Co-publishings and translations

After the Africans’ first heated and indignant reactions to Nicolas Sarkozy’s speech in Dakar on July 26, 2007, his declarations on the African continent’s inaction or the absence of French responsibility in its current problems deserved a well-argued response, uncluttered with any emotional diversion. In the aim of enlightening President Sarkozy, yet also his entourage and, broadly speaking, the general public, about the reality of African history, Adame Ba Konaré launched in September 2007 a noticed call to the historians’ community. This book is the product of this mobilization: 25 contributions by world-famous experts or younger researchers, both African and European, who each tackle with rigor and precision one aspect of the continent’s rich, complex and little-known history.

Year of publication of the pan-African version: 2009, 350 pages, 15,5 X 24 cm

The result of a remarkable three-year-long investigation that took award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin across four continents (North and South America, Europe, and Asia), The World According to Monsanto tells the little-known yet shocking story of this agribusiness giant—the world’s leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms)—and how its new “green” face is no less malign than its PCB- and Agent Orange–soaked past.

Robin reports that, following its long history of manufacturing hazardous chemicals and lethal herbicides, Monsanto is now marketing itself as a “life sciences” company, seemingly convinced about the virtues of sustainable development. However, Monsanto now controls the majority of the yield of the world’s genetically modified corn and soy—ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households—and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern.

Released to great acclaim and controversy in France, throughout Europe, and in Latin America alongside the documentary film of the same name, The World According to Monsanto is sure to change the way we think about food safety and the corporate control of our food supply.

Marie-Monique Robin is an award-winning French journalist and filmmaker. She received the 1995 Albert-Londres Prize, awarded to investigative journalists in France. She is the director and producer of over thirty documentaries and investigative reports filmed in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. She lives outside of Paris. George Holoch has translated more than twenty books, including Notes on the Occupation (The New Press). He lives in Hinesburg, Vermont.

Year of publication: 2010 ; 384 pages

Ousmane Sy describes his journey, that of a negotiator extraordinaire, moving between action and reflection, between Africa and the world, between the past and the future. In this work from his lively and unapologetic pen dipped in personal experience, Ousmane Sy sets out real alternatives: an authentic decentralisation, a radical reform of the state, regional integration achieved by the people, the rethinking of international aid. What he offers us is a real project for Mali and Africa.

Ousmane SY is a doctor of economic and social development. He was a researcher at the Rural Economic Institute and headed up the UNDP programme in Mail, then piloted the Mission for Centralisation and Institutional Reform in Mali, before joining the governement as Minister of Territorial Adminstration and Local Communities, which gives him the opportunity to put his theoretical work into political practice. He has also created his own centre of expertise and advice, the Centre of Political and Institutional Expertise in Africa (CPIEA). Since 2002 he has been a coordinator for the Alliance for the Rethinking of Governance in Africa.

Preface: Pierre CALAME

Year of publication: 2009, 224 pages, 14 X 21,5 cm, ISBN: 978-2-84377-149-1

What does fair trade mean today? Who are the main stakeholders? What is its future? So many questions which this book sets out to answer by way of seven experiments on site in various regions of the worls. In the course of this journey, the reader will visit a small organisation of coffee producers in Chiapas, a quinoa farm in Bolivia, and India to explore less traditional forms of fair trade.
This book reveals the many facets of an ever-growing movement, seeking the human face behind the consumer, the community behind the producer and to redefine the social and political links among those long reduced to disembodied economic players. Beyond the sterile criticism levelled against it in recent years, but without lapsing into an idealised discourse, the authors provide food for thought on the issues raised by fair trade compared with appeals for fairer international trade and the possibilities of an alternative market based on other values.

Corinne GENDRON is a tenured professor in the Department of Strategy, Social and Environmental Responsibility at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and holds the Chair of Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development. She has written many books and articles on fair trade as well as sustainable development and social responsibility. She is regularly called on as an expert by private and public organisations in Quebec and internationally.

