Category: The Conversation

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Five books about the lives of musicians that are stonking good reads

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester

This year is the national year of reading, and if you’re a music lover, I urge you to pick one up about your favourite musician. The lives of musicians are often full of highs and lows, which makes for compelling reading. Here are five of my favourites.

1. Fight The Power by Chuck D

I suppose I shouldn’t really include Fight The Power in my list, given that Chuck D himself says in its prologue that it “damn sure ain’t an autobiography”. He positions himself as a tour guide rather than a protagonist, chaperoning us through the fascinating landscape of 80s and 90s hip-hop. Such guiding means it’s different from your average autobiography. But, intertwined with observations on racial oppression, media bias, politics, violence and religion, we find Chuck D’s life story. And it’s quite the story indeed.

The book moves from a childhood lived against a backdrop of assassinations, chaos and race riots, through his days as the leader of Public Enemy (one of the most revolutionary groups in music history), up to his latest challenge as a father encouraging his daughters to think as independently as possible. An engrossing, page-turning peek behind the curtain of a fascinating character living in a fascinating (albeit often troubling) world.

2. Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush (2024 Omnibus Remastered Edition) by Graeme Thomson

At 432 pages, this is a slim volume compared with the likes of Ray Davies: A Complicated Life (800 pages), Madonna: A Rebel Life (880 pages), or The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (892 pages). But what it lacks in physical heft, Under the Ivy more than makes up with the weight of research that has gone into it.

Thomson is forensic in his detail, both in terms of researching Bush’s life (he conducted more than 70 interviews with school friends, band mates, studio collaborators, former managers, producers, musicians, video directors, dance instructors and record company executives), and in analysing her songs, which he does with the keen eye of a music critic. Trying to form a single picture of an artist as enigmatic and complex as Bush is, in Thomson’s words, “like trying to complete a jigsaw when some of the pieces are missing”. And making a coherent, entertaining and informative read from that is an even bigger challenge. Luckily for us, Thomson is up to it.

3. Things The Grandchildren Should Know by Mark Oliver Everett

By page four of his autobiography, Eels singer and songwriter Mark Everett (known professionally as “E”) has been attacked with a butcher’s knife, found his 51-year-old father dead in the family home, and told us about how, at 19, he fantasised about driving his car off a bridge. As if this weren’t enough tragedy for one lifetime, E then tells us about his sister’s suicide, the months of nursing his bedridden mother before she eventually succumbed to breast cancer, his flight attendant cousin dying during the Pentagon plane crash on 9/11, the deaths of several close friends, and the numerous rejections of his music.

In other hands, Things The Grandchildren Should Know might have been one of the saddest, most harrowing autobiographies ever written. And it certainly had every right to be. That it somehow succeeds in being one of the most uplifting, positive, and inspirational autobiographies is a testament to both E’s skilful writing, bone-dry sense of humour, and infectious optimism in the face of adversity. I’ve read it at least once a year since its release in 2008, usually in one sitting. It’s one of those books that never fails to raise my spirits. Even if you haven’t heard a single note of Eels’ music, or you don’t normally bother with books about rock or pop stars, this story is so good; it’s a must-read.

4. The Beatles by Hunter Davies

That it is the only authorised biography of The Beatles ever to be produced is reason enough to read this 1968 classic. But knowing that, for 18 months, Hunter Davies partied with the band, went to work with them and was introduced to all their friends makes it an essential. And the 18 months were those between 1967 and 1968, when the band were changing not only music, but pop culture at large.

Strangely, for all the magic of the now well-known story of the band’s rise to global domination, the real highlight comes toward the end of the book, where Davies details the time he spent at each Beatle’s house. Here we get to see the world’s most celebrated icons behind closed doors, unguarded and relaxed. And the mundanity of it is delicious. There’s Lennon playing with a loose filling before swigging milk straight from the bottle; Ringo pottering around his garden; Paul eating fried eggs, bacon and buttered bread; and George answering the phone pretending to be “Esher Wine Store”.

5. The Story of The Streets by Mike Skinner

Mike Skinner burst onto the British garage scene with his project the Streets in the early 2000s, with songs about sitting around on the sofa, working at JB Sports and getting pissed on the plane back from holiday. After five hit albums, Skinner took a hiatus from The Streets in 2011, releasing this book the following year.

Skinner makes it clear from the outset that he’s “going to be as honest as the publisher’s lawyers will allow”, but the book is so much more than a warts-and-all account. Much of it focuses on musical inspirations, the craft of songwriting, and his production techniques.

It may come as a surprise to some that The Story of The Streets is written with such intelligence and insight, especially given that Skinner’s lyrics brim with colloquialisms, profanity and ineloquence. But as those of us who’ve followed his career closely will know, this is a man who is able to build character as well as he builds story, and the “everyman” we see portrayed in the Streets’ songs is only the tiniest part of a much more complex person.

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.

The Conversation

Glenn Fosbraey 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. Five books about the lives of musicians that are stonking good reads – https://theconversation.com/five-books-about-the-lives-of-musicians-that-are-stonking-good-reads-280216

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Israel’s onslaught against Lebanon may strengthen Hezbollah – just when it’s at its weakest

Source: The Conversation – UK – By John Nagle, Professor in Sociology, Queen’s University Belfast

As the tentative ceasefire in Lebanon holds, people are returning to their homes in the south to find widespread destruction. Whole villages laid waste, roads and bridges ruined, hospitals and other civic infrastructure flattened. And the Israeli army still very much in evidence in many areas.

The most recent conflict between Israel and Lebanon has killed more than 2,100 people and displaced more than a million more. Israel’s stated aim is to destroy Hezbollah, which it describes as an Iranian proxy. But this is a misleading framing of the situation. And trying to destroy Hezbollah by attacking and occupying Lebanon is a dangerous misreading of the situation.

Hezbollah, the so-called “Party of God”, is not the same thing as Lebanon. Yet the party is deeply embedded in Lebanese politics. The group emerged during the Lebanese civil war and in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 invasion. It grew rapidly by combining armed resistance with political representation and services for Shia communities that had long been neglected by the Lebanese state.

In the southern suburbs of Beirut, known as Dahiyeh, and across the south, it became a provider of services. Hezbollah built schools, clinics and welfare networks that helped it convert resistance into social legitimacy. That presence built loyalty and dependence that outlasted its original resistance role.

Lebanon’s postwar political system is built on sectarian power sharing. Hezbollah entered parliament in the 1990s and built alliances well beyond its core Shia base, which enabled it to join coalition governments.

But unlike other major Lebanese factions, it retained its weapons after the civil war. This allowed it to combine formal political participation with an armed capacity that was outside the control of the state. Its alliance with Christian groups, most significantly Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon’s largest Christian party, gave it cross-sectarian legitimacy and protection against isolation.

Hezbollah’s ability to shape Lebanese politics has often rested less on governing than on stopping other groups from governing. The clearest illustration was the presidency. After Michel Aoun completed his term in October 2022, Lebanon went without a president for more than two years. Hezbollah blocked every candidate that threatened its interests. Parliament failed to elect a successor 13 times.

Lebanon drifted without a head of state through the 2024 war with Israel. Its caretaker government could not take major decisions. Desperately needed economic assistance was withheld by international donors. It was Hezbollah’s blocking power made visible. Lebanon’s caretaker government could not take major decisions or enact the reforms international donors required. Desperately needed economic assistance was withheld as a result.

Hezbollah’s political weakness

This current conflict has caught Hezbollah in a weaker political position than it once enjoyed. The anti-government protests of 2019, economic collapse and the Beirut port explosion has deepened public anger at Lebanon’s ruling class — and at Hezbollah as part of it. Hezbollah’s attempts to obstruct the judicial investigation into the explosion deepened that anger further.

The 2022 elections confirmed the shift. Hezbollah and its allies lost the majority they had held since 2018. Independents and reformists who emerged out of the protests took seats in a more fragmented legislature.

The Arab Barometer’s 2024 survey found that just 30% of Lebanese expressed significant trust in Hezbollah, with 55% saying they had no trust at all. Hezbollah’s claim to speak for Lebanon — or even for all Lebanese Shia — is now more contested than at any point in its modern history.

The 2024 war, with the devastating pager attacks of September 17 and 18, substantially degraded Hezbollah’s military and further weakened its political standing. Assad’s fall in Syria in December removed a key source of regional support.

