Matthieu Schoenhals

Alboukadel Kassambara

John De Vos

Dirk Hose

Jérôme Moreaux

Bernard Klein
email: bernard.klein@montp.inserm.fr

Pr Bernard Klein

Embryonic stem cell markers expression in cancers

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Introduction

Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, c-Myc are expressed in embryonic stem (ES) cells, and their over-expression can induce pluripotency in both mouse and human somatic cells, indicating that these factors regulate the developmental signaling network necessary for ES cell pluripotency [1; 2].

Cancer stem cells refer to a subset of tumor cells that has the ability to self-renew and generate tumor heterogeneity [3; 4; 5].

Oct4 is a major transcription factor that is mandatory for the self-renewal and pluripotency characteristics of ES cells and germ cells. Rare cells that express Oct4 were identified in several somatic cancers [START_REF] Sotomayor | Oct4A is expressed by a subpopulation of prostate neuroendocrine cells[END_REF]. Oct4A expressing cells are present in human benign and malignant prostate glands and the frequency of Oct4A expressing cells increases in prostate cancers [START_REF] Sotomayor | Oct4A is expressed by a subpopulation of prostate neuroendocrine cells[END_REF]. A subpopulation of the Oct4A expressing cells coexpressed Sox2, an ES cell marker [START_REF] Sotomayor | Oct4A is expressed by a subpopulation of prostate neuroendocrine cells[END_REF]. In the intestine, Oct4 expression causes dysplasia by inhibiting cellular differentiation in a manner similar to that in the ES cells [START_REF] Hochedlinger | Ectopic expression of Oct-4 blocks progenitor-cell differentiation and causes dysplasia in epithelial tissues[END_REF].

In the mouse nervous system, Sox2 is expressed in neural stem cells, in early precursors and in few mature neurons, and is essential to maintain the cell proliferative potential [8; 9]. Sox2 is also expressed in several malignant tissues [10; 11; 12; 13]. These data and the known role of Sox2 in development and cell differentiation suggest that this transcription factor may be relevant to the aberrant growth of tumor cells.

Myc has a gene activation function, a finding consistent with Myc ability to recruit multiple coactivator complexes [14; 15]. The ability of Myc to bind to a staggeringly large number of genomic loci has also been demonstrated in ES cells [START_REF] Kim | Pluripotent stem cells induced from adult neural stem cells by reprogramming with two factors[END_REF] and is likely to underlie its activity as part of the "magic quartet" of transcription factors that can reprogram somatic cells to pluripotency [1; 17; 18; 19]. High levels of Myc may block cell differentiation and enhance self-renewal of committed and differentiated cells [START_REF] Eilers | Myc's broad reach[END_REF]. During tumor progression, Myc would promote the formation of cancer-initiating cells that retain developmental plasticity. Expression of Myc in hematopoietic stem cells leads to the rapid formation of pre B-cell lymphomas if apoptosis is blocked by coexpression of Bcl-2.

Cells derived from these lymphomas can be differentiated into either B-lymphocytes or macrophages in vitro [START_REF] Strasser | Progenitor tumours from Emubcl-2-myc transgenic mice have lymphomyeloid differentiation potential and reveal developmental differences in cell survival[END_REF]. Similarly, cells derived from liver tumors generated using an inducible Myc transgene differentiate into hepatocytes and biliary cells that go on to form bile ducts when the transgene is turned off [START_REF] Shachaf | MYC inactivation uncovers pluripotent differentiation and tumour dormancy in hepatocellular cancer[END_REF]. A key function of Myc during normal development is to drive expansion of transit amplifying cells. Due to this unique combination of properties, oncogenic deregulation of Myc expression generates cells possessing a tumor phenotype that has no counterpart during normal development [START_REF] Eilers | Myc's broad reach[END_REF].

Kruppel-like factor 4 (Klf4) is a transcription factor expressed in a wide variety of tissues in humans and is important for many different physiological processes, including development, differentiation, and maintenance of normal tissue homeostasis [START_REF] Evans | Roles of Krupel-like factor 4 in normal homeostasis, cancer and stem cells[END_REF]. Klf4 is a transcription factor that can either activate or repress transcription, depending on the target gene. Klf4 can function as an oncogene or a tumor suppressor depending on the type of cancer involved [START_REF] Evans | Roles of Krupel-like factor 4 in normal homeostasis, cancer and stem cells[END_REF]. Klf4 is an anti-proliferative factor in differentiated epithelia, and acts as a tumor suppressor in gastrointestinal cancers [24; 25]. However, Klf4 might also act as an oncogene [START_REF] Rowland | KLF4, p21 and context-dependent opposing forces in cancer[END_REF]. It is overexpressed in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma as an early event in its progression [START_REF] Foster | Oncogene expression cloning by retroviral transduction of adenovirus E1A-immortalized rat kidney RK3E cells: transformation of a host with epithelial features by c-MYC and the zinc finger protein GKLF[END_REF]. Klf4 expression is increased in ductal carcinoma of the breast [START_REF] Foster | Increase of GKLF messenger RNA and protein expression during progression of breast cancer[END_REF] and is associated with an aggressive phenotype and poorer prognosis [START_REF] Pandya | Nuclear localization of KLF4 is associated with an aggressive phenotype in early-stage breast cancer[END_REF]. In the skin, overexpression of Klf4 results in hyperplasia and dysplasia, eventually leading to squamous cell carcinoma [30; 31].

Recently, Ben-Porath et al. identified a subset of ES-cell associated transcription regulators that are highly expressed in poorly differentiated tumors revealing a link between genes associated with ES cell identity and the histopatology of tumors [START_REF] Ben-Porath | An embryonic stem cell-like gene expression signature in poorly differentiated aggressive human tumors[END_REF].

Cancers arise from a cancer stem cell, able of self-renewal and forming tumor hereterogeneity. The frequency of cancer stem cells is a matter of debate, depending of the technique used to detect it and the cancer type [5; 33]. Given the critical role of Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc to confer on adult cells self-renewal and pluripotency and their role in cancer, we have reviewed here the expression of Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc in various cancers, in comparison with their normal counterparts and in association with cancer staging.

Methods

Databases

We used Oncomine cancer microarray database (http://www.oncomine.org) [START_REF] Rhodes | ONCOMINE: a cancer microarray database and integrated data-mining platform[END_REF], Amazonia database (http://amazonia.montp.inserm.fr/) [START_REF] Assou | A meta-analysis of human embryonic stem cells transcriptome integrated into a web-based expression atlas[END_REF] and RAGE database (http://rage.montp.inserm.fr.gate2.inist.fr) [START_REF] Reme | A new method for class prediction based on signedrank algorithms applied to Affymetrix microarray experiments[END_REF] to study gene expression of Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc in 40 human tumor types and their normal tissue counterparts as indicated in Table 1. In order to compare the gene expression in a tumor type to its normal counterpart, gene expression data from a same study, performed with the same methodology, were used. The gene expression data were log transformed, median centered per array, and the standard deviation was normalized to one per array [START_REF] Rhodes | ONCOMINE: a cancer microarray database and integrated data-mining platform[END_REF]. A gene was considered as overexpressed when its mean value in tumor samples was significantly higher to its mean value in the normal tissue counterpart using a t test (P  .05).

Statistical analysis

Statistical comparisons were done with Mann Whitney or student t-test.

Results and discussion

We investigated the expression of Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc in cancer using publicly available gene expression data. The 40 tumor types investigated corresponded to 4 hematological malignancies and 36 solid tumors (Table 1).

Oct4 is overexpressed in solid and hematological malignancies

We found Oct4 overexpression in 1/4 hematological cancers and 10/36 solid tumors (Table 1). Overexpression of Oct4 was found in in CLL; oligodendroglioma, glioblastoma multiforme and astrocytoma; in bladder carcinoma; in primary colon cancer; in lung adenocarcinoma; in prostate cancer; in testis tumor; in ovarian carcinoma; in pancreatic cancer and in clear cell carcinoma compared to their normal counterpart tissues (Supplementary Figure S1).

Sox2 is overexpressed in solid tumors

Sox2 was significantly overexpressed in 7/36 solid tumors (Table 1). Overexpression of Sox2 was found in brain cancers; in hepatocellular carcinoma; in bladder carcinoma; in primary colon cancer; in lung adenocarcinoma; in prostate cancer and in seminoma compared to their normal counterpart tissues (Supplementary Figure S2).

