Christian Barrère

Walter Santagata

Defining Art. From the Brancusi Trial to the Economics of Artistic Semiotic Goods. by

Keywords:

The special nature of the artistic and cultural goods is commonly stressed in inquiries into the art market failure. Though the artistic goods are not quite defined, their special character is used as a rationale for art policies. The paper try to theoretically found them. In the first section we introduce the concept of artistic goods as a class of the semiotic goods, that is goods bearers of an aesthetic sign acknowledged in a specific cultural context. The second section relates the semiotic nature of art to three models of organization and regulation of the artistic field, namely the model based on institutions and hierarchies, the gift model and the market model. La spécificité de l'art et l'impossibilité de le gérer par un recours exclusif au marché sont couramment invoquées pour justifier des politiques publiques des activités artistiques mais restent généralement imprécises. Le texte se propose de les fonder théoriquement. La première section introduit la notion de bien artistique sémiotique, bien porteur de signe esthétique dans un contexte culturel donné. La seconde relie la nature sémiotique de l'art à trois modèles d'organisation et de régulation du champ artistique, le modèle des relations personnelles, le modèle du don et celui du marché.

Introduction. Brancusi vs. The United States of America

On the twenty-first of January, 1926, Marcel Duchamp arrives in New York bringing from Europe about twenty sculptures by Brancusi to be exhibited at the Brummer art gallery (Brancusi contre Etats Unis, 1996). The works that are to return to Europe are issued a transit visa, but one sculpture, "Oiseau dans l'espace" bought by an American citizen, is taxed as an imported commodity. Given that the Tariff Act of 1913 grants works of art duty-free entry into the U.S., Brancusi refuses payment of the tax and insists that the object in question be acknowledged as a work of art. Quite to the contrary, the Customs authorities consider his work an ordinary manufactured industrial good.

The Brancusi vs. The Customs Administration trial took place in New York in 1927. The bulk of the trial proceedings was concerned with how to define art and how to distinguish it from industrial production. The Tariff Act defines a work of art as meeting the following three conditions: (1) it must be an original and not a multiple; (2) it must be made by hand and not manufactured; (3) it must be entirely devoid of utility. The debate concentrated on the second of these conditions because Brancusi's sculpture was in bronze that had been perfectly smoothed like a skillfully manufactured object. Brancusi had to explain at great length that the smoothing had been carefully done by hand. The controversy also concerned the aesthetic aspect of Brancusi's work, in particular the conformity between its title and its final form. The sculpture, titled "Oiseau", did not resemble a bird, and some of the artists and critics called as witnesses refused to admit that the object was an artistic sculpture: as a matter of fact, it could be considered simply a well-smoothed piece of bronze. Other artists and critics affirmed instead that Brancusi was an artist and that his sculptures were genuine works of art.

Two Basic Questions for a Great Challenge

Beyond the anecdotal aspect of the trial, there are two basic questions being dealt with here. The first one relates to the definition of art. The second one is that of the relationship among artistic goods and art market, art management and economic management.

The special nature of the artistic goods is commonly stressed in inquiries into the art market failure. Though the artistic goods are not quite defined, their special character is used as a rationale for public policies or non market management. As a matter of fact they need to be rigorously justified. What is the specificity of art ? What are the boundaries of the artistic fields ? Why this specificity can be managed by non market regulation ? And what kind of non market management should be implemented ? Here is a great intellectual challenge.

In practice, two kind of definitions are possible -an "essentialist" definition founded on the idea that artistic objects have a special essential quality which sets them apart from other non-artistic goods and a "conventional" definition based on a social convention -that is, on the idea that art is that which society acknowledges as such. A study of the economic nomenclature of artistic goods allows us to study their specificity and to introduce here a new category -that of artistic semiotic goods.

Given that artistic goods are sign bearers, economic activity must take this characteristic into account. Throughout the history of art, we can observe a few systems of regulation that are based on a non-market logic. If, today, market organization is able to manage some aspects of artistic goods, the market meets with failures when it has to deal with the semiotic character of artistic goods. Art markets may therefore have special ways of working. Market regulation must be connected to a plurality of institutional and organizational models for the artistic field.

Many authors have stressed the non-market aspects of artistic goods. Baumol asserted that a rational art collector values aesthetic pleasure at least as much as the difference in returns between works of art and financial assets [START_REF] Baumol | Unnatural Value: or Art Investment as Floating Crap Game[END_REF][START_REF] Frey | On the rate of return in the art market: Survey and evaluation[END_REF], [START_REF] Lahlou | La regulation des marchés culturels: le rôle de la passion[END_REF] study how passion can influence economic choices; [START_REF] Wijnberg | Selection Processes and Appropriability in Art, Science and Technology[END_REF] compares institutional regulation in the artistic field with that in other areas such as scientific production. Rouget and Sagot-Duvauroux (1996) consider non-market regulations in the artistic field, examining passionale regulation and conventional regulation. What differentiates our approach from the others is our attempt to derive a plurality of models of regulation directly from the definition of artistic semiotic goods.