Socio-economist specialising in economic solidarity and fair trade, Arturo PALMA TORRES is currently an expert associate at CRIDA (France) and consultant at the Brazilian Ministry of Agrarian Development. He is a member of the movement for economic solidarity in France and the international network ALOE (Alliance for a Plural, Responsible and Supportive Economy).

Holder of a Masters Degree in Environmental Science, Véronique BISAILLPON is the coordinator of the Chair of Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development of the School of Management Sciences at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

Year of publication: 2009, 274 pages, 14 X 21,5 cm, ISBN: 978-2-84377-148-4

Ousmane Sy describes his journey, that of a negotiator extraordinaire, moving between action and reflection, between Africa and the world, between the past and the future. In this work from his lively and unapologetic pen dipped in personal experience, Ousmane Sy sets out real alternatives: an authentic decentralisation, a radical reform of the state, regional integration achieved by the people, the relaunch of international aid. What he offers us is a real project for Mali and Africa.

Preface: Pierre CALAME

Year of publication: 2009, 224 pages, 14 X 21,5 cm

In the context of globalization, how is it possible for humanity to reconcile its economic needs with the inescapable fact the natural resources are limited ? That is the question asked by Pierre Calame in this book.

This book bears the “Le Livre équitable” (Fair Book) label, which symbolizes this solidarity between publishers – solidarity also indirectly mobilizing readers: because this book is sold for 25 € in France, it can be bought half this price in Republic of Guinea.

Year of publication : 2009,
608 pages,
14 X 21,6 cm

The spread and consolidation of the women‘s movement in North and South over the past 30 years looks set to shape the course of social progress over the next generation. Peggy Antrobus asks

• Where are women now in the struggle against gender inequality ?
• What are the common issues that they face around the world ?
• What challenges confront the women‘s movements ?
• And what strategies are needed to meet them ?
  

The author draws on her long experience of feminist activism to set women‘s movements in their changing national and global context. Her analysis will be an invaluable aid to reflection and action for the next generation of women as they carry through the unfinished business of women‘s emancipation.
"Today the global women’s movement stands at the crossroads
between protecting hard-won gains and being swept away by the
tidal wave of globalization. It is my belief that feminist politics and praxis hold the key to addressing the threat this terrifying conjuncture poses for human security everywhere".

Peggy Antrobus was born in Jamaica. Her studies in Economics led her to a gradual commitment in the field of socioeconomic development. Working with NGOs and discovering feminism have transformed her understanding of economy and politics forever. She has worked for the UN, the Women and Development Unit (WAND) and the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) network.

See English version at www.zedbooks.co.uk

Set up in Porto Alegre in 2001 in response to the Davos World Economic Forum, the World Social Forum has, with each publication, continued to flesh out, internationalize and build up its organization.
However, due to lack of information on the content of the debates, it has never succeeded in convincing the media, public opinion and politicians of its ability to put forward constructive ideas. A great many proposals have nevertheless emerged. Drawing on their memory of the previous forums, eleven editors, women and men from different regions of the world, covered the debates at Porto Alegre, for the 2005 WSF event, and collected the proposals that emerged from the eleven themes addressed. Their work demonstrates that the World Social Forum is a genuine vehicle for helping build a world community that is able to produce a significant amount of intellectual advances and put forward specific proposals based on its conviction that “another world is possible”.

Year of publication: 2006

Translated into portuguese by Giselle UNTI.

This book was co-published by the Brazilian publisher
Vozes, the Angolan publisher Chá de Caxinde and the Portuguese publisher Campo das Letras and received support from the Prince Claus Foundation for culture and development.
Following Les batailles de l’eau by Mohammed Larbi Bougerra, this is the second French-language title of the “Enjeux Planète” series, translated and published in the Portuguese series named “Questões Mundiais”.