KLF4 is overexpressed in all hematological malignancies and in some solid tumors

Klf4 was significantly overexpressed in in 1/4 hematological cancers and 7/36 solid tumors (Table 1): in acute lymphoblastic leukemia; in hairy cell leukemia; in multiple myeloma; in brain tumors; in prostate cancer; in yolk sac tumor compared to their normal counterpart tissues (Supplementary Figure S3).

c-Myc is overexpressed in solid and hematological malignancies

We found c-Myc overexpression in all hematological cancers and in 10/36 solid tumors (Table 1). Overexpression of c-Myc was found in leukemia; in lymphoma; in smoldering myeloma and in multiple myeloma; in brain tumors; in head and neck cancer; in primary colon cancer compared to normal adjacent mucosa; in breast carcinoma compared to normal breast; in lung adenocarcinoma; in tongue squamous cell carcinoma; in pancreatic cancer; in prostate cancer; in seminoma; in clear cell carcinoma and in salivary-gland tumors compared to their normal counterpart tissues (Supplementary Figure S4).

Correlations between Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc expression in tumor cells

Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and Myc are all co-overexpressed in 2/40 tumors: i.e. in prostate and brain cancers compared to normal counterparts (Table 1). 3 of these 4 factors were cooverexpressed in leukemia, lung tumors and testis cancer compared to their normal conterparts (Table 1). 2 factors were co-overexpressed in 5/40 tumor types: i.e. multiple myeloma, colon, bladder, pancreas and kidney. At least 1 out of the 4 pluripotency factors were overexpressed in 3/4 hematological cancers and in 15/40 solid tumors.

Link between Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc expression and tumor grade

Thus, we sought to find out whether Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and Myc expression could be associated with tumor progression and prognosis.

Oct4 was significantly overexpressed in glioma grade IV compared to grade II and III; in poorly differentiated breast carcinoma compared to well differentiated tumors from patients; in head and neck cancers grade IV compared to grade I and in metastatic sarcoma compared to non metatstatic sacrcoma (Table 2 and Supplementary Figure S5). Sox2 is overexpressed in bladder carcinoma grade III compare to grade I; in glioma grade IV compared to grade II and III; in head and neck cancers grade III and IV compared to grade I and II; in breast tumors grade III compared to grade I in 8 independent studies; in colorectal carcinoma T stage 4 compared to T stages Tis and T1; in cervical carcinoma stage IV compared to stage I; in endometrial carcinoma stage IV compared to stage I and T stage 4 compared to T stage 1; in metastatic sarcoma compared to non metastatic sarcoma; in metastatic papillary renal cell carcinoma compared to non metastatic papillary renal cell carcinoma and in thyroid gland carcinoma stage IV compared to stage I (Table 2 and Supplementary Figure S6). Klf4 is overexpressed in metastatic ovarian carcinoma compared to non metastatic ovarian carcinoma; in prostate carcinoma stage III compared to stage II and in primary melanoma tumors N stage 1 compared to N stage 0 (Table 2 and Supplementary Figure S7). C-Myc is overexpressed in poorly differentiated lung adenocarcinoma compared to well differentiated lung carcinoma; in ovarian carcinoma grade IV compared to grade I; in poorly differentiated pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma compared to well differentiated pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma; in breast carcinoma grade III compared to grade I; in breast ductal carcinoma stage N1 compared to stage N0; in mantle cell lymphoma grade IV compared to grade I; in metatstatic sarcoma compared to primary sarcoma and in melanoma stage N1 compared to stage N0 (Table 2 and Supplementary Figure S8). Sox2 has been found expressed in a variable percentage of cells in several malignant tissues [10; 11; 12; 13] and is essential to maintain the cell proliferative potential of neural stem cells [8; 9]. Furthermore Sox2 is overexpressed in patients with ovarian carcinoma dead at 5 years compared to patients alive at 5 years (P = .001) [START_REF] Bild | Oncogenic pathway signatures in human cancers as a guide to targeted therapies[END_REF] and in patients with melanoma metastasis tumor dead at 3 years compared to patients alive at 3 years (P = .007) [START_REF] Xu | Gene expression changes in an animal melanoma model correlate with aggressiveness of human melanoma metastases[END_REF] (Table 3 and Figure 1). C-Myc is overexpressed in patients with non-small cell lung cancer dead at 5 years compared to patients alive at 5 years (P = .007) [START_REF] Tomida | Gene expression-based, individualized outcome prediction for surgically treated lung cancer patients[END_REF]; in patients with glioma dead at 3 years compared to patients alive at 3 years (P = .008) [START_REF] Shai | Gene expression profiling identifies molecular subtypes of gliomas[END_REF]; in patients with breast carcinoma dead at 5 years compared to patients alive at 5 years (P = .007) [START_REF] Desmedt | Strong time dependence of the 76-gene prognostic signature for node-negative breast cancer patients in the TRANSBIG multicenter independent validation series[END_REF]; in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma dead at 5 years compared to patients alive at 5 years (P = .006 and P = .007) [42; 43]; in patients with Burkitt's lymphoma dead at 5 years compared to patients alive at 5 years (P = .006) [START_REF] Dave | Molecular diagnosis of Burkitt's lymphoma[END_REF] and in 1 year relapsing multiple myeloma patients compared to patients with no relapse at 1 year (P = .001) [START_REF] Carrasco | High-resolution genomic profiles define distinct clinico-pathogenetic subgroups of multiple myeloma patients[END_REF] (Table 3 and Figure 1). Oct4 and Klf4 expressions were not associated with prognostic in the 40 tumor types investigated (Table 3).

Conclusions:

A key goal in cancer research is to identify the mechanism by which cancer stem cells arise and self-renew. We have shown here that at least one gene coding for 1/4 pluripotency factors -Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc -is overexpressed in 18/40 cancer types investigated. In addition, for a given tumour, the expression of these genes is associated with tumor progression or bad prognosis. The activation of an ES cell-like transcriptional program in differentiated adult cells may induce pathologic self-renewal characteristics of cancer stem cells. In particular, it was recently demonstrated that c-Myc activates an embryonic stem cell like program in epithelial cells leading to epithelial tumor initiating cells [START_REF] Wong | Module map of stem cell genes guides creation of epithelial cancer stem cells[END_REF]. Cancer stem cells are so named because they possess qualities reminiscent of normal tissue stem cells including self-renewal, prolonged survival, and the ability to give rise to cells with more differentiated characteristics. Effort is now focused on identifying cancer stem cells in various malignancies, and defining the cells of origin. This review of publicly available data emphasizes the cancer types associated with Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and/or c-Myc overexpression and may encourage further studies to address the role of these pluripotent transcription factors in these cancers. A. c-Myc expression in multiple myeloma relapsing patients and patients with no relapse [START_REF] Carrasco | High-resolution genomic profiles define distinct clinico-pathogenetic subgroups of multiple myeloma patients[END_REF], in alive patients with and dead patients with breast carcinoma, [START_REF] Desmedt | Strong time dependence of the 76-gene prognostic signature for node-negative breast cancer patients in the TRANSBIG multicenter independent validation series[END_REF] , in MM patients with no relapse, in MM patients with relapse [START_REF] Carrasco | High-resolution genomic profiles define distinct clinico-pathogenetic subgroups of multiple myeloma patients[END_REF], in alive and dead patients with diffuse large B cell lymphoma [42; 43], in alive and dead patients with Burkitt's lymphoma [START_REF] Dave | Molecular diagnosis of Burkitt's lymphoma[END_REF], in alive and dead patients with lung cancer [START_REF] Tomida | Gene expression-based, individualized outcome prediction for surgically treated lung cancer patients[END_REF], in alive and dead patients with brain cancer [START_REF] Shai | Gene expression profiling identifies molecular subtypes of gliomas[END_REF].

B. Sox2 expression in alive and dead patients with ovarian carcinoma [START_REF] Bild | Oncogenic pathway signatures in human cancers as a guide to targeted therapies[END_REF] and in alive and dead patients with melanoma metastasis tumor [START_REF] Xu | Gene expression changes in an animal melanoma model correlate with aggressiveness of human melanoma metastases[END_REF]. Patients with mutliple myeloma without Sox2 expression (Affymetrix call) have a better event free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OAS) than patients expressing Sox2.

Table 1

Ovrer-expression of SOX2, OCT4, KLF4 and c-MYC in human tumor types to that of their normal tissue counterparts using publicly available gene expression data, including the Oncomine Cancer Microarray database.

Figure 1 :

 1 Figure 1: Association of Sox2 and c-Myc expression with prognosis

Table 1

 1

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the Ligue Nationale Contre le Cancer (équipe labellisée), Paris, France, from INCA (n°R07001FN) and from MSCNET European strep (N°E06005FF).