At the time of the Brancusi trial, it was already clear that defining art was not an easy task.

Brancusi won the case, but the judge chose to ignore the legal criteria of the Tariff Act and passed an aesthetic judgment. The sentence stated that the object, despite the fact that there was some difficulty in assimilating it to a bird, was at least pleasant to look at and accepted its dutyfree entry into the United States. A cultural agreement can thus give an object the status of a work of art.

Artistic semiotic goods.

1. 1 From the physical and immaterial characteristics of art to its social status.

The criteria adopted in "Brancusi vs. the US" referred to the characteristics of artistic goods. On the whole these characteristics do not appear to make a clear differentiation between art and industrial goods. Two of them -originality and hand-manufacture -have to do with production, and the third -the lack of utility -with consumption.

Can we, then, determine where the specificity of the process of artistic production lies? 1. Originality is a restrictive condition. It implies that the artist produces new works ex novo.

Moreover, every creative act, if original, is also unique and in this sense is the opposite of the multiple production of standardized goods. Finally, the characteristic of originality/unicity means that art can be copied but not perfectly reproduced. The reproduction of an original would be a contradiction in terms.

The difficulty with originality is twofold. First of all, the concept is not able to distinguish between a sculpture and an industrial prototype, which are both single pieces. Secondly, the concept leaves out many artistic goods that in the age of "technical reproducibility" ˆ la Benjamin are works of art in every sense of the term. Sculptures in bronze are perfect multiples; photographs and etchings can be not only copied but also reproduced. We need other criteria to distinguish a reproduced photograph from a practical object produced in series.

2. The criterion of manual labor is meant to stress that in art, labor is the dominant factor. Of course the techniques and the materials can make a difference, but the creation is organized on the basis of specific labor. The output depends on labor and not on other inputs. Industrial production, on the contrary, makes use of machines; they are the dominant factor. Furthermore, artistic labor is not to be confused with the craftsman's labor. The output of artistic labor is extremely heterogeneous because of its specificity. The element which is common to these two kinds of labor -that is, human energy -is secondary to the quality and personality of artistic labor, to the talent and creativity incorporated in it. A work of art is created by irreplaceable labor: you cannot replace the labor of Picasso with that of Braque. But you can replace the labor of a craftsman or a worker with that of another.

Another obstacle to applying the criterion of manual labor lies in the fact that contemporary art has abandoned the criterion of the artist's skill and talent as a general rule for defining art. The aesthetic canon of conceptual art, which has gained favor with critics since the time of Duchamp's early works, magnifies conception and disdains, in a certain sense, manual accomplishment. It increases the value of an idea, but not its materialized form.

3. From the point of view of consumption, the essentialist definition is based on two criteriaone negative (artistic service is without functional utility) and the other positive (artistic service satisfies an aesthetic need). The main criticism of this third characteristic is that it cannot be generalized. Some goods may be considered art in a given society and not in another; the borderline between art and non-art is very mobile. An African tragic mask can be an actor's stage prop, a wizard's ritual symbol or an object of art on display in a museum. We cannot then distinguish between art and non-art merely by looking at the object: we must look at the relationship between men and objects , i.e. to the ideas, values, beliefs which constitute the shared bases of social culture. This means, as we will discuss later on, that what is art can vary as cultural environment varies with time from generation to generation and space from a national culture to another.

Other Suggested Characteristics

Originality, hand manufacture and non-utility do not capture per se the nature of a work of art.

Other characteristics have been proposed; we will now briefly examine the nomenclature. [START_REF] Grampp | Pricing the Priceless. Arts, Artists, and Economics[END_REF], one of the modern supporters of the identification tout court of artistic goods with the general class of economic goods, states that "... works of art are economic goods, whose value can be measured by the market, (...) sellers and buyers of art (...) are people trying to obtain the maximum benefit from what they own. Shortly, in the artistic field each activity is a maximising one." (Grampp, 1989, p. 8). Also for [START_REF] Throsby | The Production and Consumption of the Arts: A View of Cultural Economics[END_REF] original art objects can be assimilated to commodities. Moreover, they can be described and circumscribed by an extensive nomenclature of characteristics [START_REF] Throsby | The Production and Consumption of the Arts: A View of Cultural Economics[END_REF]Pommerehne e Granica, 1995;[START_REF] Moulin | Le marché de la peinture en France[END_REF][START_REF] Moulin | L'artiste, l'institution et le marché[END_REF]Rouget, Sagot-Duvauroux e Pflieger, 1991). None of these on its own is able to distinguish artistic goods from industrial ones: heterogeneity, duration, addiction, informational content, scarcity, publicness, and being a capital good.