In the North as in the South, we like big cities, but we don’t like their violence. A common tendency is to blame the poorest inhabitants for this violence, and then, in order to fight against its spread, to adopt strategies based on strong security measures: our societies are quickly becoming societies of fear. Town planning, already, divides space into fortresses and ghettos. One cannot continue to conceptualize urbanization in police stations: an alternative analysis of the phenomena of urban violence and insecurity is necessary. This can only be done by putting this question in perspective, in the context of the violence of urbanization and globalisation, while also taking into account, the point of view of the poor and particularly among these poor, the “malicious ones”, outsiders, illegal immigrants, criminals, members of gangs.
When everything seems blocked, the “vision of the poor” opens the way to a pacification of urban territories. Against the current obsession with security, a creative dialogue is essential with those that the ruling power blames or distrusts. This book is addressed to all those who seek to understand the logic of the city, those for whom the city inspires fear and love, who don’t want to give up it, but also to the inhabitants of the extreme districts, even if they are poor and “malicious”, even if the city destroys them more than it protects them. To rebuild cities we can live in, we must disobey the models.

Year of publication: 2006,
188 pages

Translated by Patrick CAMILLER

Also available in Arabic, Portuguese, Spanish and French.

This English co-publication now accompanies the French-language (12 publishers), Portuguese-language (5
publishers), Arabic-language (5 publishers)and Spanish-language (1 publisher) versions.

Rapid population growth, climate change and pollution have combined to make it the resource over which wars may be fought in years to come. But does water have a price? Is it a right or a need?
Increasingly, water is viewed as a commodity whose function is to generate profits. In this book, Larbi Bouguerra argues that instead we should view it as a common good of humanity. Water has an exceptional cross-cultural symbolic value and its use raises enormous questions about our lifestyle, our ethics and our relationship with nature. Bouguerra makes a powerful case for a society that is more economical with water and manages it openly and democratically, as a global resource.

Year of publication: 2006,
208 pages

While Europeans are in a struggle or in forced coexistence with nature, the Chinese are, according to Confucian tradition, in symbiosis, in communion, mutually dependent. “We look at each other, the sky and I, without tiring”, sings the famous poet Li Po, cited by Yue Dai Yun. In the countless legends recounted by Yue Dai Yun, man is or becomes nature: how many young girls and (formerly human) gods or goddesses have been transformed into hills and their tears into streams? Mountains, river water and the immensity of seas are not things in China, but living realities that teach man time, death and the insurmountable. As a result, says Yue Dai Yun, we must “not force ourselves or, worse, oppose nature, but rather adapt to ourselves.” For many Chinese people, nature is the source, not the object, of intellectual thought. There is nothing like climbing, for example, to think: “The succession of mountains has no limits for the Chinese, for it represents the elevation of their mind and the expansion of their thought.” Let us not seek out the East-West opposition throughout these two texts. Doesn’t the aforementioned Chinese veneration for high reliefs correspond to our own tradition, that of the Sinai and the Thabor, not to mention the mount of the well-known Sermon? Would our mystics argue when the Chinese say, according to Yue Dai Yun: “There are mountains beyond the mountains; there is another world beyond ours”? And does China have a monopoly on wonder? The magic of nature’s products, which Miao women take to market in autumn, these wild, dazzling red fruits, these leaves of palm – Aristotle also knew this magic. His ideas, according to Anne Sauvagnargues, “were always limpid, full of rocks, animals, men and the starry sky that we observe at night when we lie on the ground.”
Reading these two very different, very literary texts, the reader learns about visions of the world and of nature that were often inherited from the distant past. Distant? Not really! The story of saving the moon", in which Yue Dai Yun heroically took part in her childhood, tells us how much traditional myths permeate men and women today and just may give them the strength to fight for a less despoiled nature

Year of publication: 1999

Two top-level researchers – a French geophysicist and a Chinese philosopher – talking about death: quite daunting for a reader unaccustomed to academic language. Not to fear. Professor Tang Yijie, president of the Academy of Chinese Culture, and Xavier Le Pichon, professor at the Collège de France, talk about their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, about their beliefs and their faith. Above all, about life.
Tang Yijie and Xavier Le Pichon have met several times to discuss the essential issues of existence. These two texts thus do not present a simple comparison. They respond to each other, with a nearly pedagogical concern for addressing the other’s culture and for presenting – and questioning – the most representative features of their own civilizations.