Cervix no no no no Chondrosarcoma no no no no Colon no yes no yes Endocrine no no no no Endometrium no no no no Esophagus no no no no Gastric no no no no Head-Neck no no no yes Liver no yes no no Lung yes yes no yes Melanoma no no no no Mesothelioma no no no no Multi-cancer no yes no no Muscle no no no no Neuroblastoma no no no no Oral no no no no

BreastCarcinoma-OverallSurvival-5Years

Figure1A:Associa>onofc-Mycexpressionwithprognosis

MelanomaMetastasisTumor-Survival-3Years

Figure1B:Associa>onofSox2expressionwithprognosis


Pencolé Marc-Antoine

Automation: Between factuality and normativity

Keywords: Autonomy, morality, effectivity, Hegel, Habermas, Peer-to-peer, Wikipedia

Moral or ethical decisions, involving values and norms of a given community, necessarily have to be made, as it seems, by subjects, characterized in particular by their intentionality and autonomy. Thus, delegating them to an automated apparatus would consist either in eliminating their moral dimension, or at least limiting it to the morality of its original designer.

Such classical conception hinges on strictly non-dialectical notions of factuality and normativity. Our claim is that the delegation of a moral or ethical decision to an automatoncomplex and powerful enough to be assimilated to a « decision-making » machine -may indeed be considered a dispossession yet also, under certain circumstances, be the very condition of its effectivity. Indeed, as exposed through the hegelian tradition and particularly thoroughly by Habermas, certain normative demands could require, to be fulfilled, the collective power that is being cast into an institutional or a technical system -an algorithm for instance. To be normatively satisfactory, concrete interactions imply a motivational, cognitive and organisational load that the subjects involved have to bear: without being mediated by factuality, such as that of informational machines, these normative demands would remain ineffective.

We will use the case of Wikipedia, and of diverse and ambivalent peer-to-peer files exchange communities to back our claim and help shift the debate about the morality of « decisionmaking » machines toward the question of the different forms of delegation to automata: what are the intrinsic or contextual elements that make such delegation a successful effectuation of collective norms or a sheer disposession of our autonomy?

Automation: Between Factuality and Normativity1

[151]The use of automated machines started being worrying when they became complex and powerful enough to impose their own norms to the human activity. The inflexibility of a factory system certainly strips its workers of most of the control they could have on their labour, its pace, its form and its meaning and destination. In the last decades, the problem arose under quite a new guise with the development of digital automata and their increasing capacity to calculate, evaluate, organize and anticipate human activity. Should we see it as an inevitable deepening of the disposession of our prerogatives as subjects in favour of an extending network of cold and impersonal algorithmic administrators?

Our collective existence is being regulated through different ways. First -and it was indeed for long the main topic of classical political philosophy -, laws, decrees and rules formally organize social life and shape congruent subjectivities. Then, another powerful regulator consists in the normativity immanent to any social activity: these bundles of common norms and expectations that determine what is a successful and respectful interaction -and it explains, for instance, why people spontaneously queue up in a certain order in front of the bakery without any law to prescribe it. Finally, technology may also act as a regulator, materializing certain norms within fixed processes, architectures and artifacts. Technological normativity hasn't always been a problem -beyond the workplace at least -: concern arose when the development of computer science extended the scope and depth of technological regulation over domains where rules were traditionnaly set by law.

The power of artifacts rests on their very factuality: the factual properties of cement and stone determine the capacity of a certain architecture to organize visibility and circulations; the diversity and complexity of softwares, functions, libraries and databases on one side, and the miniaturization of chips and processors on the other, is what grants digital devices the power to take very adequate (« intelligent ») decisions. Although, as soon as it comes to effects that can't be reduced to physical phenomena but tends to be assimilated to pseudo-decisions, similar to the kind of behaviours manifested by intelligent subjects, then the possibility arises that actual subjects may hand the exercice of their defining faculties over to factual objects, and thus end [152]up being dispossessed of some aspects of their subjectivity. Indeed, a subject is traditionnaly seen as a being that is -at least partially -able to reflect itself, and act freely, thus whose most proper domain is that of moral and political deliberations and decisions: delegating decisions about the good life and justice to impersonal machines would mean to alienate oneself from one's very autonomy and responsibility as a subject. Now, we would like here to question the inevitability of such a trade-off between the power offered by digital automata and the preservation of human autonomy and responsibility.

The normativity of technical artifacts.

First, we must examine different conceptions of the normativity of technical artifacts to specify the precise conditions of the trade-off. The most common one may be the use theory of norms, according to which the norm is extrinsic to the artifact and stands entirely in the diverse ways subjects choose to use them. Artifacts would then be no more than neutral instruments. This applies quite well to abstract tools: for instance, a screwdiver may be used as a weapon as well as a repair tool or any other purpose we can think of that requires a short and rigid metal rod. It covers also the normativity of indeterminate technological fields, understood as a sum of knowlegdge beyond any determined application, like informatics in general, which can lead to an indefinite variety of actual devices. Yet, it doesn't account for the specific normativity of concrete « technical individuals » upon their environment2 .

An opposite theory that we could call the substantial theory of norms pretends to account for concrete technical individuals by stating that the norm is intrinsic to the artifact. Indeed, certain technical beings tend to channel, facilitate or forbid certain behaviours, hence imposing their own norms to the actors. For instance, the now famous Long Island bridges were designed at the beginning of the XX th century in such a guise that only low vehicles could drive under their archs; since cars were still rare and merely owned by wealthy residents, the Black and Puerto Rican poor, mainly travelling in tall public buses were practically forbidden the most convenient access to the island3 . Although, such normative imposition appeared later to be highly context dependant, revealing the extrinsic conditions of « intrinsic » technical norms: indeed, driving habits evolved along the century and today the rich drivers of bulky campers happen to be the ones impeded from enjoying the sea shore4 .

These two theoretical frames are either too partial or partially contradictory, and any combination of both will also partially carry their flaws. Their shared presupposition, from which stem these limitations, consists in the idea that the opposition between the subject and the object is a very static one. The modern concept of subject posited it as absolutely autonomous and transparent to itself, casting the object as its radical other, some pure exteriority [153]or unreflected stillness, an extended and unthinking thing. Philosophy of technology recently remembered that old critic of a too naive subject-object divide and proposed a mediation theory of technical factuality and norms5 . In order to overcome binary reasonings about technology, the mediation theory suggests a dynamic frame, where a technical process or artifact doesn't just stands in front of the subject and her norms, but participates in their constitution; it doesn't simply connect the poles that are intermediated, but transforms them. To give a trivial exemple, phones, video-conference devices, etc. aren't mere communication instruments, neutral and passive, since they transform the message itself, and ultimately what it means to communicate. Certain emotions or nuances can't be carried through a flattened voice message or a visual frontal display with no eye contact. More interesting : Verbeek showed that the very existence of ultrasound-scanners alters what is deemed as reasonable, cautious, or irresponsible during pregnancy, because having missed some serious pathology affecting the child will now be considered the result of a conscious decision, where before it wasn't but blind fate anyway. The parenthood norms mediated by the factual power of such a modern detection tool undergo a real transformation: scanner aren't neutral instruments, obviously, but they aren't imposing some fixed hardcoded norm onto parents either.

Surprinsingly, this ambitious move toward a more concrete and dynamic theoretical ground in philosophy of technology boils down to the refusal of any critical discussion of technical phenomena. Indeed, according to Verbeek, the dependancy of the content of the evaluation standards on the mediating activity of the object that is being evaluated makes it absurd to pretend to assess a technology that hasn't been widely adopted yet: it would be tantamount to evaluate a phenomenon form a normative standpoint we already know we will probably disaprove afterwards. Let's then try to substantiate our concept of mediation by digging into the hegelian tradition.

Hegel used the concept of mediation to account for, and extend, the idealist intuition according to which the subject participates in the constitution and the position of her objects. It became in his philosophy the general form of reflection, the negative moment of thought, where the immediate distinctions set by the understanding -between the thing and its others, what the thing is not -are blurred and overcome to eventually lead to a more comprehensive apprehension of the thing. Let us narrow down the perspective from logical generalities to the question of technology: here, the mediation of human activity by technology covers all the manners of effectuation, actualization, or degradation and loss of the self and his or her activity through the objectivity of tools, know-hows and procedures. Human beings exist and reflect themselves through the products of their activity: their subjectivity is given and confirmed to them through the objective matter-of-factness of their products. It doesn't simply mean that something, once [154]mediated, isn't the same as before -this seems to be the logical observation underlying Verbeek's argument and it could be deemed rather obvious and slightly vague -; the becoming of the mediated subject may in fact be one of objective realization of inner pretentions, actualization of virtualities, or on the contrary negation of oneself, or inability to confirm one's value in objectivity. The mediated being isn't a whole new mysterious thing, but remains the same in its difference with itself, as for exemple an impulse of kindness or envy remains itself once it has been manifested outside despite the new mode of existence it has acquired. Hence, Hegel offers us a more complex frame to describe normative phenomena in the technological realm as well as to criticize irrationalities or emancipatory perspectives.