The total assimilation of art to commodities creates serious problems because artistic goods escape the standard rules of utilitarian market exchange. In this context [START_REF] Pommerehne | Perfect Reproductions of Works of Art: Substitutes or Heresy ?[END_REF] maintain that artistic goods can be defined on one hand, by a list of characteristics and on the other, by making reference to the historical and cultural environment. Others make explicit reference to the concept of social network or artistic field of the artistic paradigm [START_REF] Wijnberg | Selection Processes and Appropriability in Art, Science and Technology[END_REF]. What defines the meaning of the goods is the context in which they are produced, exchanged, consumed and interpreted. What matters are the rules shared by a community. The paradigm evolves in cycles, in which the avant-gardes define new aesthetic rules acknowledged by experts. The experts do in fact select the young artists and acknowledge the new language. The experts dominate the market with their judgment [START_REF] Mossetto | Aesthetic and Economics[END_REF]. According to this view, artistic goods are different from industrial goods because of the selective cultural paradigm which dominates the community.

To better elaborate a conventional definition of artistic goods we must now resort to the concept of semiotic goods.

2 Defining artistic semiotic goods

In defining art our main reference is Panovsky's concept of semiotic goods -that is, goods that bear a sign (Panovsky, 1940).

Panovsky divides the goods according to a clear-cut taxonomy into: (a) "practical objects", that don't demand to be aesthetically consumed;

(b) works of art, that demand to be aesthetically consumed.

In order to distinguish between the two classes, we must refer to the creator's intentio. Both practical objects and works of art can be communication carriers (a newspaper, a painting) or functional devices (a coffee-pot, a cathedral). As in the work of art the intentio stresses the interest in the form, in the practical object the intentio is connected to the communication to be made or the function to be performed. Given that every object has form and matter, we cannot define technically at what point the form becomes dominant with respect to the matter. "It is then impossible, and undesirable, to define the exact moment in which a communication carrier or a functional device begins to be art." "Where the sphere of practical objects ends and art begins depends on the creator's intentio. But the intentio cannot be determined in an absolute manner." Panovsky's argument asks, then, for further inquiry in order to capture the cultural context in which the intentio reveals itself. The cosmos of the culture is an evolutive space-time structure.

The meanings and intentions materialize and change in time and space. The culture of a given place and epoch can modify the intentio both of the creator and of the consumer. Let us think for instance of a car by Enzo Ferrari: it has been produced in order to reach high speed, today is collected as a status symbol or as an art work. Let us think of an item of furniture by Phillips Stark: today its aesthetic side is highly appreciated, tomorrow could be neglected.

The sign or symbol must in some way be revealed, meaning that the original idea must materialize in a medium, otherwise it remains a pre-object, private and unknowable.

The work of art, then, is a semiotic good, bearer, thanks to its materialized form, of an aesthetic sign acknowledged in a specific cultural cosmos or context. Its dual nature is derived from this definition: it is at the same time sign and object. This duality allows us to separate, in modern times, an artistic semiotic good (for instance, Bottle Rack, 1914, a ready-made by Duchamp), from an industrial good like a "bottlerack", which is functional as a practical object but devoid of any aesthetic significance. Duchamp showed how an action acknowledged by the artistic community can shed sacrality on an object of daily use.

The sign allows us to separate the idea created by the artist from its technical means of expression. As a sign, the artistic good is a couple signifying/significance. It expresses the significance by means of the signifying. It belongs to the field of symbolic production. As the linguistic method has shown, every signifying belongs to a system, and appreciating the significance depends on the social system of representation. Artistic communication needs codes, regular relationships of signifying/significance, founded on common conventions, on consensual culture. The sign is accepted within a system of representation, which in turn is the result of learning and memory. Only the dominant culture can give us the key to interpreting a sign or a symbol.

In the artistic dimension sign is synonymous with meaning, symbol, icon, sacrality. It is true that many industrial objects have a significance (let us think of status symbols) or that many relational goods become symbols, but we refer here to the aesthetic sign. Like the famous "l'oeil du XVI Siècle" by [START_REF] Baxandall | Paintings and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy[END_REF], it is usual to think of an artistic paradigm. The paradigm is the dominant writing and reading code, it defines the cultural meaning of the goods.