In January 2025, the Lebanese parliament finally elected Joseph Aoun as president — something that would have been unthinkable when Hezbollah was at its peak and was able to use its influence to exclude him. Aoun, a former army commander, has always insisted it was the army – not Hezbollah – that should be the defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Operation: destroy Hezbollah

Israel’s stated objective for many years has been to create a more durable security order along its northern border by weakening or dismantling Hezbollah. But, at the same time, Israeli strikes have inflicted devastation far beyond Hezbollah itself, hitting civilians, infrastructure and communities across the country.

The destruction of places such as Dahiyeh reflects a broader logic of warfare in which dense urban space is treated as part of the battlefield. UN experts have argued that the destruction of homes and mass displacement amount to collective punishment in violation of international law.

The argument echoes broader legal debates about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, where UN experts have made similar findings.

That is also why the simple frame of “Israel versus Hezbollah” erases so much. Many of those driven from their homes in the south or in Dahiyeh had grown critical of Hezbollah, or had not chosen this war at all. Yet they found themselves bombed out of neighbourhoods that had been designated as legitimate targets, because of an assumed association with Hezbollah. The civilians killed and displaced are not bystanders to somebody else’s conflict. They are among its principal victims.

A ceasefire was announced on April 17, and – while Hezbollah has not formally endorsed it – the group appears to be observing it for now. Yet the truce leaves the central political question unresolved. Israeli officials have made clear they do not regard it as settling the question of southern Lebanon’s demilitarisation.

Expecting the Lebanese army to dismantle Hezbollah by force is unrealistic. If Hezbollah resisted — and it would — the result could be open civil conflict. It would fracture the army, deepen sectarian tensions, and drive Shia communities back behind the very organisation whose grip had begun to loosen, leaving it politically stronger than it was before the latest round of hostilities.

Any lasting settlement will have to reckon with the reality this war has exposed: Hezbollah is not Lebanon. But at the moment it’s Lebanon which is being punished.

The Conversation

John Nagle 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. Israel’s onslaught against Lebanon may strengthen Hezbollah – just when it’s at its weakest – https://theconversation.com/israels-onslaught-against-lebanon-may-strengthen-hezbollah-just-when-its-at-its-weakest-281031

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Eating fruit is linked to lung cancer? Here’s what you need to know about that new study

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

Deadly? Not likely. New Africa/Shutterstock.com

The idea that fruit and vegetables might cause cancer sounds bizarre. For decades, studies have shown that people who eat more plants tend to live longer, healthier lives, with lower rates of heart disease, stroke and several common cancers.

Lung cancer is no exception: in many large studies, higher intakes of fruits and vegetables are linked with lower risks, especially in smokers.

Against that backdrop, a new suggestion that fruit and veg might be driving lung cancer in young adults is surprising.

The story behind this latest wave of anxiety doesn’t come from a definitive, landmark trial. It comes from a brief presentation at a scientific conference, based on 187 people with early‑onset lung cancer.

Most had never smoked. When researchers asked about their diets, a lot of them reported eating plenty of fruits, vegetables and whole grains – the sort of pattern most of us would call “healthy”.

Instead of measuring pesticides in their food or blood, the team estimated probable pesticide exposure using average residue levels from other sources. From there, they speculated that pesticides on otherwise healthy foods might help explain why some young non‑smokers develop lung cancer.

That is a very long way from proving that fruit and vegetables themselves are harmful. Studies like this are meant to raise questions – “could pesticides be part of the story in young lung cancer?” – not to rewrite dietary advice on their own.

Crucially, this particular study looks backwards from people who already have cancer, rather than following healthy people forwards over time, so it cannot tell us whether their diet played any role in causing the disease. Nor does it show that these patients had higher pesticide exposures than comparable people without cancer. It only shows that they ate foods that, on average, can carry residues.

The bigger picture

When you zoom out from this single, tiny study to the broader body of evidence, the picture changes from alarming to reassuringly familiar. Large studies have followed tens or hundreds of thousands of people over many years, asked them what they ate, then waited to see who develops lung cancer. Time and again, those eating more fruit and vegetables either do better or, at very worst, no differently from those eating less.

Meta‑analyses that combine data from multiple studies find reductions in lung cancer risk with higher fruit intake and benefits from vegetables, too. These are the studies that inform official guidelines. They are not perfect – no nutrition study is – but they are far more informative than a single unpublished study of 187 patients.

So why do small studies like this latest one sometimes seem to say something different? One reason is simple statistical noise.

With small numbers, chance plays a huge role. If, for whatever reason, the particular group of young adults who turned up to that clinic happened to be unusually health-conscious, then fruit and vegetable intake will look high among people with lung cancer, even if diet has nothing to do with their disease.

Another issue is what scientists call “confounding”. People who eat more plants often differ in many other ways. They may exercise more, drink less, have different jobs, live in different neighbourhoods, or be more on the ball about seeking medical help.

When you start from patients and look backwards, it is very hard to disentangle these overlapping factors. That is why we place more weight on large, prospective studies that follow people forward in time and can better account for these differences.

Pesticides

Then there is the question of pesticides – the part of the story that understandably unnerves people. It is true that many conventionally grown fruits and vegetables carry measurable pesticide residues, and that people who eat a lot of produce tend to have higher levels of some pesticide breakdown products in their urine.

It is also true that farm workers who handle pesticides regularly and at high doses have higher rates of certain cancers, including some lung cancers. That tells us pesticides are not benign. But what it does not tell us is that eating sprayed apples or lettuce at normal dietary levels causes lung cancer in the general population.

A farm worker spraying pesticides on a crop.
Farm workers who are exposed to high doses of pesticides do have higher rates of certain cancers.
Kuro1982/Shutterstock.com

That doesn’t mean we should be complacent: there is an ongoing discussion about cocktails of many different chemicals, about vulnerable groups such as children and pregnant women, and about longer‑term hormone or brain effects that might not show up in crude cancer rates. However, these are arguments for improving how we farm and regulate pesticides, not arguments for abandoning fruit and vegetables.

If you are still uneasy about pesticides, there are practical, proportionate things you can do that don’t involve swapping an orange for a packet of crisps. Washing produce under running water helps remove surface residues and soil, and varying the types of fruit and veg you eat means you are not relying heavily on any one item that tends to carry higher residues.

If your budget allows, choosing organic versions of a few “high‑residue” foods can make sense. But the key point is that these are tweaks at the margins. They don’t change the central message that a diet rich in plant foods is overwhelmingly associated with better health.

Perhaps the most important lesson from this episode is about how to read nutrition headlines. Whenever you see “X food causes cancer” or “Y ingredient is the next miracle cure”, it helps to ask a couple of simple questions. How big was the study? Was it in healthy people followed over time, or patients looked at after the fact? Did the researchers actually measure what they are claiming (like pesticide levels)? And how do the new findings sit alongside decades of existing research?

In the case of the early-onset lung cancer study, the answers are sobering: it was small, it was retrospective, it used indirect exposure estimates, and its suggestion that fruit and vegetables might be harmful sits awkwardly with a much larger body of work pointing the other way.

None of this means we should ignore the possibility that pesticides contribute in some way to cancers in non‑smokers, or that diet is irrelevant to lung health. But we should be wary of turning one provocative conference talk into a reason to fear the very foods that consistently show up as markers of better health.

The Conversation

Justin Stebbing 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. Eating fruit is linked to lung cancer? Here’s what you need to know about that new study – https://theconversation.com/eating-fruit-is-linked-to-lung-cancer-heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-that-new-study-281003

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We designed the turf for soccer’s biggest World Cup ever – here’s how we created the same playing experience across 3 countries

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By John N. Trey Rogers, Professor of Turfgrass Research, Michigan State University

World Cup pitches take a beating. AP Photo/Bernat Armangue

With 104 matches in 16 stadiums across Canada, the United States and Mexico, the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be soccer’s biggest event ever.

It’s our job as turfgrass researchers hired by FIFA, the game’s governing body, to make sure those pitches feel the same for players and that the grass thrives.

That’s not so simple. In fact, it seemed like an impossible challenge at first.

Picking the right turf

The scale of this job was unprecedented: three distinct climatic zones, over 3,100 miles between the farthest stadiums, and venues ranging from stadiums open to the heat of Mexico City and Miami to enclosed NFL stadiums in Dallas and Atlanta, to the cooler climates of Boston and Toronto.