Mediation and norms effectivity.

The most encompassing exploration of the relations between factuality and normativity isn't proposed by Hegel in his few lines on technology but in his study of the mediation of social relations by law, in which we might nevertheless find precious insights for our topic. According to him, our shared norms of morality and justice require the mediation of the legal system, its codes and institutions, to be effectuated and actualized, to pass into the stuff and structure of society. Indeed, norms would remain mere wishes, inner standards with no objective reality, if they weren't to shape somehow social relations and weigh on them. So norms get more actual, morality and justice become more adequate to what they are supposed to be, when passing into the inert factuality of texts, institutions and established procedures.

On another side -and here is Hegel's most decisive argument -, these norms are in their turn affected by their passing into factuality, and not merely in the sense they would become more actual. Indeed, as facts, laws necessarily bring their share of contingency and rigidity, what may appear as irrational and contrary to the ideal of justice they were supposed to embody. Although, in court, a decision has to be taken, even if partly contingent6 . The worst that could happen is that no judgement is made and that justice is denied, be it because of the inability to qualify a specific act, or to practically understand the intricacies of the texts and procedures. So the law has to be simple enough to handle well yet also be encompassing enough to cover every possible case: it is then impossible to legally code the perfectly moral and just answer to every transgression since nobody would be able to actually learn and apply it to conrete cases -and precisely, actualization of the ideal is the essence of the law. We must then acknowledge that a factual legal system, partially inspired by the norms of justice but also partially contingent and arbitrary, is normatively superior to the pure ideals themselves, because of its very factuality. The factuality of actual law is normative. So the norms need to become facts to be proper norms as well as the facts tend to become themselves norms in the process.

[155]Habermas later developped these insights7 . The reason that norms as mere subjective demands are weak and that factual systems may bear their own kind of normativity is that, for the self, to stand alone at the origin of ethical decisions about justice or the good life, and to align her activity on these norms, and to recognize herself in them, represents an immense demand. As an actual and empirical thing, every subject is finite. Thus, she faces subjective factual limitations in her will to accomplish her ideals, so that the individual subject, the true bearer of these norms, responsible before them, also appears dramatically separated from them because of three determinations of her finitude.

First, realizing the norm, tearing it away from its abstract ideality, means applying its general prescriptions to concrete cases. Now, the universality of the norm opens a rift, between itself and the always too particular cases, that demands some intellectual effort to be crossed: realizing the norm in complex situations demands to face a huge cognitive indeterminacy. Everybody experienced the toil of exploring, analysing and evaluating the moral issues of everyday life: to be sure that what we do is moral, outside trivial situations, we need to collect informations and put a lot a thought into it, weighing the right and wrong, sometimes even deliberating with others, before being convinced that a certain behaviour really is the right course of action. The more persons are involved, and the more extended the situation is, the more difficult it will be for the arbiter to cognitively relate the many singular and interconnected facts to the unity of a simple general ideal. This is why a proper law posits more or less clear boarders between, for instance, what qualifies as a harmful negligence and what is but an unexpectable accident. All the work of customs and legislators sedimented in tradition and positive law relieves the present arbiters from the immense burden of crossing the cognitive gap between the particular and the universal. The counterpart of enabling the judge not to be struck by doubt is of course a certain part of contingency in the determination of the application rules.

A second burden consists in the motivational uncertainty moral actors may experience. Knowing what is just is one thing, but willing it is another. Situation will often rise where the right course of action happens to be detrimental to the particular interest of the actor. There, we can expect she sometimes lacks the motivation demanded to eventually choose the general interest over her own. Since the legal system is factual, the subject in position to judge as well as the individual subjected to the law are strongly encouraged to act according to the norm -because they can expect a reward or at least avoid some harsh punishment. Factuality of an effectuated norm may be seen as a promise once made to oneself to later comply to principles whose general validity has been recognized.

Finally, moral action faces the question of the organizational (or accountability) indeterminacy. The subject is traditionally defined by her freedom thus her responsibility, and yet, beside trivial situations, nothing is more indeterminate than the extension of the domain of what can be reasonably [156]imputed to her. Assisting the person in immediate danger in front of her is obviously her responsibility, but is it still her duty to go and help the same way when the person lives in a completely different region of the world, though she knows she could have made a difference, would she had commited herself to it? Beside a procedure of application and a series of incentives, a legal system also consists in a complex system of agreements about where everybody's responsability ends, that makes possible to practically live under the rule of just norms.

Such unburderning of the demands of moral action onto the factual power of a legal system can be deemed virtuous as long as the community ruled by its law recognizes itself into it. As soon as it gets deeply heteronomous, we may speak of a dispossession of autonomy, which ends up in the position of an inert opposit, an oppressive system of unilaterally imposed norms. Couldn't then a powerful technical system endorse through its factuality the same role as positive law in effectuating norms of morality and justice?

Digital automata and the effectuation norms.

Complex technical systems, and among them, algorithmic regulations, usually appear as impersonal mechanisms tearing off actors' autonomy and forcing extraneous norms upon them, but this isn't an essential property of technological mediation as such -in hegelian terms we could brand them as insufficiently rational, as an oppressive state would be, if ruled by a particular class in its own interest. Let's try to identify two exemples of relatively valid digital mediations : the BitTorrent protocol and sharing communities on one side, and the Wikipedia encyclopedia on the other.

The BitTorrent system is a technical assemblage allowing the decentralized sharing of files on the Internet between peers. A key component is the BitTorrent protocol -which has been instanciated in many different softwares -, a simple set of technical rules designed by Bram Cohen to ensure the effectuation of an certain ideal of sharing: altruistic behaviour (hosting files for others to download) had to be encouraged, while free-riding (downloading while never uploading back) was to be avoided as much as possible, but narrow bandwidth users also had to be able to access a significant share of the downloads even though they couldn't contribute as much as broadband peers8 . Another crucial part is that of the platforms, composed of a web search engine -similar to some sort of directory or catalog -and of a tracker -the server that informs a given user's software about the other uploaders who may send her the requested file. Admittedly, many of these platforms aren't much more than profit organization pushing in direction of the basest consumerism, but some of the most prominent institutions of torrent-sharing are built as well ordered communities: chats and forums are dedicated to mutual help, the imperative to keep hosting the file for others once downloaded is repeated [157]ad nauseam by the users themselves, the users have to register and the tracker keeps count of the total amount of data they transfer, blocking downloaders who don't take their share in uploading, and finally every users participates in the evaluation of the safety and quality of each new file they download 9 .

Cognitive and motivational loads weighing on the subjets and relieved by the protocol and the platforms are easily recognizable. Knowing how fast to download, which users to upload to, and which files to avoid sharing -because they're corrupted or poisoned by malwares -to respect the general principles of the community, all this would obviously require hundreds of complex calculations every couple minutes. What the human mind can't handle, a network of computers can. Besides, there is a strong incentive to share and fill the needs of others peers with the automatic effect of the protocol, the download over upload ratio, and the whole esteem economy enforced throughout the system, so that everyone has an interest in being a truly altruistic contributor.

The third burden needs to be slightly redefined to fit the specificity of technological mediation since the scope of the regulation doesn't reach far enough for imputability problems to arise. Habermas related the problem of accountability to the material cost of being moral: if accountability stretches too far, almost nobody will own the means necessary to accomplish any significant moral action. Here, we can see that normative advantage of a factual algorithmic system is even more obvious than in the legal domain: it would be materially impossible to share so many cultural works by burning disks and dispatching them through the postal network or any other means. So building huge digital libraries, curating collections and gathering millions of daily sharing peers around them wouldn't even be conceivable without digital technologies, while here it doesn't require more than a few servers and a handful of animators and technicians.