The failure of the Arts Incohérents movement is a confirmation, a contrario, of the dependence of semiotic goods on the cultural context. A group of artists working at the end of the XIX century elaborated an aesthetic like that made successful by the Conceptual Art movement in the sixties.

The lack of collective attentions ˆ la Mauss meant that their artistic message could not be acknowledged. The necessary social conditions were missing.

From the sixties on, the avant-garde movement eliminated the question of form. For minimalism, land art and conceptual art, the style becomes irrelevant; only the contents matter.

Organizational and institutional models of artistic semiotic goods.

The sign/object duality is a basic point of departure for the economics of artistic semiotic goods.

Our thesis is that different historically-determined forms of organization can regulate the production and consumption of artistic semiotic goods. Today market regulation is dominant, but other forms at least survive. As we will see shortly, there is nothing new here for economics.

What seems new is that different forms of organization can be derived from the dual nature of artistic semiotic goods, and not only from the historical evolution of social systems.

During the thirties, Coase showed economists that the logic of the market was not the only way to regulate economic activity. A significant portion of economic activity is regulated by the logic of the organization, as for example inside a firm. Hierarchies and organization are good ways to minimize transaction costs. From an anthropological point of view, the research conducted by Malinovsky, Mauss and Polanyi (Polanyi, 1943;[START_REF] Malinowsky | Argonauts of the Western Pacific[END_REF][START_REF] Mauss | The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies[END_REF] showed that economic activity was regulated in primitive and classless societies by norms of generosity and reciprocity and centralized redistribution processes. Modern institutional economics [START_REF] North | Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance[END_REF]) emphasizes the importance for economic development of establishing property rights [START_REF] Santagata | Institutional Anomalies in the Contemporary Art Market[END_REF], of "path dependency" and cultural environment. Institutional rules do not coincide with market rules. Finally, we can mention the regulationist theory: "...the economic agents interact by means of a series of institutions, rules of the game and conventions which imply many situated rationalities [START_REF] Orléan | Analyse économique des conventions[END_REF]. It should be fallacious trying to explain the specificity of contemporary evolution using principles valid in every time and place." (Boyer, 1995, p;22) On the basis of our hypothesis we will now examine three organizational and institutional models for the artistic field. Although in principle they coexist, each of them may be dominant at any one time.

1 The institutional liaisons and hierarchies model.

Generally speaking, this model was established in Europe during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. As princes and noblemen of Western Europe consolidated their civil and military administration, they performed the strategic function of art and culture. The semiotic nature of artistic goods fit well with their new political needs for political legitimacy and a stronger identification of the people with the State.

Within that context and in order to enhance the symbolic dimension of their dominance, they needed the productive and organizational assistance of a new social figure: the artist, a creative man who was independent of the powerful corporations of craftsmen. Together with the ministers of religions, poets and humanists, the artists were those most capable of producing symbols.

The courts tried to solve their daily communication problems with the aid of art. Thus in this model, the sign borne by the artistic good is indirectly the symbol of legitimate power. The artist becomes a member of the family of the monarch, then his work confers honor and respect on the kingdom, whether the sculpture or the painting represents a mythological subject, a Madonna and child or the dignity of the monarch.

The historical locus of the institutional liaisons and hierarchies model is in the Middle Ages and

Renaissance. However, it is also present today where it survives in some segments of the artistic field -namely where and when patrons and non-profit organizations intervene to support the arts and artists. This kind of selection of modern artists shares the paternalistic nature of the institutional liaisons model. Fellowships, stages and prices are not connected to the quantity produced. Artists usually receive a grant for a project, whose market price does not exist.

We will outline here the main traits of the model, whose specificity makes it different from the market and other ways of regulating economic activity and human relationships. We shall describe the model bearing in mind that what matters most is the aspect of production -i.e., the context in which the new artist is acknowledged as such.

I. Power and Hierarchies

Great and successful artists acquire a social position that is very different from that of a craftsman who works in the market. In the Middle Ages, their productive sphere was regulated mostly by their liaisons with the court and the family of the monarch. Being a member of the family established a purely personal legal tie with the monarch, confirmed by a solemn oath.

Simone Martini, from Siena, lived at the court of Robert d'Anjou in Naples around 1315, where he had been nominated familiaris and dubbed a knight. He received a yearly salary of about 50 ounces. In exchange he provided the king with a very special semiotic good, immortalizing Robert, whose claims to royalty were considered doubtful at the time, being crowned by Saint Louis of France. This kind of institutional regulation of artistic production lasted for more than a century. In this model we can see that the law of supply and demand does not prevail. What prevails instead is an organic conception of artistic systems.