Although he considers the place of Christian culture within European culture to be “no doubt excessive,” Xavier Le Pichon chooses to approach the mystery of death from his personal perspective as a Catholic. In the European context, he lucidly shows the extent to which death – formerly incorporated into life and a reminder that “the fate of man is eternal happiness” – has become, through the centuries and with the advance of medicine, an event that is increasingly tied to the pain of living. A passage toward the light, yes, but at so high a cost! Impressive, for example, are these words written by his father on the approach of death: “Death is the most important act of life; it is like the seal affixed to a letter written with so many tears, so much blood and suffering. It is the crowning achievement of life.”

Year of publication: 1999

When we learn that a “Grand Diviner” existed long ago during the Middle Kingdom, a sort of oneiromantic secretary of state placed at the head of an “office of divination,” and when we read what Jin Siyan writes on the role of dreams in her own life, we understand that for the Chinese, dreams are a serious affair. Is it for the sake of counterpoint that Maurice Bellet rues the difficulty of Western man – “this dreamer who does not know himself” – to do the same? Not quite. Philosopher, psychoanalyst, priest and occasional novelist, Maurice Bellet knows and loves dreams after having worked with and on them for other people and for himself and after having long studied their creative value. Although he mentions himself only rarely in his contribution to this book, his analyses and parables reveal his true essence, as they contain much more experience than abstract speculation.
Jin Siyan attaches no more importance to the detached speculation of life. Formerly a teacher at the University of Beijing, lecturer at ENA and professor of Chinese civilization and comparative literature at the University of Artois, her interest is in recounting. She recounts the everyday dreams of her happy rural childhood, those of the legends and myths of ancient China; she describes ghosts and what the dream was in such troubled times as the Cultural Revolution.
For very different reasons, the two writers discuss the dream as mediator. For Maurice Bellet’s Western man, built on divisions – soul/body, subject/object – the dream is a sort of interface “at the junction of mind and body.”
For the Chinese, generally unfamiliar with this type of opposition, the dream is nevertheless an emissary. “It moves unhindered, Jin Siyan tells us, oscillating between the worlds of yin and yang.”

Year of publication: 1999

Symbol of progress and of the reasoning process that tirelessly seeks to explain the real and the fate of the universe, science is also an extraordinary locus of dialogue between cultures via its tendency toward the universal.

Pierre Léna, an astrophysicist, lays out a “promenade of science” mentioning questions that everyone asks themselves. Isn’t science, the search for the invisible through visible appearances, only the domain of specialists? A patient exercise in proof or an elaborate mathematical structure, maybe even a subtle relationship between truth and change?

A specialist in the human gene, Yang Huanming offers the Chinese perception of science, tied to cosmology, wisdom and the vision of the universe and the forces that drive it. He also addresses the ethical dimension in terms of the human genome.

The geography of time zones instructs us that when Paris goes to sleep, Shanghai wakes up. But if you ask a Chinese writer and a French writer to tell you what night is, they won’t talk (much) about sleep. Tang Ke Yang, a young specialist in comparative literature, and Martine Laffon, a philosopher, are too fascinated with the many facets of night to leave its riches to slumberers. The journey that they each propose to us, to the end of the night of their souls – and of their civilizations – is an invitation to see in the dark what we don’t see, to look into the night of the other to better understand him and to better understand ourselves.
They say that night illuminates. Gone is the fear of the child lost in the darkness; a mysterious alchemy emerges by which the night, as if by surprise, reveals something to us about the infinite. Tang Ke Yang and Martine Laffon have each had personal experience with it. One of them discovered in the night a “space of nonchalance in our life horsewhipped by reason”; for the other, nocturnal time reveals “what the eye and the other senses can no longer distinguish, for they have forgotten what they knew so well in the light of day.” Sleepless nights, those (so French) nights of mischief, once-forbidden nights in China when no one could stroll without special permission, nights of intoxication and nights of lucidity, nights of Pascal and Descartes when they did their best thinking, inner nights and trap-nights, nights of lamps, red lanterns and Chinese candles, nights celebrated according to Christian tradition, night of writers and poets. Based on this litany of evocations set forth by the two writers, we can categorically deny the doubt expressed in passing by Martine Laffon: “And what if night were only night?”