The case of peer-to-peer file sharing isn't pure, not every platform will qualify as a virtuous mediation, but it illustrates the fact that such communautarian values of sharing would remain but wishful thinking, weren't they taken in charge by the factual power of a certain device. Even though far from perfect, they're effective at least to a certain extent. Yet, every assemblage isn't that successful, and the conditions of such a rational mediation musn't be neglected. There are two risks of dispossession of users' autonomy: the verticality of the the organization, whose administrators are formally accountable to nobody -even though one might observe diverse forms of protest emerging from the community -; and the pressure of culture industry's capital, that has been trying to shut down the platforms through legal means. Here again, the ambivalent factuality of the system helps understand why it could have hold so long against heteronomous constraints: the cheap infrastructure and little labour that needs to be put in to make it operational allowed it to be repaired or built again elsewhere after every serious blow.

[158]Wikipedia is a collaborative encyclopedia launched in 2001, two years before the invention of the BitTorrent protocol, and based on a few principles: neutrality in the presentation of the differents points of view, free access to reading as well as participation, respectful collaboration, and finally debatability of every rule. Before these quite general norms, instead of resting solely on spontaneous impulses toward the preservation and improvement of common knowledge amongst its dozens of millions users per day, the project developped a complex of technical mediations, ensuring everyone isn't required to be selfless and asbolutely dedicated to keep it working. We could show it through the way the platform architecture elicits the distribution of tasks and cooperation 10 , but let's focus on the more strictly technical part of its inner regulation -the bots 11 . Wikipedia is humming with task-specific software activity: thousands operate constantly (the majority in the english speaking sphere), the total production of some amouting to millions of edits. Their tasks, among many others, may be to automatically detect vandals and repair their deeds, or to quickly identify copyright issues, they may paticipate in data structuration to standardize certain elements in articles or assist in the labelling and distribution of the remaining work to be done by humans, they also often clean pages from broken code and dead links.

Without the help of these tiny automata, substantially contributing to Wikipedia could end up being wearing given the numerous and complex conformity rules between which to arbitrate. Bots offer some assistance by relieving the users from having in mind all the exact details of every procedure, for exemple, to alter a strongly debated article or to call for a second opinion about a contested deletion. The motivational assistance consists here in punishing deliberate rules transgression, like patterns of obvious vandalism which are automatically detected and end up in banishment and the lockout of the affected articles, but again, it also implies a strong esteem economy, where generous contributors are respected and praised. Finally, the organizational burden lies on one side in the tedious effort and numerous hours spent in standardization of the text and code of each article, and on the other in the tremendous material cost such a worldwide cooperation would imply if conducted through analogical ways; both of which are spared by the efficiency of automated informational procedures.

Beside a certain social homogeneity of most active contributors, Wikipedia's socio-technical system achieved a remarkably horizontal, open, and yet robust common institution of knowledge. Admittedly, its global infrastructure is terribly expensive but the software and all the produced content are freely reproducible, and the project managed to ensure its independancy by regularly calling for donations and thus creating a non-commodified bubble to isolate it from the influence of private property and the market. Yet another significant condition of its success is certainly that the [159]principle of debatability of every rule has been instanciated in the algorithmic automata themselves: of course, every bot may be subjected to a public discussion and redefined by the community, but even individuals may temporarily yet very quickly contest and interrupt the course of a certain bots by inserting specific labels in the article before it is automatically scanned. Users' activity may be assisted, controlled, complemented by automata, but one merely needs to type a few letters to get back her hold onto the processes previously handled by the machine.

Conclusion.

It appears that once equipped with a mediation theory of technical norms, the normative value of factuality in technical systems may be properly assessed: the effectivity of our norms about the good life or justice depends on them passing into the factuality of a technical mediation, given the colossal weight of the cognitive, motivational and organizational demands adressed to the subjects of any community that ambitions to live along their shared norms of justice.

Yet, the study of actual communities mediated by digital automata -the BitTorrent networks and Wikipedia -reveals that their factual organizational advantage isn't just a normative requirement to the effectuation of the ideals of sharing and open cooperation, but also contributes on another level to their consolidation against the risks of dispossession. Such systems are technically reproducible with no insurmontable obstacles and thus particularly difficult to shut down. But above all, their design tends to encourage or at least allow collective appropriation. Contrary to cumbersome machines and bureaucratic administrations, algorithmic mediations are characterized by their oppenness to communautarian appropriation and the difficulty to establish a private monopoly over them. So even the delimitation between what is positively and negatively normative in technological mediations may also be established by their factual determinations.

Once established these logical groundings, claiming that impersonal automata in general are bound to dissociate the subjects and their essential prerogatives and duties is as abstract as pretending that since norms and technology are linked, no consistent critic can be made about the latter. A critical assessement of technological delegation is actually possible, but only on the level of concrete and situated socio-technical assemblages. Now, collective autonomy seems to be the general condition to determine wether a given mediation grants effectivity to the norms; certain factors are of course extraneous to the mediation itself (as is capital or market's pressure in the aforementionned cases), yet it remains possible to identify in the very factuality of some systems a form of flexibility and openness to communautarian appropriation that seems to limit phenomena of dispossession: this is finally the only characteristic of machines, considered in abstraction from any concrete social embedding, that would make sense of the idea of machine's morality.

Pencolé Marc-Antoine

  10 Nicolas A. (2009). « De Linux à Wikipedia : Régulation des collectifs de travail massivement distribués », in L'évolution des usages et des pratiques numériques, FYP Editions. 11 Halfaker, A. & Riedl, J. (2012). « Bots and Cyborgs: Wikipedia's Immune System », Computer, vol. 45, n°3; Geiger, R. S. (2017). « Beyond opening up the black box: Investigating the role of algorithmic systems in Wikipedian organizational culture », Big Data & Society, vol. 4, n°2.

This presentation reframes and extends the reflections elaborated in a previous work : Pencolé, M.-A. (2017), « Nos algorithmes peuvent-ils être plus justes que nous ? », Revue Française d'Ethique Appliquée, n°5.

Simondon, G. (2017). On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects, Minneapolis, Univocal Publishing, p. 63.

Winner, L. (1980). « Do Artifacts Have Politics? », in Daedalus,Vol. 109, n°1,

Verbeek, P. P. (2005). What things do. Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency and Design, Pennsylvania State University Press, p. 117.

It has mainly been promoted by Don Ihde, in Technology and the lifeworld: from garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990 ; and Peter-Paul Verbeek, op. cit.

Hegel, G. W. F., Outlines of the Philosophy or Right, §213 add.

Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms, Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 114-118.

Cohen, B. (2003), « Incentives build robustness in BitTorrent », Workshop on economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems, Berkeley, California

Dagiral, E. & Dauphin, F. (2005). « P2P: From File Sharing to Meta-information Pooling », Communications & Stratégies, vol. 59, n°3.


Valérie Clerc

"Negociation of Space

The control and appropriation of space has been an important dimension of urban planning for the last 15 years in Beirut. It appeared particularly after the civil war during which space was at the heart of the conflict. Some large urban projects, the principal objective of which is per nature to transform space in given areas, became places of possible modification of the geography of territories. The stake was not only to control space. It also bore social, population and influence aspects. The context of reconstruction (sometimes of reconciliation) encouraged some political opponents, often former adversaries of the war, to negotiate space by negotiating urban projects (their existence, sometimes their content, and their control).

It was the case for the two projects of reconstruction studied here, Elyssar (after the civil war) and Waad (after the July 2006 war), both located in the southern suburbs of Beirut, inhabited by a population composed mostly of Shiite Muslims and dominated by Hezbollah, and both developed in a context of tension between the Lebanese government majority and the Party of God.

The multiplicity of the urban projects' stakes is not specific to reconstruction. Everywhere, town planning carries the idea that the transformation of space will have a social impact. The urban projects usually plan the transformation of society (to improve living conditions, encourage social diversity, protect identity, defend rights, encourage means of access to the city, modify the social composition...). The stakes are always strategic, social, political and space related.

As a consequence of the community distribution of space, and at the close of a civil war which reinforced the parcelling of space in denominational territories, the stake of the modification of the population is recurrent in the urban projects of reconstruction in Lebanon.

It has been a central element in the criticisms towards the city centre's project which modified the demography of the heart of Beirut by emptying it of its inhabitants. It is nodal in the projects set up in the southern suburbs. Although the space is not homogeneous, the dahiye is a stronghold for the Shiite parties, Amal and Hezbollah [START_REF] Harb | Action publique et système politique pluricommunautaire: les mouvements politiques chiites dans le Liban d'après-guerre[END_REF], and the population composes these parties' electorate. Consequently, in this space, any intervention of the government, for which those parties, former rivals in the war, have become the political opponents, assumes an important political and strategic dimension. Because they plan the construction of housing units (and not only their dismantling as in the infrastructure and equipment projects), both the Elyssar and the Waad projects are essential when it comes to the issue of populating the southern suburbs.