Despite the unique situations of each stadium, FIFA has a long list of rules for how the fields must be built. The grass has to be real but reinforced so it can handle a lot of games and ceremonies. Each field needs an automatic irrigation system, good drainage, built-in vacuum and vents to keep the grass and soil aerated, and artificial grow lights to keep the grass healthy.

Each host city is responsible for figuring out how to meet these requirements.

Right now, eight of the 2026 host stadiums normally use artificial turf – how will they temporarily switch to real grass for the World Cup?

Even trickier, five of the stadiums have domes, which means the grass gets less sunlight. How can they keep the grass alive for eight weeks?

How can we make sure that a player competing in Philadelphia has the same on‑field experience as a player competing in Guadalajara or Seattle?

The new turfgrass goes down in New England’s Gillette Stadium near Boston. WCBV.

Our team at the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University has spent the past five years researching these questions to provide guidance to the host cities. Here, we’ll explore some of the most important questions we faced: which grass to grow, how it’s grown, how we plan to make it even stronger, and how to move it safely to each stadium.

Growing the grass

Typically, sod is grown on native soil. When harvested, the roots are cut, which shocks the plant and can delay root reestablishment for several weeks.

That wouldn’t work for the World Cup because games may take place within just 10 days of installation. If the roots can’t become established fast enough, the grass will be weaker and more prone to damage.

To address this, we decided to use sod grown on plastic with sand as a base.

Think of it like growing grass in a plastic tray, but on a much larger scale. When the roots reach the plastic, they spread sideways and intertwine, forming a dense rooting system. Because the roots stay intact during harvest, the sod experiences minimal stress and can be ready to play almost immediately after installation.

Sod for sports fields is typically grown in a base of sand to provide quick drainage and prevent the grass from getting compacted as the roots become established.

The problem is that growing grass in 2 inches of sand on a plastic sheet comes with risks. Because of the plastic, a single heavy rainfall while the grass is becoming established can wash the exposed sand away.

For warm‑season sod farmers – those that grow grass that thrives in high temperatures – sand washing away is less of a concern because the Bermudagrass they grow establishes quickly. On the other hand, cool‑season sod farmers usually grow Kentucky bluegrass, which germinates slowly compared to other turfgrass species, increasing the risk of washouts.

We decided to mix a faster‑germinating species – perennial ryegrass – with Kentucky bluegrass grown on plastic and then tested various seeding ratios. We found that an 84% Kentucky bluegrass and 16% perennial ryegrass mixture produced a stronger sod than pure Kentucky bluegrass alone four months after seeding. Since 2025, these findings have been used on sod farms across North America, beyond those growing grass for the World Cup.

Stabilizing the surface

“One World Cup game is equal to a Super Bowl,” FIFA officials like to remind us. Since each field will host a lot of games and ceremonies, including up to nine games over six weeks, the fields need to be extremely strong.

To make them tougher, we mix plastic fibers into the natural grass, which creates a hybrid turfgrass system. As the grass grows, its roots wrap around these plastic fibers, which helps to keep the surface stable and firm. These fibers are also colored to match the natural grass, so even if the real grass wears down, they help the field stay green.

Hybrid turfgrass systems can be created in two ways: by stitching plastic fibers into an existing grass field or by laying down a carpet of plastic fibers that is then filled with sand and seeded to grow new grass.

Stitched systems have been used in World Cup games for a long time, but carpet systems are still fairly new to the tournament – they have been used only in the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

We tested eight carpet systems to see how they performed and found that all could be successfully grown on plastic. All the surface performance tests – ball bounce, rotational resistance and surface hardness – on these eight carpets also met FIFA standards.

One type of carpet was chosen by three host cities for their stadiums: Vancouver, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia.

Getting the sod from farm to stadium

Most of the stadiums – 14 of them – will have sod that is grown on plastic, then rolled up and shipped to the venue during spring 2026. Some of the grasses won’t have to travel far, but some will be shipped in refrigerated trucks across the country. Since the sod remains fully intact after harvest, it can withstand long travel times.

Five of those stadiums don’t get enough sunlight, so they will use cool-season grasses that require less light than warm-season grasses.

While the open-air stadium in Miami will use Bermudagrass, the domed stadium in Houston, despite being at a similar latitude, will use the Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass mix. That means cross-country trips from cool-season sod farms in Denver and Washington to domed stadiums in the southern regions is essential.

It’s wild to think that this is all necessary, but the length of the tournament and unique stadium environments call for innovation.

The Conversation

The University of Tennessee was the prime awardee of the FIFA grant. Michigan State University is a subawardee. John N. Trey Rogers is the principal investigator for the Michigan State work.

Jackie Lyn A. Guevara is affiliated with Michigan State University. She received compensation through a FIFA grant awarded to Michigan State University.

John Sorochan is the principal investigator for the FIFA grant at the University of Tennessee.

Ryan Bearss works for Michigan State University

– ref. We designed the turf for soccer’s biggest World Cup ever – here’s how we created the same playing experience across 3 countries – https://theconversation.com/we-designed-the-turf-for-soccers-biggest-world-cup-ever-heres-how-we-created-the-same-playing-experience-across-3-countries-279536

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Cities helping cities rebuild: How local partnerships are shaping Ukraine’s recovery

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Tamara Krawchenko, Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria

The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe recently called for local and national authorities to work together to help Ukraine recover and rebuild four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country.

The message is clear: cities and regions must lead, and their counterparts around the world should help them do it. The congress also calls on Russia to pay for the damage it has caused, pointing to frozen Russian assets worldwide as one source for those funds — an acknowledgment that recovery cannot wait for the war to end, since communities are already rebuilding under fire.

As a lead author of the report underpinning the congress’s call to action, I want to explain why it matters and why Canada, in particular, has both the track record and the responsibility to step up.

The scale of what needs to be done

The numbers are almost impossible to absorb. By the end of 2024, direct damage to Ukraine’s buildings and infrastructure had reached approximately US$176 billion, with more than 2.5 million households destroyed or damaged.

Total aggregate economic losses from the invasion are estimated at more than US$1.1 trillion. Nearly 6.8 million Ukrainians have also sought refuge abroad, the largest displacement of people in Europe since the Second World War.

Behind every statistic is a community struggling to survive — a mayor trying to keep schools open under missile attacks; a municipal council managing hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons with dwindling resources; a city engineer repairing the same water system for the third time after it was bombed yet again.

Local and regional authorities across Ukraine face these situations every day. And it is precisely because the challenges are so local — tied to specific communities and capacities — that the response must also be local.

Ukrainian decentralization reforms since 2014 have expanded the fiscal capacity of the country’s municipalities, enabling them to respond to the unprecedented shocks of war far more effectively than before. In fact, local budget revenues quintupled between 2014 and 2021.

Russia’s invasion disrupted these reforms.

Why city-to-city networks are different

The call to action by the congress asks local and regional authorities in Council of Europe member states to use “existing co-operation platforms and bilateral partnerships to offer practical support to their Ukrainian counterparts.”

It’s an appeal for cities that have solved difficult problems — managing mass displacement, rebuilding after disaster, reforming service delivery — to share what they know with Ukrainian cities doing the same under fire.

City-to-city partnerships are fundamentally different from top-down aid. They are peer relationships built on what scholars call horizontal assistance — the exchange of practical knowledge and structural social capital between cities navigating similar challenges.

Research on municipal technical exchanges, including a study of Seattle’s city-to-city delegations, shows these networks generate direct benefits: lower costs of accessing policy information, facilitation of collective action and long-term institutional ties that outlast any individual project cycle.

As the researchers who conducted the Seattle research point out, the exchanges “disseminate information, and through the personal relations they initiate, have a potential for influencing future resource decisions among cities and countries.”

This matters enormously for Ukraine. The most effective city networks are those oriented toward concrete policy transfer such as sharing regulatory frameworks, governance tools and public administration practices.

Ukrainian cities need exactly this: working models of how to manage housing allocation for displaced persons, how to deliver trauma-informed social services and how to rebuild energy infrastructure with built-in resilience.

Canadian municipal engineers who might advise a Kharkiv counterpart on water system resilience wouldn’t just be delivering aid — they’d be sharing hard-won professional knowledge among equals. That knowledge sticks in ways that consultant reports rarely do.

The lessons of past reconstruction

History offers clear guidance on what works. Comparative analysis of post-war and post-disaster reconstruction experiences identifies local community engagement and bottom-up leadership as the single most consistent factor separating successful from failed reconstruction.