Bearing in mind the institutional field dominated by legal ties, we can trace the evolution of the social status of the artist from the "mechanical" guilds to a member of the so-called arti liberali (liberal guilds). The first step in this process leading the artist to the humanists' position lies in making society accept the idea that the artist is an "inventor" and an "engineer", while the craftsman is someone who executes a piece of work and sells it under market conditions. A free guild was not supposed to demand physical work, nor was the work to be performed in exchange for a wage. Ars is a Virtus which expresses itself in an original and inimitable way: the artist is someone who sells an image, a sign, which bestows dignity on whosoever is mirrored in it. The performance of a craftsman, on the contrary, can be evaluated, its value can be appreciated and paid for. (Warnke, 1985, p. 46)

II. Scientia Donum Dei est, unde vendi non potest.

The artist's social ascent and the symbolic character of his work separate him from the market.

Serving at court was not wage-earning labor but the offer of a virtuous activity tied to an oath of reciprocal trust. In a famous document of April 12, 1334, Giotto was nominated by the city of Florence cathedral architect, magister et gubernator. The Signoria received Giotto, signing a contract for life (Warnke, 1985, p. 18).

Art is a gift of God and therefore impossible to quantify. There is no sense in searching for its monetary counter value. Many documents stress this ennobling of artistic labor. It was evident that at court the wage was a compensation for the virtue and not for the services rendered. The typical formula of the official acts established that payment be made to the artist in exchange for a virtue which in any case could not be bought, "for as little as may be" -though humanists earned much more than painters. Payments reflected in fact the duties of the prince, which included responsibility for the conditions of his servants. This meant giving the artist a house, servants, clothing, a knife and fork and a doctor [START_REF] Haskell | Patrons and Painters. A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of Baroque[END_REF][START_REF] Baxandall | Paintings and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy[END_REF][START_REF] Warnke | L'artiste et la Cour[END_REF].

Even from the point of view of consumption we see rules different from the market ones. The Lord does not buy; legal ties define precise ceremonial acts with which artists ritually offer their works of art to the Lord.

However, the institutional ties model works together with other market factors. In general, the successful artist accepts an invitation to court firstly for economic reasons, but also in order to be freer. The city Signorie were conservative, because the guilds were conservative, while courts were extremely lively: they loved innovation and originality. The guilds were the bulwark of a protected market. Weakening their role through the social ascent of an independent artist meant reducing the room for the market in artistic production.

Being a familiaris gradually lost its hierarchical significance. Important changes were made in the model of regulating artistic activity. On one hand we can see that at the end of the XVI century the figure of the artist supplying the court stemmed from the legal ties system. This is an intermediate position between working on commission and working at court. Tiziano, Durer, Rubens, Michelangelo were suppliers of kings or popes. They lived in the city and escaped the bureaucratic constraints and ritual of the courts. Moreover, they enjoyed the privileges of the artists at court and were not subject to the rules of the guilds. The autonomy of the artist supplying the court was not total; in any case his privileges depended on the benevolence of the court: here we have a sort of implicit ties model. On the other hand, at the end of the XVII century another model of hierarchies becomes dominant: the Academies model.

The model we have just described never returned to its initial splendor but survives in the logic of patronage and of the not-for-profit sector, limiting the hegemonic expectations of market regulation.

The model of symbolic goods: gift and reciprocity

The economics of symbolic goods is founded on the unselfish logic of the gift as opposed to the selfish logic of market exchange. However, the gift models are essentially different: according to [START_REF] Mauss | The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies[END_REF] gift exchange is a discontinuous succession of generous action; according to Levi-Strauss the gift and counter-gift system reflects a logic of reciprocity which is beyond any exchange; according to [START_REF] Bourdieu | Le marché des biens symboliques[END_REF] the gift logic conceals an objective frame of selfish exchanges.

The description of the "gift and reciprocity" system usually refers to primitive peoples without social classes, but the same organizational and institutional logic could be applied to the artistic community. If we take the artistic community seriously, we will see that artists and collectors try to regulate the exchange of semiotic goods, constantly swinging between dependence on and independence from the market.

Freedom from the market is sought by carrying out the anti-economic logic of l'art pour l'art, implying the negation of all that is tradable, praising, on the contrary, what is creative against what is salable and commercial. The artist is indifferent to market sanctions, to commercial success. He is interested above all in the accumulation of symbolic capital.

Market dependence, on the other hand, induces artists and art collectors to become managers of themselves. They spend their time controlling the system of sales and the process of valorization of their works of art. The aim of the community becomes the search for short-run gains.

