charles, cette crise est alors liée à la dévalorisation du statut social des enseignants du primaire – ressentie fortement par les jeunes instituteurs – dans le contexte de la démocratisation quantitative du système éducatif, qui fait perdre à l’école primaire sa place centrale. Au cours de ces années, le métier d’instituteur fait, en effet, l’objet d’un processus de dévaluation lié « aux effets des réformes de 1959 qui […] situent désormais l’enseignement primaire comme une simple étape du cursus scolaire » ainsi qu’à la transformation corrélative des « dispositions des candidats, [et de] leurs rapports à l’institution ».

Sous l’effet de l’allongement de la scolarité obligatoire, la valeur distinctive du niveau de diplôme des enseignants est fortement relativisée, contribuant à une perte de prestige du métier : l’instituteur voit désormais « sa fonction se banaliser et sa reconnaissance sociale décroître ». Le métier cesse ainsi progressivement d’être une voie de promotion sociale pour les candidats, en particulier à partir de 1973, date à laquelle le recrutement en école normale ne se fait plus qu’après le baccalauréat. La composition sociale des écoles normales et le rapport que les élèves entretiennent à son égard s’en trouvent modifiés : « Faute d’avoir réussi dans l’entreprise de leurs études supérieures à l’Université, mais surtout d’avoir pu accéder à une grande école ou à l’École normale supérieure », une partie des normaliens « ont été amenés alors, pour éviter un déclassement social, à se rabattre sur la petite École normale d’instituteurs ». L’École normale n’apparaît ainsi pratiquement plus génératrice de mobilité sociale et l’intégration en son sein correspond, pour beaucoup de candidats, à « des stratégies de reclassement ou de lutte contre un déclassement social », sauf pour des jeunes femmes qui ont pu valoriser ces diplômes.

À côté de cette problématique propre aux normaliens, qui constituent 50 % du personnel enseignant primaire de la région parisienne, l’enseignement primaire fait face, dès les années 1950, à une « très grave crise » du recrutement. Pour y pallier, on recrute des « bacheliers sans aucune formation professionnelle » comme auxiliaires.

Selon une enquête d’Ida Berger, menée auprès des personnels enseignants du premier degré en 1957 pour le Centre d’études sociologiques de Paris, cette crise est, pour partie, liée au « malaise socio-professionnel », dont les causes sont liées à des salaires trop faibles ; au « manque de perspectives d’avenir dans la profession » ; à « la perte du prestige social de leur profession » ; ainsi qu’à la vétusté des bâtiments et au trop grand nombre d’élèves par classe. À cet égard, Ida Berger note :

« En face de 45-50 enfants, habitant souvent des taudis, mal nourris et hypernerveux, combien d’instituteurs sont à contrecœur obligés d’abdiquer en tant que pédagogues et de se transformer en “gendarmes” pour maintenir un semblant de discipline dans leur classe ? »

Dans l’enseignement secondaire, l’explosion scolaire, engagée dès les années 1960, conduit également à l’émergence d’une crise aiguë du recrutement entre 1955 et 1965. Avec l’arrivée de nouveaux publics, « la distance subjectivement vécue entre la carrière ambitionnée et la réalité actuellement perçue du professorat » est, pour un certain nombre d’enseignants, symptomatique d’une crise révélatrice d’« une baisse du statut du professorat de l’enseignement secondaire ». Le malaise enseignant devient, d’ailleurs, à cette époque une « catégorie médiatique ».

Si on peut être tenté de considérer que la création du statut de professeur des écoles en 1989 – qui rapproche le statut des instituteurs d’une partie des enseignants du secondaire, avec lesquels ils sont d’ailleurs formés, dès 1991, dans les Instituts universitaires de formation des maîtres (IUFM) –, aurait pu contribuer à clore cet épisode de « crise » pour les enseignants du primaire, il n’en est rien. L’historien Jean-François Condette a, de ce point de vue, bien souligné que « le contexte de création des IUFM est inséparable d’une crise aiguë de recrutement ». En effet, les besoins en recrutement d’enseignants, dans le primaire comme dans le secondaire, demeurent très importants pour affronter la seconde vague de la massification liée à l’objectif de 80 % d’une classe d’âge au niveau du baccalauréat. Le ministère peine, pendant cette période, à recruter : en 1988, 27 % des postes de certificat d’aptitude au professorat de l’enseignement du second degré (capes) et 15 % des postes d’agrégés ne sont pas pourvus, en dépit de la création des concours internes du capes et de l’agrégation. Les besoins en recrutement sont ainsi « estimés à 360 000 entre 1988 et 2000 ».

Dans le contexte des années 1990 et 2000, la question de la « crise du recrutement » et « des vocations » prend, en France, une tournure nouvelle, notamment liée aux transformations de la morphologie enseignante, avec une remise en question de l’accès au métier selon « un modèle d’accomplissement de vocation », dont la période présente est l’héritière. De ce point de vue, les importants travaux du sociologue Pierre Périer ont montré le caractère sectoriel de la « crise du recrutement » et de la « crise d’attractivité du métier d’enseignant » fortement mises en avant dans le débat public au cours des deux dernières décennies.

À partir d’une enquête réalisée en 2015 auprès de 1 103 étudiants de différentes filières de troisième année de licence, Pierre Périer montre que « la problématique d’attractivité des métiers de l’enseignement apparaît à la fois inégale et paradoxale » et que l’affectivité spécifique et le sentiment d’urgence ou de catastrophe véhiculés par les discours sur la crise du recrutement dans le débat public doivent être relativisés :

« Aussi préoccupants soient-ils, ces constats [sur les difficultés de recrutement d’enseignants] confirment le caractère sectoriel et paradoxal de difficultés qui, en réalité, ne sont pas nouvelles. On peut rappeler, en effet, que le nombre de candidats présents pour un poste en 1993 était de 2,6, identique à celui observé en 2015 ou 2016 mais deux fois inférieur à celui du début des années 2000. La comparaison vaut également pour le secondaire avec 2,7 candidats pour un poste en 1993 ou encore 3,7 en 1994 et 3,4 en 2015. Ajoutons que la part des enseignants non titulaires dans le second degré public a déjà été à plusieurs reprises supérieure à ce qu’elle représente aujourd’hui (près de 8 % en 1993 contre moins de 6 % en 2015). »

Et Pierre Périer de souligner que « le manque de candidats aux concours a un caractère académique dans le premier degré et disciplinaire dans le secondaire ». Le sociologue montre également que la « crise de recrutement » masque, en réalité, « une tension en forme de dilemme d’orientation » pour les étudiants qui « met en rapport, d’un côté, un intérêt personnel manifeste pour les fondements et contenus du métier et, de l’autre, des appréhensions et, plus encore, une incertitude sur ce que recouvre le “devenir enseignant”, que ce soit en termes d’accès, de conditions d’exercice ou de carrière ».

Sébastien-Akira Alix ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d’une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n’a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.

– ref. La crise des vocations enseignantes, un défi récurrent dans l’histoire de l’école ? – https://theconversation.com/la-crise-des-vocations-enseignantes-un-defi-recurrent-dans-lhistoire-de-lecole-276320