Top-down donor interventions that bypassed local institutions, as in Iraq after 2003, produced waste, duplication and projects misaligned with community priorities. By contrast, programs that genuinely incorporated recipient input — like the post-Second World War Marshall Plan — achieved lasting results.

The review by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of Ukraine’s recovery architecture echoes this: Ukraine’s reconstruction ecosystem remains fragmented, with co-ordination gaps among federal government departments, international donors and local authorities.

City-to-city networks can help fill that gap at the most practical level by channelling directly applicable knowledge to the local officials who most need it.



Read more:
Engineering hope: how I made it my mission to help rebuild Ukraine’s critical infrastructure

Canada’s proven record, and its moment

Canada has been here before. Beginning in 2010, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), financed by the Canadian government through Global Affairs Canada, built exactly this kind of peer network in Ukraine through the Partnership for Local Economic Development and Democratic Governance.

The $19.5-million, six-year initiative worked directly with 16 Ukrainian cities to strengthen local democracy, support small and medium-sized businesses and advance decentralization.

FCM’s municipal experts worked alongside counterparts in cities like Lviv and Dnipro, co-publishing Ukraine’s first municipal guide to local economic development and helping local governments design collaborative regional projects. A key partner throughout was the Association of Ukrainian Cities, a key municipal advocacy organization.

That program ended, but the relationships it built did not. And the decentralization reforms it supported are now widely credited — by the congress’s call to action itself, the OECD and scholars of Ukrainian resilience — with giving Ukrainian local authorities the capacity to respond as effectively as they have to the shocks of war.

The case for reinvestment

The congress explicitly notes in its call to action that decentralization reforms “have played a crucial role in Ukraine’s wartime resilience.” That is, in part, a legacy of Canada’s investment.

A new, scaled-up commitment through FCM building on existing relationships with the Association of Ukrainian Cities — drawing on FCM’s international programs expertise and connecting Canadian municipal professionals to their Ukrainian peers across the priority domains the resolution identifies (like in housing, social and mental health supports, economic recovery, emergency management, community energy and citizen participation) — would represent a return to a proven formula.

The congress’s call to action urges deeper, more focused work on local recovery and reconstruction. City-to-city partnerships stand out as one of the most cost-effective and sustainable tools: they share practical knowledge that endures, strengthen institutions over the long term and recognize Ukrainian cities as active participants in their own reconstruction.

Canada helped build local government capacity in Ukraine before the war. The Council of Europe’s Congress has now called on the world to do so again. Canada should answer that call.

The Conversation

The author served as a contributing expert to the Council of Europe Congress Report CG(2026)50-10prov, adopted at the 50th Session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in March 2026.

– ref. Cities helping cities rebuild: How local partnerships are shaping Ukraine’s recovery – https://theconversation.com/cities-helping-cities-rebuild-how-local-partnerships-are-shaping-ukraines-recovery-280205

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Exploring conversational AI and poetry but not as we know it

Source: The Conversation – France – By Thierry Poibeau, DR CNRS, École normale supérieure (ENS) – PSL

What do the large language models behind human-like conversational AI really know and what does it mean to live alongside them?

A new book Understanding Conversational AI by Thierry Poibeau offers a critical and interdisciplinary exploration of large language models (LLMs), examining how they reshape our understanding of language, cognition and society. Drawing on philosophy of language, linguistics, cognitive science and AI ethics, it investigates how LLMs generate meaning, simulate reasoning and perform tasks that once seemed uniquely human from translation to moral judgement and literary creation.

The book explores the limitations of these models, their embedded biases and their role in processes of automation, misinformation and platform enclosure while reflecting on how they prompt us to revisit fundamental questions: What is understanding? What is creativity? How do we ascribe agency or trust in a world of synthetic language?

Recent findings are suggesting that non-expert poetry readers prefer AI works to poems written by humans. Thierry Poibeau reminds us how “aesthetic judgment in poetry often involves elements that are not easily codifiable, such as originality, emotional resonance, metaphorical depth, and cultural embeddedness”. Poibeau sheds light on why AI-generated poems can be appealing, by highlighting how literary value is “shaped by evolving norms within particular reading communities, making judgments of poetic merit historically contingent and socially negotiated”.

AI Poetry in motion

Excerpts from Understanding Conversational AI

“The arrival of AI-generated poetry raises fundamental questions about whether current evaluation criteria, often rooted in human experience, intentional expression, and historical context are adequate for assessing texts produced through large-scale statistical recombination.

As large language models generate increasingly fluent and plausible verse, their outputs may challenge existing notions of aesthetic authenticity, precisely because they blur the boundary between craft, imitation, and genuine creative insight.

These systems are capable of reproducing recognizable poetic forms, stylistic conventions, and affective tones, raising the question of how such texts should be evaluated when traditional assumptions about authorship and intention no longer clearly apply.

However, despite this formal competence, recent studies reveal recurrent stylistic tendencies characteristic of large language model–generated poetry. GPT-4, for instance, shows a strong preference for quatrain structures, a frequent reliance on iambic meter and end rhyme, and a tendency to employ recurring lexical choices such as heart, whisper, or dream.

These outputs often reflect a flattening of emotional and metaphorical complexity, favoring literal formulations and conventional poetic tropes over ambiguity, innovation, or semantic depth.

In comparison to human poetry, LLM-generated verse appears more homogeneous and less nuanced, and is less capable of producing the kinds of conceptual tension or unexpected imagery often found in more original human compositions.

In addition to these stylistic patterns, recent reader evaluation studies suggest that some AI-generated poems are judged comparably to human-authored texts when assessed blind.

However, once authorship is disclosed, evaluations tend to decline, indicating a persistent skepticism toward machine-generated poetry. This reception dynamic highlights the ongoing tension between the formal fluency of AI-generated verse and readers’ perceptions of authenticity and creative agency.

Interestingly, readers often find AI-generated poems easier to interpret. They can more readily grasp the images, themes, and emotions, which are typically presented in a more accessible and transparent manner than in the often denser and more ambiguous work of human poets.

As a result, readers may develop a preference for these texts and mistakenly interpret their own ease of understanding as evidence of human authorship. When the machine origin of the poem is revealed, this interpretation shifts, and the same textual features that previously facilitated comprehension may be reinterpreted as signs of superficiality or lack of depth.

Such findings should be interpreted with caution. They do not demonstrate that AI-generated poetry is superior in literary quality, but rather that it tends to conform to familiar forms and accessible conventions. In contrast, human-authored poetry frequently relies on layers of complexity, allusion, and ambiguity that demand substantial background knowledge in literature, history, and poetic traditions. Interpreting such works is a cognitively demanding task, and it is therefore problematic to ask lay readers to evaluate poetry in a meaningful way without accounting for differences in expertise and interpretive competence.

Beyond questions of evaluation, the reception of AI-generated poetry raises broader issues of attribution, disclosure, and creative ownership. Literary institutions, publishers, and competition organizers increasingly require authors to disclose the use of AI tools, reflecting uncertainty about how machine-generated texts should be situated within existing frameworks of creativity and value.

The discomfort that emerges when readers discover that a poem was generated by a machine is not merely a reaction to deception but an indication that aesthetic judgment remains deeply entangled with assumptions about intention, experience, and authorship.”

Thierry Poibeau is Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Paris and head of the LaTTiCE laboratory in Paris, France.

He is a member of PRAIRIE-PSAI (Paris AI Research Institute – Paris School of Artificial Intelligence) and is also an affiliated lecturer at the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (DTAL) of the University of Cambridge. He works on natural language processing (NLP), particularly focusing on information extraction, question answering, semantic zoning, knowledge acquisition from text, and named entity tagging.

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The Conversation

Thierry Poibeau is a member of PRAIRIE-PSAI (Paris AI Research Institute — Paris School of Artificial Intelligence) and has received funding in this capacity.

– ref. Exploring conversational AI and poetry but not as we know it – https://theconversation.com/exploring-conversational-ai-and-poetry-but-not-as-we-know-it-280284

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Women working in Uganda’s pig sector: how challenging prejudices can unlock opportunities – research

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Esther Leah Achandi, Post Doctoral Fellow- Gender, International Livestock Research Institute

In some communities in Uganda, women aren’t supposed to work with pigs. This stems from restrictive social and gender norms, some of which are rooted in culture and religious beliefs.