«Pricing the Priceless»

This dual nature of semiotic goods is reflected in the pricing mechanism. As far as semiotic and symbolic goods are concerned, we could say that where young artists, avant-gardes, talent scout art galleries and unselfish art collectors are prevalent, prices are an imperfect sign. When artistic goods are pure sign -i.e., they become pure semiotic goods -they are priceless, they do not enter the logic of market exchange. They enter the class of connoisseur goods, and like relics, things belonging to the deceased, offerings to gods, king's treasures, they are collected, protected and kept out of the market sphere. These goods acquire significance, and as long as there are no cultural or institutional changes, they are devoid of any practical utility. Once the social environment changes, the goods may be treated as market goods. The symbolic aspect of artistic goods allows them to be exchanged, as Bourdieu says [START_REF] Bourdieu | Le marché des biens symboliques[END_REF], just as their monetary counter value is a sort of sunk payment. The payment of a price is a kind of gift, pure generosity that in the long run might give a good return, also from the market point of view.

The Artistic Community

Levi-Strauss tells of the primitive peoples of Papua and Melanesia who have only one word to indicate the action of buying and selling. According to Levi-Strauss, the reason is that these actions are two sides of the same coin, and the two actions are not antipathetic.

We can examine this point more closely. When an art collector, better yet a young one, buys a painting from a young artist he feels part of a wider cultural phenomenon. As it is revealed by a host of biographies and interviews to famous and less renown collectors, they feel as though they were participating in the creation of culture. In this sense his contribution is not on the demand side but rather, on the supply side. The cost of the payment of a price is transformed into the benefit of participating. The work of art does not charge the collector with its costs but becomes the pleasure derived from participating in an aesthetic and cultural adventure. Thus market exchange is replaced by liaisons and relationships in which cooperative and symbolic reasons take the place of prices and selfish preferences.

The artist is interested in reputation, which could in the long run produce social and economic benefits. There is a pre-capitalist dimension that withdraws part of the artistic activity from market exchange and weakens the efficiency of the prices as informative signs. In the artistic community there is a special dimension in which exchange has a moral dimension whose object is to produce a sentiment of friendship between two interested persons [START_REF] Mauss | The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies[END_REF] Of course the "gift and reciprocity" model is directly related to the artistic community. It loses its significance where non-contemporary art is concerned. It has no sense when in a secondary market the work of art is exchanged between persons who are not members of the artistic community. The history of the movement called Industrial Painting which developed during the sixties under the aegis of the Situationist International is just one interesting case in point. The artist -namely, Pinot Gallizio from Alba, Italy -aimed to produce art for the people, exploiting all the opportunities that industrial technology could provide. In order to accomplish this task, the idea was to "technically" separate the sign/symbol from the object, selling the latter at its market price. How? The artists painted rolls of canvas and sold them by meters at the low price of the canvas. Within the "artistic community" this was an attempt to strengthen generous relationships, where the symbolic side of the work of art was deprived of any economic value. Outside the community, dealers, selfish art collectors and speculators exchanged one meter of artistic cloth at its market value.

The gift and the reciprocity system can also concern the future generations. In the past and nowadays many exchanges of art works did not pass through the market mechanism. Churches, monastery, museums and public collections received paintings and sculptures by means of bequeath and heritage. The reciprocity expected by bequeathing corresponds to the will to be remembered by the community. The reason of bequeathing makes the price mechanism useless. Also transfers to relatives and friends define a community environment different from the market field.

3 The market model for artistic semiotic goods

Artistic goods have several dimensions -social, political, aesthetic, economic, etc. Each of these dimensions has its own logic. The first specific characteristic of the market model is that all these dimensions are subject to the economic one. Its second characteristic is that the market model is a separation model. Personal or community links have disappeared, and the only mediation in a society made up of autonomous and separate individuals is that of the market -namely, that of a pricing system. Thirdly, in the market model the allocation of artistic goods is governed not by political power or by social relationships but by the willingness to pay.

A large part of the field of art is therefore never based on interpersonal relationships but rather, on a market of works of art, circulating autonomously and free of their creators. Artistic status is not dependent on the artist's sociopolitical status but on the market value of his/her products, on market contracts and finally, on the anonymous horizontal relationships among the owners of the goods.

Prices and Externalities

Our problem is that of the relationship between these specific characteristics of the market model and the semiotic characteristics of artistic goods. Artistic goods make up autonomous and closed sets which have only one property -their price. Market efficiency rests with the ability of prices to synthesize all of the economic information relating to the good. Can we postulate a rational pricing system for semiotic goods? We believe in fact that the semiotic characteristics of artistic goods make it very difficult to obtain such a system.