Of course, the negotiations did not tackle exclusively this issue. In the southern suburbs, many projects, whether carried out or not, were the subject of explicit political negotiations concerning the definition of their content or the details of their execution: for example, at the time of the planning of large infrastructure installations projects (carried out motorways of the airport and of Jnah, non-carried out motorway of Ouzaï…) or of equipment projects (carried out governmental hospital), particularly to settle on the issue of the dismantling of accommodations under their political influence and the compensations to be paid [START_REF] Deboulet | Beyrouth[END_REF]. In Elyssar, the negotiations led to the laying-out of a joint project and to the setting up of an institutional framework in order to carry it out, the public agency, bringing the different parties of the negotiation together. For its main part, the project has not been carried out. In Haret Hreik, the negotiations did not lead to a project bringing together the opposed parties, but came to an agreement about continuing the reconstruction through parallel actions: compensations given by the government, the rebuilding of housing units by the owners, the creation of the Waad construction project by Hezbollah, the rehabilitation of the infrastructure installations by the government. The project is being carried out.

In the political negotiation of these two projects, the main stake, the crux of the negotiations, has been this populating issue. The Shiite parties' leitmotiv was to obtain that all the population would remain and be re-housed on the spot, thus guaranteeing the continued influence and control of these parties on this space. On the contrary, the other actors are in favour of a population modification, which would reduce, even disrupt, the predominance, which they consider to be excessive, of an organised social group considered to have unbalanced the social space of Beirut. Thus, they prefer the solution of indemnification, which let the population free to choose if they want to rebuild their house here or elsewhere, In this paper, I thus address the issue of this specific form of space negotiation that is the negotiation of urban projects. The point of this paper is to show the permanency of the themes and stakes around which the negotiation of the projects in the southern suburbs takes place, and in particular the re-housing on site. Regarding Elyssar, it highlights the weakness of the compromise about re-housing, which is the main reason why the core of the project of Elyssar has never been implemented. It however shows why, thanks to this compromise, the main expectations of the parties have been fulfilled. Finally, despite different projects and political contexts, some intersections between the two projects shed light on the current period. In analysing Elyssar, this paper suggests hypothesis about Waad and the reconstruction of the southern suburbs after July 2006.

I-Elyssar, a politically negotiated project

The project of Elyssar1 comes politically within a logic of reconciliation between the Lebanese people and of reunification of a city fragmented in numerous community districts by the civil war (1975)(1976)(1977)(1978)(1979)(1980)(1981)(1982)(1983)(1984)(1985)(1986)(1987)(1988)(1989)(1990).

A reconstruction project

This ambitious project seeks to open up and to reinstate the 560 hectares of the South-Western suburbs into the city. The complete restructuring of the two thirds of the project's area has to provide an answer to the fact that there are irregular settlements in the area, which have been built on the estates of others, and which contain 80 000 inhabitants, in a city of one and a half million.

In Lebanon, this kind of squatting is localized mainly in these South western suburbs of Beirut (see map). Very localized irregular settlements have developed especially during the war, sometimes from former cores, owing to massive displacements of population coming particularly from South Lebanon and the Eastern suburbs. The setting up of the inhabitants was organized by Shiite militias, either enlarging the Palestinian camps or on parcels subjected to land conflicts. These districts were a stronghold of the Shiite parties Amal and Hezbollah, as are older quarters that are next to them to the East, Bourj el-Brajneh, Ghobeiry and Haret Hreik, where the main destructions occurred during the war of 2006. Therefore, in a Lebanese political context largely based on denominational cleavage, any intervention of this space assumed a strong political dimension.

Encouraged as soon as the conflict was over by the then prime minister Rafic Hariri, the project was developed through political negotiations between the government, who wanted to regain foothold in those spaces, and the Shiite parties, who play a structuring part on those territories which they control, which they help to equip, and in which the population, composed in a vast majority of Shiite Muslims, compose the electorate.

The project's content

The negotiations led to the decision to carry out a project of restructuration of the area, planning on creating or improving the infrastructure installations, and on developing real estates and tourist resorts along the largest beach of the city, thus offering a new global potential of 6.7 million square meters in the area. They also enabled an agreement of the Shiite groups on the setting up of the project itself, in exchange of the insurance that the population would remain on site.

They established the principle and the modes of the dismantling of the existing irregular settlements, of compensation for the inhabitants and building owners, and of relocation of the Lebanese inhabitants who want to in new units built within the project's area. To implement the project, they settled a Public Agency, the only one in Lebanon for a project of planning and development.

In a displayed logic of public interest and of renewing the social links, this project sought a compromise between an access to the southern suburbs for all the inhabitants of the cityasked for by a government concerned to rebuild a unified and practical city -and the protection of the identity of those districts, related only to part of the population of Beirut, that is the one who live there -defended by their representatives who wish to maintain their mono-confessional territorial anchorage.

Elyssar negotiation

Before the negotiations, between 1990 and 1992, the project was developed by Rafic Hariri, before he was Prime minister. He consulted many people and worked with consultants who undertook studies on his behalf. The southern suburbs were divided into three different projects: suburbs upgrading in the South East, urban project in the South West and special action concerning the demarcation line.

In 1992, a decision process started before consulting the Shiite parties, with approbation by the Council of Ministers of the idea of a private real estate company for rebuilding the Southwestern suburbs.

Between 1992 and 1995, three years of political negotiations took place between Rafic Hariri's team and the Shiite parties Amal and Hezbollah. These three years were divided in two parts.

-From 1992 to July 1993, the Shiite parties rejected the project unless it would allow the inhabitants to stay in the area and unless the project would be led by a public development authority instead of a real estate company. These two conditions were very tightly linked, for the real estate company was mainly criticized because it required the inhabitants to leave their homes. They obtained this in July 1993 and in return voted the law on suburbs upgrading for the eastern part of Dahiye. -In 1993, there was a pause due to national and international situational reasons. -In 1994-1995, with the agreement on the two principles of the relocation of the inhabitants on the spot and the public agency, negotiations took place on the modalities of the process and the control of the project (composition of the board, unanimous decision, preparation of a decree including a master plan and a text confirming that new units would be built before evictions took place, signature of all the parties on the decree…).

Some points have to be raised about the way in which the project has been negotiated: -There was a limited understanding of who could be an interlocutor for the negotiation in the beginning: during the time immediately following the civil war, during which militias progressively became political parties, it took around one year for the government's team to identify with whom to negotiate. -Negotiations were not only between the actors. In the beginning, they were between whole projects, which the actors accepted or rejected. In the beginning, the government's project was rejected, not because of its content, part of which the Shiite parties agreed on, but for the only reason that it was to be implemented through a private real estate company. -Negotiation was dissociated from the process of studies. Some of the ideas developed during the studies were not mentioned during the negotiation. -Every actor said that all the negotiations occurred between the Prime Minister and the chiefs of the parties. This has to be nuanced. During the first six months, between March and October 1992, the first meetings brought together only engineers from both parties.

A compromise ?

When stakeholders are asked about the project, they present some choices as the result of a consensus (renovation or destruction of existing buildings, for example) and some choices as the result of a balance of power (notably the two principal points of the compromise: the agreement on the re-housing in situ and on the public agency in July 1993). In fact, even this has to be nuanced.

-The public agency was envisaged in the reports since the beginning of 1993 and some of the engineers of the Hariri team said they had never believed in this solution for it seemed impossible to think of attracting investors in an illegally occupied area. -For the relocation on site, presented by the Shiite parties as a requirement to be complied with by the government, it seems, to a certain extent, to have been an evidence for Rafic Hariri's team during the conception and the negotiation of the project. In March 1993 (after the beginning of the negotiation, but before the compromise), the three option plans for the area (that were not presented during the negotiation) all integrated the idea of relocating the inhabitants in the area and the place to relocate was considered as an important choice. Furthermore, for some members of the Hariri team, including the Prime minister himself, the option of compensating the population would have been made impossible by the fact that South Lebanon was at that time occupied by Israel. In this part of the suburb, illegal settlements are considered as being linked to the issue of the displaced people. In the mind of Hariri and his team, compensation was not only money to compensate for a house, but also a means of enabling the displaced population to return to their villages. However, at the time of the negotiation of the project, South Lebanon was still occupied by Israel, so a symbolic part of Dahiye's population could not go back to their villages. The presence in the area of displaced people from the South became an argument to justify re-housing on site.