Until recently, eating pork was associated with drunkards because the meat was typically served alongside home-brewed alcohol in local bars. That’s changing, as “pork joints” become popular everyday eating places. What’s more, pigs are unfairly thought of as dirty and therefore some people think the people who work with them must be dirty too. Women, in particular, according to prevailing social norms, are meant to keep themselves clean.

The pig sector is growing rapidly in east Africa on the back of rising demand. Uganda is one of three top pork producers in Africa, after Nigeria and Malawi. The country also has the highest per capita consumption of pork in the region, estimated at 3.4 kilograms per person per year. This has led to job opportunities in pig farming, trading, butcheries, food stalls, artificial insemination, and feed and veterinary supply shops.

Across Africa, social and gender norms determine whether a woman can work, what kind of work she can do, where she can work, with which animals, and how much she gets paid. This is the case in Uganda. In some parts of central Uganda, while the management – and cleanliness – of piggeries have improved, resulting in better perceptions about pig hygiene, lingering prejudices have meant women working in the pig industry have little bargaining power and lower incomes, and may feel pressured to work covertly. All this results in missed opportunity for women to develop professional skills and support their families, and reduced food safety for everyone.

In 2022/2023 we conducted a study in two districts to understand how local gender norms affected women in the pig farming sector. The findings revealed that women faced restrictions in conducting artificial insemination, castrating animals, taking sows to boars for mating, and transporting pigs on motorcycles. Additionally, certain activities – including slaughtering, trading livestock, producing feed, and owning large farms – were deemed inappropriate for women.

We also found systemic barriers such as lower wages, lack of control over income, restricted physical mobility, and exclusion from influential networks blocked them from fully reaping the benefits of the sector.

These findings led us to launch a range of interventions in the districts. Working with the international NGO Ripple Effect, my team at the International Livestock Research Institute and I trialled a range of interventions in Uganda’s Masaka and Mukono districts.

The results, evaluated a year later in December 2025, showed that social norms can be both accommodated and transformed for the benefit of all. For example, radio shows and conversations challenged widely held sentiments and sought to normalise roles that were taboo for women – such as providing pig insemination services to other farmers and contributing to a growing pig sector.

Our findings have lessons that are of value across many industries and in many places.

Doing things differently

We worked with pig farmers, business people, regulators and community members in five different communities to address the restrictive norms that prevented women from engaging in pig businesses. The work was carried out in Masaka district (south-west of Kampala) and Mukono district (east of the capital).

The interventions we put in place included:

  • providing women farmers with weigh-bands to estimate live pig weights and make sure they weren’t being cheated

  • offering training for women farmers to help them negotiate better prices and animal services

  • providing branded lab coats and badges to certified professionals to help combat the lack of respect for women in technical roles like artificial insemination

  • providing aprons, head wraps and boots to women working in slaughterhouses and butcher shops, so they would not be seen wearing dirty clothes.

These interventions provided solutions to accommodate existing norms without directly challenging them.

We also trialled some interventions aimed at transforming gender norms. We organised broadcasts on local radio talk shows, featuring a panel discussion between gender officers from Ripple Effect, community leaders and local men who explained why they supported their wives and daughters to work in the pig industry.

For instance, in one broadcast, one local leader shared his family’s story:

My wife rears pigs in large numbers, and I help her look for markets. When I travel, I bring her feeds for them. A home without money is unhappy. Piggery projects are family enterprises … When a woman earns an income, her husband is relieved financially; an empowered woman is a responsible woman.

We also held large community meetings, and used recordings from these shows to spark dialogue about these issues.

The changes

Over a year we observed changes.

Women butchers, farmers and artificial insemination agents felt more confident and accepted, and their services were sought after, especially by other women.

They were able to negotiate higher prices for their pigs. They invested their savings in their piggeries; some were able to use the profits to buy their own land and build houses.

There has been movement towards policy changes, too. Traditionally, pigs have had to be killed in official slaughterhouses – male-dominated spaces. Women did not feel welcome there, and men felt women would not be able to cope with the practical act of slaughter.

After our work in the sector, including inspection officials, authorities are now allowing some women to slaughter their pigs at home.

Lessons

Norms are powerful. Any efforts to improve livelihoods, boost community health, or grow a particular industry will be shaped by these norms. Ignoring them is a recipe for failure, while understanding them – and, where appropriate, moving beyond them – can benefit a whole community.

To transform restrictive norms, both men and women must be included in dialogues that encourage critical curiosity about their impacts. Religious, political and community leaders – people who often enforce these unwritten rules – must also be part of the conversations and solutions.

Radio talk shows and social media can showcase women successfully performing traditionally masculine tasks and supportive men, to normalise new behaviours and reduce shaming. And something as simple as professional clothing can send a signal that women are competent – and clean.

Gender norms can change, and these social changes can have practical and economic effects. Livestock development, as we have seen in Uganda’s pig industry, can be an entry point to promote gender equality.

At the same time, removing barriers to women’s participation can boost families’ incomes, bolster rural industries and alleviate poverty.

Challenge norms, empower women, and everyone benefits.

The Conversation

Esther Leah Achandi received funding from the CGIAR Sustainable Animal and Aquatic Foods (SAAF) Science Program, with funding from CGIAR Trust Fund donors. We would like to thank all funders who support this research through their contributions to the CGIAR Trust Fund:
www.cgiar.org/funders.

– ref. Women working in Uganda’s pig sector: how challenging prejudices can unlock opportunities – research – https://theconversation.com/women-working-in-ugandas-pig-sector-how-challenging-prejudices-can-unlock-opportunities-research-277751

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Political violence in South Africa is driven by a power elite trying to establish dominance – new research

Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Ivor Chipkin, Associate lecturer, University of Pretoria

For much of the past two decades, South Africa’s recurring waves of protest have been interpreted through a dominant lens: the failure of the post-apartheid state to deliver services to its poorest citizens. Rising unemployment, corroding infrastructure and inadequate housing are the familiar explanations offered.

We are political scientists who have been analysing protests and protest data for years. In a recent article we propose that the overall pattern of protest activity in South Africa cannot be explained by socio-economic conditions alone. It tracks the internal power struggles of the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC).

This has led us to a new reading of state capture.

As we set out in a paper in 2025, state capture in South Africa is often reduced to a phenomenon of large-scale corruption. The focus has been on the way that private businesses, working with politicians, repurposed legislative and administrative processes to serve their interests and disable the criminal justice system to avoid consequences.

The conventional understanding casts state capture as looting: the opportunistic and organised theft of public resources by politically connected networks and enabled by a compromised presidency.

We do not contest the reality of this pillaging. But we argue that it was also something more structurally purposeful. State capture, in our account, was the mechanism by which former president Jacob Zuma sought to forge a “power elite” in the ANC.

This is a term we borrow from the sociological tradition of C. Wright Mills to refer to a small cohesive group that is able to make decisions with national consequences in political, military and economic institutions. In contrast a politically connected network may have influence but is too diffuse to exercise power as such.

The power elite matters because it explains who really makes the biggest decisions in society and why democratic institutions do not always fully control those decisions.

The argument we’re presenting has consequences for how the country understands what state capture is, and the trajectory of South African democracy itself.

Protests as a barometer

Drawing on data from the South African Police Service, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, and the Institute for Security Studies, we identify a striking pattern. Protest events rose sharply from around 2006, reaching what some researchers called “insurrectionary proportions” by 2011.

Then they stabilised and began to decline between roughly 2013 and 2017. This period coincided with the consolidation of Zuma’s hold on power and the height of state capture.

After 2018, protests surged again to unprecedented levels. In 2021, the country
experienced its worst civil revolt since the end of apartheid.

The socio-economic conditions typically cited to explain protest – unemployment, inequality, poor service delivery – do not follow this same pattern. They did not improve during the 2013-2017 lull. If anything, they worsened. As our paper records, municipal audit outcomes deteriorated sharply by the end of the period.

Inequality, measured by Gini coefficients across South Africa’s major
cities, remained essentially unchanged. The exception was Cape Town, where inequality seems to have declined.

The stabilisation of protest activity, we conclude, cannot be attributed to improvements in the living conditions of poor South Africans.

Something else was suppressing the mobilisation of discontent.

Our answer draws on political sociology and on comparative work on elite formation in Africa and beyond. We conclude that protests are instruments of elite competition. This includes the tactical deployments of professional agitators by local politicians and their networks contesting for control of resources, positions and patronage within the ANC.

When these competitions are acute and unresolved, they spill outward as protests. When they are contained, protest subsides.