It is easier to identify and measure the costs of production of an industrial good than of an artistic good. As we have said, art is sign. It is produced not only by the classic inputs of labor, capital and commodities: it is also "produced" by other signs, representations, emotions and so on, all participating in the social context. Monet's painting "Impression soleil levant" is also the product of a social environment, which is not a purchasable input. If in fact the cost of production fails to be a basis for price determination, we must turn to demand price and utility as in the Ricardo-Marshall model of rare goods.

As a sign bearer, an artistic good has many widespread effects. Monet's painting favors the works of Manet and Degas. But the owner of this painting cannot receive the exact monetary value of all its effects, present and future. And given the semiotic character of artistic goods, the evaluation of utility depends on several changing social factors, variable social norms. These spatial and temporal externalities create a gap between price and social conditions and the benefits of an artistic good. Market regulation must therefore use conventional regulation.

Some Remark Upon Author's Property Rights

Contrary to the functioning of the gift model and the usual relationships developed within the artistic community, markets need, in addiction to spontaneous conventions, formal rules and well defined property rights if they are to originate and function efficiently. Without these institutions an efficient market unlikely would exist. Artistic semiotic goods are information goods, like many other goods (music, movies, books) circulating in other cultural markets. However the acknowledgment and the allocation of property rights in the contemporary painting market is incomplete: the anomaly concerns an evolution of the institutional setting that does not acknowledge an equivalence of the copyright. While the composer and the writer can choose at least between selling the complete bundle of acknowledged property rights; or selling the bundle, except for the copyright to sound or written reproduction, the painter can only sell her/his complete bundle. This leads to the prejudice of the artist/author's property right. The droit de suite , a particular specification of an artist's right to the yields of his work, was the first institutional measure in place in many bodies of legislation -it is now going to be extended to the whole European Union -but on the whole neither enforced by the governments nor claimed by the artists. The droit de suite gives painters a little share in the value that their works may attain in a sale following the first one. Although intended to correct inefficient rights allocations, the droit de suite has some serious drawbacks. First of all, the existence of this right depends on a hypothetical future resale. If there is no resale, there is no such right. The droit de suite does not seem to protect the artist from the economic point of view either [START_REF] Rottemberg | The Remuneration of Artists[END_REF][START_REF] Mccain | Artists' Resale Dividends: Some Economic-Theoretic Considerations[END_REF][START_REF] Mccain | Bargaining Power and Artists' Resale Dividends[END_REF][START_REF] Santagata | Institutional Anomalies in the Contemporary Art Market[END_REF]. Because of its serious failures, a substitute of the droit de suite should be examined, such as an exhibition or display right.

The final problem we wish to pose here is that of the market dynamics of the artistic field. For standard goods market regulation is an incentive to reduce production costs by improving productivity and adjusting products to individual preferences. The first effect is important for those parts of the artistic field characterized by a process of industrial production, such as cultural industries. Conversely, the principle of productivity makes little sense for the more traditional areas of the artistic field. Moreover, the role of the cost of labor is decreasing with the gradual substitution of aesthetic form with a conceptual manner of "making" art. Similarly, the adjustment of artistic production to individual preferences cannot be seen to be as efficient as it is in the case of standard goods. The dynamics of art give the avant-garde a predominant role.

Avant-garde movements do not match individual preferences but on the other hand, tend to oppose them, destroying the dominant paradigms in order to erect others. The dynamics of art need incentives other than those provided by the market.

Conclusion and suggestions for further research.

In the first part of this essay we have defined the semiotic artistic goods, that is goods bearing sign. We have thus described three models of organization of the artistic field. The institutions and hierarchies model is politically-oriented. In this context the logic of politics governs the semiotic dimension of artistic goods. The gift model develops within an autonomous artistic community. Its logic is linked to cultural and aesthetic dynamics, heavily based on the semiotic nature of artistic goods. Finally, the market model is economically-oriented. Here, the logic of resource allocation governs all transactions of semiotic goods.

These three models are not exhaustive: others can be used to explain the historical setting of the artistic field -for example, by referring to the practices of religion and magic with regard to art.

Each model has its own logic; no one model can organize and regulate the entire artistic field on its own. Market logic clearly has a strong influence on the artistic field. The gift model can be seen at work in modern artistic communities. The institution and hierarchies model instead survives in some segments of the artistic field -namely, when and where patrons and not-forprofit organizations intervene in support of the arts and artists.

The first step in our analysis has been to link the semiotic characteristics of goods to different systems of regulation. The next step will be to devote ourselves to understanding the way in which the different systems and logic interact in order to regulate the artistic field.