II The contradiction between the justifications of re-housing on site, a deep-rooted reason for the non-implementation of Elyssar

The negotiations of a project are neither a linear nor a clear process based on mono intentional strategies. Strategies and negotiations lay widely on perceptions. The choices of the project depended on the actors' representations.

Negotiations and decisions lay on perceptions

All the interviewed actors gave a personal explanation of the project, justifying and/or criticizing its choices. Numerous ways of building up the issue of the spatial and social reconstruction were present simultaneously, and confronted each other, throughout its development. The described strategies varied greatly and there were several notions of the city.

Each actor had a personal interpretation of the situation and of the project. Each one built his own way of constructing the problem, drew up personal hierarchies, according to the situation, and these conditions defined his position towards the project. Personal positions were composed of 3 different ways of reasoning.

-Everyone in Lebanon is reasoning about space in a strategic way, imagining what can be gained or lost, and how. Some think of preserving or modifying collective organisation, others see above all the intentions as a desire for territorial conquest or defence, others measure political or economic stakes. -Actors are also always reasoning on what should ideally be done, according to them (to modernize, enhance the living conditions, upgrade, put in order, promote citizenship, social rise…) -Finally, they pronounce a judgement, either criticism or justification, through different value systems, two of which were really omnipresent in the actors' discourses: the functionalist values (where what is most important is efficiency and progress) and the civic values (where the pillars are general interest, solidarity and respect of the law).

Analysis of the Elyssar project shows that many ways of combining these ways of thinking are present and that actors build their own position regarding the project independently from their profession or confession.

Even when they are widely shared, the representations do not shape the project directly. In spite of sometimes evident influences, it is impossible to give credit for the authorship of a choice to one or more people. The decisions are the result of the interactions, within a strategic interdependency background. Within the framework of this power struggle, each person aims at an agreement corresponding to his own interests and representations. Some proposals are the place of a crystallization. Some ideas suit everybody. Therefore the choices of the project carry the sense given to them by the actors, but this sense is different to each person.

It is the case for the choice of relocating the population in the area.

The strategic and ideal dimensions of populating

Population and populating of this area mobilize many representations.

All the actors of Elyssar think that acting on space is, and can only be, political, and that everyone but him has strategic intentions regarding the space (the actors almost always express the assumed strategies of others, very seldom their own). Thus, the southern suburbs are considered by all of them as a territory, a space inhabited by a group, controlled by an authority, a place of power, a space that has to be defended or conquered, a marked space, collectively thought of, used and lived as specific, prone to multiple political and symbolical representations, the strength of which depends greatly on the suffering and passion which took place there and made it an emblematic place. The term "southern suburbs" or dahiye is never neutral in the mind of those who use it.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the civil war was still very present in everyone's mind. The Shiites are accused of wanting to keep a conquered territory, while the government is accused of trying to take it away from them or to parcel it out through the town planning projects. The Shiites accuse the government of wanting to recover the coast line in order to benefit from increased land-and economic value of the coast line, but also to recover an access, a way out of the city towards the South. On the government's side, fears are expressed, such as the shutting in of the road to the airport by Shiite areas, this road being the umbilical cord linking the capital city to the outside. Strategies appear, such as the substitution of informal quarters, the number of which is uncontrollable, by localizable and quantifiable housing units. On the other hand, through wanting to build these housing areas, the government is accused of wanting to enclose the Shiites in a ghetto. As for the Shiites, they are accused of using the public agency to establish their power and collect the State's funding for the population of this area…

These populating strategies are often mingled with reflections regarding a space and social ideal to be reached. When the actors talk about breaking the misery belt surrounding the capital -the term is recurrent since the 1970s (Bourgey and Pharès 1973)-, they wish to eradicate poverty from the suburbs, but they also wish to get rid of the threat of seeing Beirut surrounded by politicized populations living outside the law. In addition, for historical reasons, rural populations, poor people and Shiites are often assimilated. Thus the rural exodus is often considered as being the cause of a confessional unbalance in the city of Beirut. Thus, when some people criticize the rural ways of life of the inhabitants of some areas in the southern suburbs, it is often understood as a way of denying the Shiites access to the city and as an expression of considering them as second class citizens, encouraging them to move back to the countryside. On the contrary, it is said that there is a real political desire on behalf of the Shiite parties to secure the presence of their co-religionists in Beirut, politically, economically and socially, and the southern suburbs are the space of this aimed at urban anchorage. Finally, if an agreement was reached concerning the idea of improving the living conditions of the inhabitants, by giving them modern accommodation, which are seen as going along with upward mobility, the fact of meeting the inhabitants' expectations is also considered as a political competition aimed at getting the adhesion and the gratitude of the inhabitants and of securing their votes.

Justifications used concerning populating

It appears that the same values system is used to justify both relocation and compensation, both the fact of letting the inhabitants remain on site and of displacing them away from the southern suburbs.

Squatters are criticized in every system of values (thieves, illegal, unfair…). But, in each case, one can find one or several reasons to judge them positively and to justify them. The most significant oppositions arise concerning civic values, which stigmatize these quarters most violently, and provide the strongest arguments for the justification of the inhabitants and for an intervention in their favour (for they are displaced from the war, have a right to settle somewhere, suffer from a lack of housing, and had no choice but to have recourse to these processes set up by the militias of the community which received them). These justifications of the inhabitants are all based on the State's failure, but they vary according to the social group towards which it failed (poor people, inhabitant of the southern suburbs, war-displaced people, landless people).

To stay on the spot, a conflict on the common interest scale

Paradoxically, the justification used by the actors -to re-house people in the area or compensation to let them choose to go elsewhere if they want to -is a result of the same reasoning, belonging to the civic system of values. But all the actors of Elyssar do not consider social unity according to the same scale. They all agree on the importance of unity and on the rejection of social division. Based on these principles, two confronting civic attitudes, taking into account the social groups at different scales, are at the heart of the negotiations.

-The actors reasoning at the country's level refuse the territorial division between the communities. If they accept the compensation principle as well as the re-housing one, it should not be done on the spot, since it would in fact ratify a situation of partition of the society in denominational groups.

-The actors reasoning at the southern Shiite suburbs' level, are opposed to the thinning down of the community into a series of individuals who would want to free themselves from party guidelines and act in their own interests. This civic vision, internal to the community, encourages union, collective action, adherence to a cause, and the defence of the group's interests. In this regard, it seeks to maintain an existing social fabric and to gain rights and advantages for the inhabitants of the area. This civic logic drastically confronts the previous one since it advocates the preservation of a homogenous population on the spot.

By taking into consideration elements of these two contrary attitudes, the solution retained for Elyssar -the proposal of re-housing on site and the possibility of choosing compensation -is a compromise which meets both demands but does not justify itself properly in either of them.

The difficulty, probably met by the negotiators, to gather in a sole project representations that are basically opposed, is expressed through an almost absence of official texts that would enable to formulate a synthesis. The texts are unclear enough so that each party can interpret and justify them in its own terms (for example the article 8 of the Elyssar decree). The details of the implementation of the re-housing have therefore never been precisely defined. For example, in the interviews, actors never agree on how many new units should be built or whether the inhabitants should support part of the cost of these units, depending on the interpretations of what would occur for re-housing people. According to the director of the public agency, the present housing unit would be compensated for taking into account its former value of old unit, and the new unit would be sold according to its value of new unit. Housing loans, funded by the Public Agency of Housing, would have enabled the subsidization of the difference. But the very vast majority of the inhabitants would not have had the means of remaining on site. For the members of the opposition in the board of Elyssar, a new housing should be exchanged against an old one, of the same size, and everyone could remain. For others, the choice was not yet made between renting and selling…

The retained compromise solution did not fully please either of the two parties, because it was hard to justify for both of them. Thus, it would not have enough been in the interest of either the two parties to mobilize to carry out the re-housing.

A compromise which is enough in itself and allows other realisations

However, the agreement concerning the choices of the project seems at least as important as its content. Through the only fact that it exists, the project constitutes a ground of understanding which enables the proceeding of the relations. So that the agreement holds, the contradictions should not be made visible until they are solved.

The agreement about the controversial part of the project enabled to ease certain tensions, carry on with the relations and to reach, through a partial realization and dispensatory regarding the appointed rules, the main social goals of each party.

-On the one hand, the governmental party gained the possibility of modernizing and opening up the southern suburbs to the whole of the population, it was able to implement the building of motorways going across the area, and it obtained the cessation of the expansion of irregular settlements.

-On the other hand, the Shiite parties obtained for the population that they issue an official acknowledgement of the rights of the irregular inhabitants, and the suppression of the threat of being expelled without compensation.