The how

By repurposing state-owned enterprises away from their public mandates, the Zuma network generated enormous rents that were then used for private enrichment and to finance factional political activity. This included paying for party rallies, sustaining provincial and regional networks, creating sympathetic media infrastructure, and distributing cash and contracts to potential opponents in exchange for loyalty or silence.

The result was a temporary stabilisation of what had been a fractured and contested elite terrain.

Between roughly 2013 and 2017, a group of politically aligned operators was able to discipline internal competition, in part by allocating positions in government, state-owned enterprises and the party apparatus.

Those who would not be bought were expelled, marginalised, or subjected to violence. We note that political assassinations rose sharply during Zuma’s second term. Evidence before the Zondo Commission into state capture pointed to the deployment of armed units under presidential operational control.

The relative “stability” observable in protest data between 2013 and 2017 was the successful suppression of elite competition through corruption, patronage and coercion. The modest improvement in municipal spending was the result of elite power exercised over administrative systems.

The unravelling under Ramaphosa

If Zuma’s presidency saw the construction of a power elite, Cyril Ramaphosa’s has seen its unravelling.

The consequences have been severe.

At the ANC’s 54th national conference in December 2017, Ramaphosa narrowly defeated Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for the party presidency. Zuma’s internal compact then began to fracture. The spike in protest activity that followed was almost immediate.

Ramaphosa was not prepared to deploy corruption and violence as political solutions. But without an alternative basis for managing elite competition, the ANC’s internal fissures deepened.

There were symptoms of this disintegration in 2023:

Gatekeeping became decentralised and unregulated. Elite contestation began migrating out of the party system altogether.

A sobering conclusion, and hint of hope

We conclude that some of it will be pushed towards organised crime. Mafia-type networks, we suggest, should be expected to grow.

There is, however, a more hopeful possibility. The reason the ANC has functioned as the primary arena for elite competition is that it has controlled access to the “gate” – the allocation of positions in the state, the civil service and state-owned enterprises.

Remove that control, and the character of elite competition changes. This is precisely what is at stake in the amendments to the Public Service Act of 1994. Signed into law by Ramaphosa on 26 March 2026, it was gazetted on 1 April 2026.

The legislation aims to:

  • reduce executive discretion over appointments in the public service

  • insulate civil service recruitment and operations from party-political interference.

If implemented, political parties will be compelled to compete for support through policy and performance rather than patronage. Elite competition will shift to the public administration system itself. Ideally, this will be governed by merit, transparency and professional standards.

We are cautious about the prospects for this reform. History is not encouraging and the political conditions are challenging.

But if it can end gatekeeping, new legislation like the Public Service Amendment Act will change the elite social terrain in South Africa.

The Conversation

Ivor Chipkin and Jelena Vidojević are affiliated with New South Institute

Jelena Vidojević 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. Political violence in South Africa is driven by a power elite trying to establish dominance – new research – https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-south-africa-is-driven-by-a-power-elite-trying-to-establish-dominance-new-research-280504

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Entre la mode et le cinéma, une longue histoire d’amour… et de marketing

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Isabelle Chaboud, Professeur senior d’analyse financière, d’audit et de risk management – Directrice de Programme pour le MSc Fashion Design & Luxury Management- Responsable de la spécialisation MBA "Brand & Luxury Management", GEM

Dans *le Diable s’habille en Prada*, la mode est mise en scène comme instrument de pouvoir et de transformation. Allociné

Dès ses origines, le cinéma a utilisé le costume pour ancrer le récit dans une réalité historico-sociale. Mais à partir des années 1960, le vêtement dépasse sa fonction illustrative pour devenir un outil narratif et symbolique.

La robe noire d’Audrey Hepburn dans Diamants sur canapé (Blake Edwards, 1961), signée Hubert de Givenchy, est un exemple marquant du moment où le vêtement a acquis une toute nouvelle dimension à l’écran. Ce fourreau en satin, aux découpes minimalistes dans le dos, incarne l’élégance intemporelle et consacre l’alliance entre haute couture et septième art. La scène immortalisée devant les vitrines de Tiffany’s propulse au rang d’icône la « petite robe noire », popularisée par Coco Chanel dans les années 1920, et en fait un symbole d’élégance inégalée.

Quant à la robe portée par l’héroïne, elle deviendra l’un des costumes les plus chers de l’histoire du cinéma. Le seul exemplaire vendu sera adjugé 608 000 euros aux enchères en 2006.

L’âge d’or des collaborations

Les années 1980 marquent un tournant décisif avec l’arrivée de Giorgio Armani, dont les silhouettes minimalistes et déstructurées redéfinissent l’élégance masculine et féminine. C’est en créant la garde-robe de Richard Gere dans American Gigolo (Paul Schrader, 1980) qu’Armani se fait connaître du public américain. Ses costumes, épurés et sophistiqués, deviennent sa signature visuelle et lancent une mode qui demeure influente encore à ce jour. Le couturier milanais multiplie ensuite les collaborations marquantes : il habille Kevin Costner, Sean Connery et Robert De Niro dans les Incorruptibles (Brian De Palma, 1987), Lauren Bacall dans A Star for Two (Jim Kaufman, 1991), puis à nouveau Kevin Costner dans Bodyguard (Mick Jackson, 1992). Ces apparitions contribuent à forger l’image d’un style Armani synonyme de puissance discrète et d’élégance intemporelle.

Cette relation privilégiée entre Armani et Hollywood se poursuit avec George Clooney et Brad Pitt dans Ocean’s Thirteen (Steven Soderbergh, 2007) dont il signera les tenues tout comme celles de Tom Cruise dans Mission Impossible 4 (Brad Bird, 2011), ou encore celles de Leonardo DiCaprio dans Le Loup de Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013), où le personnage de Jordan Belfort arbore des costumes trois-pièces qui symbolisent son ascension et sa démesure. Ces collaborations illustrent comment la mode peut servir la narration, renforcer la crédibilité des personnages et ancrer le spectateur dans une époque ou un milieu social précis.

Leonardo DiCaprio dans le Loup de Wall Street.
Allociné

La mode comme catalyseur de métamorphose

Le vêtement, au cinéma, est vecteur de transformation. Des chercheurs se sont penchés sur ce processus à travers Pretty Woman (Garry Marshall, 1990). Le film reprend de façon moderne le thème archétypal de la transformation présent dans trois contes classiques : Cendrillon, Pygmalion et La Belle et la Bête. Vivian Ward, interprétée par Julia Roberts, femme de la rue dépeinte comme naïve mais charmante, se métamorphose grâce à ses tenues, passant d’une image marginale à une élégance sophistiquée qui lui permet de conquérir l’attention d’Edward Lewis, riche homme d’affaires interprété par Richard Gere. Les chercheurs soulignent que Pretty Woman reflète une société en mutation, où l’identité personnelle est de plus en plus façonnée par l’image et le style. Les robes à pois, la robe blanche et le chapeau noir portés sur Rodeo Drive, ou encore la robe de soirée rouge à l’opéra, deviennent des symboles de cette métamorphose, popularisant des tendances qui marqueront la mode américaine des années 1990.

Quand la mode façonne l’ambition et l’identité professionnelle

Dans le Diable s’habille en Prada (David Frankel, 2006), adapté du roman de Lauren Weisberger, la mode n’est pas seulement un accessoire, mais un instrument de pouvoir et de transformation. Andrea Sachs, jeune journaliste fraîchement diplômée interprétée par Anne Hathaway, devient l’assistante de Miranda Priestly, rédactrice en chef tyrannique du magazine Runway (incarnée par Meryl Streep).

Initialement moquée pour son manque de style, Andrea subit une métamorphose vestimentaire qui renforce sa prise de confiance en elle. Le manteau blanc, le blazer vert et la jupe plissée, ou encore les bottes noires Chanel à hauteur de cuisse deviennent les marqueurs visuels de son évolution, illustrant comment l’adoption des codes de la mode peut ouvrir les portes d’un monde professionnel impitoyable. Vingt ans après, la sortie du second opus pose une question centrale : Andrea saura-t-elle s’affirmer davantage face à Miranda et aux autres femmes ambitieuses de l’industrie, notamment en adoptant des pièces empruntées au vestiaire masculin ? Quelles nouvelles silhouettes émergeront comme symboles de cette rivalité et de cette quête d’émancipation ?