Year of publication: 1999

A pan-African solidarity co-publication: Éburnie (Côte d’Ivoire), Ganndal (Guinea), Sawa (Mali), Nstame (Gabon), Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin)

A pan-African solidarity co-publication: Éburnie (Côte d’Ivoire), Elondja (Democratic Republic of Congo), Sawa (Mali), Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin)

A pan-African solidarity co-publication: Éburnie (Côte d’Ivoire), Sawa (Mali), Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin)

A pan-African solidarity co-publication: Éburnie (Côte d’Ivoire), Ganndal (Guinea), Sawa (Mali), Nstame (Gabon), Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin), Sankofa & Gurli (Burkina Faso)

A pan-African co-publishing gathering Atelier des nomades (Mauritius) and Eburnie (Ivory Coast).

Date of publication: September 2020

This solidarity co-publishing is the result of a workshop on children’s literature organised by the Alliance in Abidjan in May 2019, as part of the International Conference of Independent Publishers 2019-2021. It received the support of the French Development Agency.

A pan-African co-publishing gathering Atelier des nomades (Mauritius) and Eburnie (Ivory Coast).

Date of publication: September 2020

This solidarity co-publishing is the result of a workshop on children’s literature organised by the Alliance in Abidjan in May 2019, as part of the International Conference of Independent Publishers 2019-2021. It received the support of the French Development Agency.

A pan-African co-publishing gathering Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin) and Vallesse (Ivory Coast).

Date of publication: September 2020

This solidarity co-publishing is the result of a workshop on children’s literature organised by the Alliance in Abidjan in May 2019, as part of the International Conference of Independent Publishers 2019-2021. It received the support of the French Development Agency.

A pan-African co-publishing gathering Ntsame (Gabon) and Elondja (DRC).

Date of publication: September 2020

This solidarity co-publishing is the result of a workshop on children’s literature organised by the Alliance in Abidjan in May 2019, as part of the International Conference of Independent Publishers 2019-2021. It received the support of the French Development Agency.

A pan-African co-publishing gathering Ganndal (Guinea Conakry), Eburnie (Ivory Coast), Ruisseaux d’Afrique (Benin), Graines de Pensées (Togo), Ntsame (Gabon) and Elondja (DRC).
Date of publication: September 2020

This solidarity co-publishing is the result of a workshop on children’s literature organised by the Alliance in Abidjan in May 2019, as part of the International Conference of Independent Publishers 2019-2021. It received the support of the French Development Agency.

Children’s illustrated book – bilingual French-Malagasy edition
Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) into French by Joana Cabral, translated into Malagasy by Veloniaina Rabakoly

Éditions Jeunes Malgaches, 2014, 32 pages.
Original edition: Pallas Editora (Brazil)

ISBN: 978-2 916362-42-7

Selling price: 16 0000 Ar (4 €)

This book is the result of several meetings between publishers who are members of the International Alliance of Independent Publishers (“Children’s literature” group of the Alliance), at book fairs (collective stand for young readers) and through workshops on children’s books. These opportunities of sharing mutual knowledge, know-how, and discussions foster unprecedented editorial partnerships. By supporting and promoting these partnerships, the members of the Alliance participate in the circulation of texts and ideas from one continent to another, but also from one language to another. Through these solidarity-based editorial partnerships, translation flows that are still “rare” are being developed, for example here from Brazilian Portuguese to Malagasy.