The negotiation of space in the Elyssar project raised the question of staying or not in the area. The core of the project, which is the relocation of the population on the spot and the possibility of those who want it to leave with compensation, was not carried out, probably mostly because the solution didn't satisfy, or at least would have needed further negotiations to satisfy both parties. But this compromise gave rights to the population and allowed other projects? in the area.

II The reconstruction of Haret Hreik: an implemented negotiation of space

The forms and practices of spatial negotiation identified in Elyssar shed light on the recent project of reconstruction of Haret Hreik after the war of July 2006.

The reconstruction of Haret Hreik cannot be reduced to the Waad project of reconstruction. This project is the most visible part of a process of reconstruction that also includes interventions from the government, notably some financial compensations and some reconstruction of infrastructures. These interventions are presented as parallel actions, not as a compromise.

The process of reconstruction of Haret Hreik

First, since the beginning, each party started acting on their own, as if there was a competition between them. Hezbollah made the promise (waad) to rebuild dahiye and make it more beautiful than it was. It gave compensations (10 000$ to 12 000$ per apartment), independently from the government. For its part, the government immediately announced its intention to take charge [START_REF] Fawaz | Beirut : The City as a Body Politic[END_REF]).

In the days following the war, grounds for cooperation and negotiation were set up. A public commission was established, including representatives from government public planning agencies and from opposition parties, notably CDR, DGU, the Order of engineers and architects, the Caisse and the ministry of displaced people, the ministry of finance, the 4 municipalities of Chiah, Ghobeiry, Bourj el Brajneh and Haret Hreik and the local political parties Amal and Hezbollah. These representatives of the Shiites parties and of the government started discussions in order to see if they could develop a reconstruction plan for the area together.

In November 2006, just a few months after having been established, the commission decided that the government would give financial compensations to those who had lost their apartments, that it would reconstruct the infrastructures and that the homeowners would rebuild their apartments on their own. Two alternatives inspired respectively from Solidere and Elyssar were rejected. Six months later, in May 2007, Hezbollah on its own officially launched the Waad project. It started to rebuild around 196 buildings out of about 265 destroyed by the Israeli strikes on Haret Hreik. Their owners decided to commit their financial compensations to the project, while Waad in return carried out the whole reconstruction. The owners of the almost 68 other buildings decided to rebuild their buildings with their own contractors.

From negotiation to parallel actions

A lot can be said about this project, on the fact that it intends to rebuild the neighbourhood exactly as it was, including the departure from the law of construction, or on the little information people had about their rights and the different possibilities they had to reconstruct their building. Some reflections can be pointed out about negotiation of space. In this process, having both said immediately after the war that they wanted to take charge, governmental and Hezbollah stakeholders held meetings to see if they could set up an urban project together. A place of negotiation was organised. These negotiations led to a decision stating that no common project would be set up and that stakeholders would act side by side, by taking complementary parallel actions, but not together. The Waad project was not set up as a compromise project, but as a part of a larger reconstruction process. The result of the negotiation let a space for Waad to be set up, but no compromise appears in its contents. Thus, negotiation of space in this reconstruction project is analysed here not in the Waad project, but more largely, in the parallel actions of the actors, including Waad.

Despite different projects and political contexts, some intersections between Elyssar and Haret Hreik reconstruction projects shed light on the negotiation of the southern suburbs space in the current period.

Permanence of the themes of negotiation

The different approaches of these projects, and the fact that the first one never implemented the housing units while the second one is rapidly coming to the end of the reconstruction of the destroyed buildings, could be interpreted as a difference in the balance of power or as a difference in the financial context. Hezbollah didn't need to ask for a governmental or public project, because no real estate company was envisaged and threatened the population as was the case with Elyssar. For the financial part, most of the actors said that Elyssar's core, the construction of the housing units, couldn't be implemented because the project lacked money. It needed an advance of 600 million dollars. To avoid this, two tenders were launched to build the units in BOT (build operate transfer). The first one was unsuccessful. No action was taken concerning the second. It was said that it was because an Iranian group gave the cheapest offer. In that case, it would have shown that Hezbollah and his supporters were ready to invest large amounts of money to allow the population to stay in the area, especially if everybody could get an apartment, regardless of their income. We can compare this with the compensation Hezbollah gave immediately after the war and with the Waad announcement that Hezbollah would pay the difference in case the State's financial compensations were not sufficient to cover the costs of reconstruction of the units. Again, there is money, probably more than before with international donors, but it seems that moreover, Hezbollah does all it can in this new project to incite the re-housing of the population in the area.

Again, it seems that the core of the reconstruction revolves around the issue of the populating of the area. It appeared as the crux of the negotiation, as Mona [START_REF] Fawaz | Beirut : The City as a Body Politic[END_REF] pointed out, writing that: "the central government retracted developing reconstruction plan when it became clear that Hezbollah would stand in the way of any redevelopment plan that could displace dwellers"

Justification and implementation

To use the analysis developed for Elyssar, in the Haret Hreik reconstruction project, all the actions undertaken in the Haret Hreik reconstruction can be totally justified. Everything appears as if both the Shiites and the government stakeholders learned from Elyssar the fact that nobody benefits from implementing a choice they can hardly justify. In the reconstruction of Haret Hreik, there is no decision that nobody was able to justify totally, as it was the case for the "re-housing or compensating" solution of Elyssar. The actions can always be totally justified by those who are responsible for it. Despite a common interest of rebuilding Haret Hreik, which is rebuilding Beirut, each part acts within its proper logic. And, as in Elyssar, the central logics of the government and of Hezbollah are, again, respectively, compensating or re-housing in the area. By giving compensation without being involved in the Waad project, the government actors are totally consistent with their willingness to allow people to leave the southern suburbs if they want to. By setting up the Waad project and offering to pay the difference if the reconstruction of the unit for which it is in charge appears to cost more than expected and than the government gives, Hezbollah is totally consistent with its strong willingness to re-house all the population in the area. The lack of information provided to the population seems to go in the same direction.

Hezbollah got what it wanted, that is to say set up a reconstruction project in which the owners of the future units will be the present inhabitants. The agreement that was reached in order to build the same number of square meters enables this. The government probably would have wanted to take advantage of the destructions in order to rebuild a less compact area with a modified population. But it at least obtained a status quo regarding population, considering that some people do not want to settle back in the area and that at least 20% of the population choose not to be dependent on Hezbollah for the rebuilding.

Conclusion : a competing implementation

Both the reconstruction projects of Haret Hreik and Elyssar are extremely different. And yet, in both cases, re-housing on site and compensation were of issue. Re-housing in order to keep the population on site was demanded by Hezbollah to keep control and an appropriation of a space, even keep a place in Beirut for the Shiite community. The only attribution of compensation enabled those who wanted to, to leave, and was to encourage a modification of the southern suburbs' population. In Elyssar, by agreeing on a decision that enabled both choices, the actors, in reality, were not satisfied with a solution and they therefore did not promote it, since it might have induced effects contrary to the ones they stood up for. The project had other consequences, but it was not implemented. The compromise can here be considered as an impeding element, since it was more than anything an outward compromise and that the bottom line contradictions had not been solved. In Haret Hreik, all parties made decisions going in the direction they wanted and that they could justify. Nobody knows if the inhabitants who received compensations and for whom Hezbollah rebuilt an apartment will in the end inhabit this apartment. They can either rent it, or sell it. Nobody knows if all those who didn't give their money to Waad will finally build their new apartment. But the reconstruction in process is consistent with the strategies and the justifications of the stakeholders. The actors were thus able to act without contradicting themselves. The project was implemented very rapidly considering the scope of the task at hand. The fact that the buildings had already been destroyed explains part of it. But the competition between the logics at work probably is a more relevant key to understanding.

Negotiation of the appropriation and control of space also often exists elsewhere. The democratic countries in which the stakes concerning this issue are so tense are rare. But the stake of political control through populating is not specific to Lebanon. Two examples, in two radically different countries: in France, the policy of creation of social housing by left wing municipalities where many already exist is largely continued in order to strengthen a workingclass electorate which is tending to diminish. On the contrary, some wealthy districts are ready to pay very vast amounts of money in order not to create social housing and therefore not disrupt the local sociological balance. In Cambodia, the establishment of new districts

The analysis of Elyssar was carried out as part of a PhD research on the principles of action of town planning in Beirut (Clerc-Huybrechts

2002). A survey was carried out between 1998 and 2001 among about a hundred observers and actors of the project, members of all negotiating parties, including Prime Minister Rafic Hariri.