Du placement produit à la création de tendances

Le cinéma et les séries, en exposant des marques de luxe, sont devenus des leviers marketing majeurs. Les années 2000, avec Sex and the City, systématisent cette pratique, transformant les écrans en vitrines pour Manolo Blahnik, Dolce & Gabbana, Prada ou Gucci. Les recherches de Sunita Kumar (2017) confirment que le placement produit dans les films est une excellente stratégie pour augmenter la notoriété d’une marque et pour atteindre facilement un segment de clientèle.

Dans un marché de luxe estimé à plus de 1,5 trilliard d’euros en 2024 avec près de 25 % de clients américains, rien de surprenant si les productions outre-Atlantique soient autant prisées par les marques. Pourtant, l’équilibre reste fragile : entre congruence narrative et saturation publicitaire, les marques doivent éviter de tomber dans la caricature, comme dans Emily in Paris, où l’exposition répétée de produits de luxe frôle parfois le théâtre parodique. Malgré cela, certaines apparitions plus discrètes comme celle de sacs produits par une maison iséroise dans la saison 5 de la série, ont entraîné une affluence de commandes, prouvant l’impact direct de ces placements.

Dans la série Emily in Paris, saison 4, épisode 3, un bal masqué très haute-couture.
Allociné

Quand la mode devient personnage principal

La série Love Story (2024), qui retrace la relation entre Carolyn Bessette et John F. Kennedy Jr des années 1990 à leur tragique disparition en 1999, offre une illustration frappante de l’influence de la mode à l’écran. Bien que la série explore avant tout la dimension psychologique de ce couple iconique, les tenues de Carolyn Bessette y occupent une place centrale. Son style minimaliste, épuré et élégant y devient un personnage à part entière, célébré sous le nom de « Carolyn Bessette Style ». Les réseaux sociaux s’emparent du phénomène, avec une explosion des recherches pour les pièces des années 1990 et le hashtag #CBK. Les plateformes de vente de seconde main voient leurs ventes de vêtements vintage bondir, tandis que Calvin Klein, marque emblématique de cette époque, bénéficie d’un regain d’intérêt inédit.

Ce succès démontre que la mode, lorsqu’elle est intégrée avec subtilité et pertinence, peut transcender son rôle d’accessoire pour devenir un véritable vecteur d’identification et d’aspiration. Le placement de marques de luxe n’a d’effet persuasif que lorsqu’il s’inscrit dans un contexte narratif cohérent. Love Story en est la preuve : en associant le style de Carolyn Bessette à une époque, une esthétique et une émotion, la série a su créer un phénomène culturel bien au-delà du simple placement de produit.

La mode à l’écran, entre miroir social et levier d’influence

Le costume cinématographique, d’abord simple accessoire, s’est imposé comme un langage universel, reflétant et anticipant les évolutions sociétales. Il transcende désormais sa fonction narrative pour devenir un outil de transformation identitaire et un levier marketing incontournable. À l’ère du numérique, où les frontières entre fiction et réalité s’estompent, les marques de luxe et le septième art entretiennent une relation symbiotique : l’un offre une scène, l’autre une histoire. Cette alliance, entre création artistique et stratégie commerciale, continue de captiver l’imaginaire collectif, tout en interrogeant les limites d’une exposition toujours plus intense. Les spectateurs, en quête d’identification et d’authenticité, voient-ils encore dans ces récits une promesse de métamorphose personnelle ?

Les influenceurs poussent désormais les créateurs de mode vers la production cinématographique pour réinventer leur storytelling, maîtriser leur image et toucher des audiences en quête de sens : la longue histoire d’amour et de marketing entre la mode et le cinéma n’est pas prête de s’essouffler, mais elle se réinvente sans cesse.

The Conversation

Isabelle Chaboud 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. Entre la mode et le cinéma, une longue histoire d’amour… et de marketing – https://theconversation.com/entre-la-mode-et-le-cinema-une-longue-histoire-damour-et-de-marketing-280379

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Directive européenne sur les sols : pourquoi les suivis par ADN environnemental ne suffiront pas

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Mickaël Hedde, Directeur de recherche, Inrae

La directive européenne sur la surveillance des sols, adoptée par l’Union européenne fin 2025, ambitionne de parvenir à des sols en bonne santé d’ici à 2050. Ces derniers se situent, en effet, au carrefour de multiples enjeux : climat, biodiversité, alimentation, etc. Oui, mais avec quels outils de mesure ? Le texte décidé à Bruxelles n’impose, pour l’heure, que l’approche fondée sur l’ADN environnemental. La France dispose pourtant d’une forte expérience de mesure de la qualité des sols, qui pourrait être avantageusement mise à profit : les meilleurs outils de suivi sont ceux qui intègrent de façon simultanée plusieurs approches complémentaires.

Depuis novembre 2025, la Directive européenne sur la surveillance et la résilience des sols impose aux États membres d’évaluer régulièrement la biodiversité des sols. Pour la partie biologique, la directive prévoit le suivi, tous les six ans, de la diversité microbienne des sols (bactéries et champignons) à partir de l’ADN environnemental (ADNe).

Or, si l’ADNe constitue un outil puissant pour détecter la biodiversité à grande échelle, il est insuffisant, à lui seul, pour interpréter les changements observés et en identifier les causes. En effet, les communautés bactériennes et fongiques ne représentent qu’une partie de la biodiversité des sols, qui inclut également de nombreux organismes aux rôles écologiques cruciaux et variés.

Le fonctionnement des sols repose également sur l’abondance, la biomasse et l’activité des organismes vivants, dimensions qui ne peuvent être évaluées par la seule détection moléculaire. Une approche graduée combinant plusieurs protocoles complémentaires est donc nécessaire pour produire des indicateurs robustes et utiles pour l’action publique.

L’expérience française, notamment à travers le réseau de mesure de la qualité des sols (RMQS) et le GIS Sol, constitue, à ce titre, un référentiel d’interprétation des résultats et un cadre opérationnel déjà éprouvé pour la surveillance de la biodiversité des sols. Celui-ci pourrait avantageusement compléter le socle prévu par la législation européenne.

L’ADN environnemental, nécessaire mais pas suffisant

L’ADNe est une approche moléculaire et, à ce titre, présente des avantages en matière de surveillance environnementale : détection large – et a priori standardisée – de la biodiversité, forte comparabilité spatiale et temporelle… De telles méthodes constituent un outil particulièrement efficace pour détecter des changements dans la composition des communautés biologiques.

Cependant, les signatures moléculaires issues de l’ADNe ne permettent pas toujours d’identifier correctement les taxons présents dans les sols. Elles peuvent présenter des biais de représentativité. Elles sont, de plus, souvent peu corrélées à d’autres caractéristiques biologiques essentielles pour caractériser la biodiversité et le fonctionnement des sols, telles que l’abondance des organismes, leur biomasse, leur structure démographique ou encore leurs activités. Elles offriront donc une vision incomplète – voire parfois déformée – de la santé des sols.

Or, au-delà de la simple détection de changements de diversité, les dispositifs de surveillance doivent également permettre d’interpréter ces évolutions, c’est-à-dire, comprendre ce qu’elles impliquent pour la fonctionnalité de sols, par exemple pour l’agriculture, et d’en identifier les causes. C’est cela qui permettra d’évaluer l’efficacité des politiques publiques et des pratiques de gestion. Dans ce contexte, réduire la complexité biologique et écologique des sols à cette unique composante comporte un risque lié à ses difficultés d’interprétation.

La directive prévoit toutefois que les États membres puissent compléter les indicateurs obligatoires par d’autres indicateurs biologiques dans leurs dispositifs nationaux de surveillance, ouvrant ainsi la possibilité d’approches plus intégrées.

Un outil d’aide à la décision publique

La surveillance de l’environnement poursuit deux objectifs distincts et complémentaires : détecter des changements de l’état des écosystèmes et attribuer ces changements à des pressions environnementales, des usages des sols ou des pratiques de gestion. Ces deux dimensions sont étroitement liées par les processus biologiques et écologiques qui structurent le fonctionnement des écosystèmes.

Au-delà de leur portée scientifique, les indicateurs utilisés pour le suivi de la biodiversité des sols constituent un outil d’aide à la décision publique. Il ne s’agit pas seulement d’identifier les dynamiques des communautés biologiques, mais aussi d’en comprendre les causes. Cela concerne donc aussi, et d’abord, les décideurs publics. Il s’agit d’orienter les pratiques d’aménagement et de gestion durable, d’identifier les situations de dégradation, de mener des politiques pour remédier et de pouvoir en évaluer l’efficacité.

Un dispositif de surveillance qui se limiterait à la détection de changements de la biodiversité des sols sans permettre leur interprétation et leur attribution aux pressions environnementales offrirait une base limitée pour l’évaluation des politiques publiques et la mise en œuvre de stratégies de gestion adaptées.

La biodiversité ne se résume pas au seul nombre de taxons

Les fonctions écologiques du sol – telles que la régulation de l’eau et des contaminants, la fourniture des nutriments, le stockage de carbone, l’entretien de la structure ou le support de la biodiversité elle-même – ne sont pas des états statiques, mais des processus dynamiques. Elles reposent sur l’activité des organismes vivants, leur biomasse et leurs caractéristiques fonctionnelles (physiologie, comportement) ainsi que leurs interactions (compétition, symbiose, parasitisme). Elles s’expriment par des flux et des vitesses de renouvellement plutôt que par de simples stocks.

Dans ce cadre, les approches moléculaires fournissent une information précieuse sur la présence d’organismes, mais ne permettent pas, à elles seules, d’évaluer ces processus dynamiques ni leur intensité. Une interprétation correcte du fonctionnement des sols nécessite donc des mesures complémentaires ainsi que des référentiels d’interprétation permettant de relier les indicateurs biologiques aux différents contextes d’usage des sols et aux conditions environnementales.

Les données ADNe sont de plus en plus utilisées pour développer de nouvelles approches, par exemple celles fondées sur les réseaux d’interactions, qui permettent de représenter l’organisation des communautés biologiques du sol. Lorsque ces réseaux sont construits uniquement à partir de données de présence ou de co-occurrence, ils reflètent surtout le partage de conditions écologiques ou de niches environnementales par différentes espèces.

Cela ne fournit alors que des informations indirectes sur les activités biologiques à l’œuvre et sur les flux de matière et d’énergie, qui déterminent pourtant aussi le fonctionnement des sols. L’interprétation écologique nécessite des informations complémentaires, notamment sur l’abondance ou la biomasse des organismes. C’est ainsi que l’on peut relier les communautés biologiques aux processus écologiques qui soutiennent les fonctions du sol.

Une approche graduée et complémentaire

Afin de concilier efficacité opérationnelle et pertinence écologique, le suivi de la biodiversité des sols gagne à combiner plusieurs types d’approches, chacune apportant une information spécifique sur l’état et le fonctionnement des communautés biologiques.

Les approches fondées sur l’ADNe permettent une détection large et standardisée de la biodiversité microbienne, et pourraient être étendues à d’autres organismes comme les invertébrés.

D’autres méthodes reposent sur l’observation directe des organismes de la faune du sol, l’estimation de leur abondance ou de leur biomasse, ou encore l’analyse de leurs caractéristiques fonctionnelles. Elles apportent des informations essentielles sur la structure biologique et le rôle écologique des communautés du sol.

Ces approches ne doivent pas être considérées comme mutuellement exclusives, mais comme des outils complémentaires. Elles permettent de relier la composition des communautés biologiques (structure taxonomique et fonctionnelle) aux processus écologiques qui soutiennent les fonctions des sols. Leur combinaison est, à ce titre, particulièrement intéressante pour construire une stratégie de suivi présentant différents niveaux d’information.

Cette logique de complémentarité est déjà mise en œuvre dans certains dispositifs de suivi existants. Par exemple, dans le cadre du réseau français de surveillance des sols (RMQS) ou encore dans l’observatoire de biodiversité de montagne Orchamp. Ces approches n’ont pas vocation à être déployées partout, mais leur combinaison est indispensable pour interpréter correctement l’état et l’évolution de la biodiversité des sols.

Nos recommandations pour une mise en œuvre de la directive à l’échelle nationale

Préserver la capacité à comprendre, expliquer et agir suppose de reconnaître que la complexité biologique des sols appelle une diversité maîtrisée des approches de suivi.

Avec le soutien du GIS Sol, la France figure parmi les nations à la pointe du suivi de la biodiversité des sols. Elle a éprouvé cette approche, combinant plusieurs protocoles au sein du RMQS, depuis plusieurs années. Cette expérience, rare à l’échelle européenne, doit constituer la base sur laquelle construire le futur réseau national de surveillance des sols.

La directive prévoit, au-delà des indicateurs obligatoires, la possibilité pour les États membres de compléter leurs dispositifs par des indicateurs optionnels. Cette flexibilité offre l’opportunité de mettre en place un système de surveillance capable non seulement de détecter des tendances d’évolution de la biodiversité des sols, mais aussi d’en interpréter les causes et les possibilités de remédiation. Cela permet enfin d’évaluer les implications pour les politiques publiques.

Dans cette perspective, plusieurs principes devraient guider la déclinaison nationale de la directive européenne :

  • Ne pas restreindre la surveillance nationale de la biodiversité des sols à une mesure unique issue de l’ADNe, qui limite notre capacité à interpréter les changements observés.

  • Mettre en œuvre une combinaison de mesures complémentaires, permettant de relier la détection de la biodiversité à la structure des communautés et aux processus écologiques qui soutiennent les fonctions des sols, avec l’appui des des protocoles et des mesures qui seront développés dans les PEPR Dynabiod et SolsVivants.

  • Développer des référentiels d’interprétation ouverts et des cadres d’analyse permettant d’évaluer si les variations observées sont significatives, afin de relier les indicateurs biologiques aux usages des sols et aux pressions environnementales.

  • Tirer parti des dispositifs existants, notamment du RMQS soutenu par le GIS Sol, afin de garantir la cohérence, la comparabilité et la robustesse scientifique du futur système national de surveillance.

Cet article est une production conjointe du RMQS Biodiversité, des PEPR SolsVivants et Dynabiod et du RNEST, représentés par les co-auteurs. Ont également contribué à l’élaboration de ce document : Apolline Auclerc, Nolwenn Bougon, Miriam Buitrago, Philippe Hinsinger, Claudy Jolivet, Antoine Lévêque, Gwenaël Magne, Florence Maunoury-Danger, Jérôme Mathieu, Christian Mougin, Laurent Palka, Benjamin Pauget, Guénola Pérès, Sophie Pouzenc, Sophie Raous, Claire Salomon, Marie-Françoise Slack, Wilfried Thuiller, Cécile Villenave, Quentin Vincent.

The Conversation

Mickaël Hedde a reçu des financements de différents organismes français (OFB, ANR, ADEME) et de l’Union Européen (Horizon Europe) pour mener ses recherches au sein de l’INRAE.

Antonio Bispo est directeur de l’unité de recherche INRAE Info&Sols basée à Orléans. Il a reçu des financements de différents organismes français (Ministères, OFB, ANR, ADEME, Région Centre Val de Loire) et de l’Union Européen (Horizon Europe) pour mener ses recherches. L’unité de recherche pilote, pour le compte du GIS Sol (www.gissol.fr), les programmes nationaux d’inventaire et de surveillance des sols, elle gère également le système national d’information sur les sols.

Claire Chenu est membre de l’Association Française pour l’Etude des Sols (AFES), membre correspondant de l’Académie d’Agriculture et membre de l’Académie des Technologies. Elle co-préside le Comité Scientifique, Technique et d’Innovation du Réseau National d’Expertise Scientifique et Technique sur les Sols (CSTI RNEST). Elle a reçu des financements Européens (en particulier European Joint Programme SOIL) pour mener des recherches au sein d’INRAE et AgroParisTech

Flavien Poincot est ingénieur à l’Acta qui accompagne, anime et représentante le réseau des 19 instituts techniques agricoles, organismes de recherche appliquée travaillant pour l’ensemble des productions agricoles, animales et végétales.

Jérôme Cortet est membre de la Société française d’Écologie Évolution (SFE2) et de l’Association française pour l’Étude du Sol (AFES). Il co-préside actuellement le Comité Scientifique Technique et d’Innovation du Réseau National d’Expertise Scientifique et Technique sur les Sols (CSTI RNEST). Il a reçu des financements de différents organismes français (ANR, ADEME, Région Occitanie) pour mener ses recherches au sein du Centre d’Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive, laboratoire rattaché à l’Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry

– ref. Directive européenne sur les sols : pourquoi les suivis par ADN environnemental ne suffiront pas – https://theconversation.com/directive-europeenne-sur-les-sols-pourquoi-les-suivis-par-adn-environnemental-ne-suffiront-pas-280098