E Cercier

Fouquet

Geoffroy-Perez B

Emilie Chazelle
email: e.chazelle@invs.sante.fr

Prevalence of upper-limb musculoskeletal symptoms in French agricultural workers in 2010: results of the pilot phase of COSET-MSA study

Data were collected by a self-administered questionnaire in 2010 for the pilot phase of COSET-MSA cohort 1 .

Objective

Agricultural workers are strongly exposed to physical and biomechanical constraints, which are known risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). In 2012, MSD represented 93% of compensated occupational diseases among workers covered by the French agricultural health insurance fund (Mutualité sociale agricole -MSA). The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of upper-limb musculoskeletal symptoms (UL-MS) among French agricultural workers.

Methods

Outcome

Prevalences of UL-MS during the last 12 months, during the last 7 days and by lenght of symptoms (>30 days, permanent) were assessed with the Nordic questionnaire. Prevalences were assessed for three localisations: shoulder, elbow/forearm and hand/wrist.

Statistical analysis

The present analysis was conducted among the subsample of workers in the agriculture, forestry, or fishing sectors. Prevalences were stratified by sex and assessed by age and occupational category (regroupment of Insee PCS 1994): farmers, craftsmen/salesmen/managers, professionals/technicians/associate professionals/lower-grade white-collar workers, agricultural blue-collar workers, non-agricultural blue-collar workers. To guarantee the representativeness of the sample, estimations of prevalence were weighted taking into account the sampling and the non-response 2 . Chi-2 tests for weighted data were used to compare groups.

Description of the study participants

Prevalence of musculoskeletal symptoms

• The prevalence of UL-MS was higher in women than in men (Table ):

o 67% vs 54% for symptoms during the last 12 months (p<10 -3 ) o 34% vs 20% for symptoms for more than 30 days during the last 12 months (p<10 -3 ) o 44% vs 30% for symptoms during the last 7 days (p<10 -3 ) • The highest prevalence of symptoms during the last 12 months was observed for shoulder in men (37%), and hand/wrist in women (49%).

• There was no difference of prevalence of UL-MS during the last 12 months by age except for the elbow/forearm localisation in men: men aged 40 years and over were more frequently affected (p=0.02). • Prevalence of >30 days symptoms and permanent symptoms differed significantly by age among men for the different localisations (except for permanent symptoms of the elbow/forearm, p=0.07): prevalence was highest for age categories ≥ 40 years old.

• Few differences were observed between occupational categories:

o In men, the prevalence of hand/wrist symptoms during the last 12 months was different according to occupation (p<10 -2 ): craftsmen/salesmen/managers declared more often UL-MS.

o In women, the prevalence of elbow/forearm symptoms during the last 7 days and for more than 30 days during the last 12 months was different by occupation (p<10 -2 for both): professionals/technicians/associate professionals/lower-grade white-collar workers declared less frequently symptoms.

o The UL-MS prevalence was not significantly different between farmers and agricultural blue-collar workers, whatever the localisation, in both genders.

Discussion

This study shows a high prevalence of upper-limb musculoskeletal symptoms in agricultural workers of these 5 areas, especially in women. The most frequent localisation was shoulder for men and hand/wrist for women. Data on UL-MS among agricultural workers are scarce [START_REF] Osborne | Prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders among farmers: a systematic review[END_REF] . Moreover, prevalence rates varied widely depending on the agricultural population studied (milkers,…). Our study provides new data on UL-MS among all occupations of agricultural workers in a western country (full data are available in a recent publication [START_REF] Cercier | Prevalence of upper-limb musculoskeletal symptoms in French agricultural workers in 2010: results of the pilot phase of Coset-MSA study[END_REF] ) that need to be confirmed at the national scale. These results underline the need for prevention in this economic sector.

People 18 to 65 years old were randomly selected from the MSA database of 5 French administrative areas among workers in 2008 (at least 4 months (or for seasonal workers, working at least 3 months in the same job, 2 years in a raw or more).

•

  The questionnaire was completed by 2363 subjects (response rate 24%) among whom 1130 participants full-filled analysis criteria. • Men represented 75% of the study sample. • The mean age of participants was 42.7 years for men [41.8-43.6] and 45.7 [44.3-47.0] for women.

Table : Prevalence of upper-limb musculoskeletal symptoms by sex among French agricultural workers in 2010.

 :


Baudouin Dupret

Myriam Ferrier

SELLING ONE'S PROPERTY ON AN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT A Praxeological Approach to a Syrian Case Study

This chapter addresses the issue of how real estate transactions are organized in Damascus, in socalled informal neighbourhoods, i.e. city quarters which developed by violating the law on rural lands theoretically improper for development. There are many different practices, which may look random, yet they are shaped through a complex relationship to the law, which acknowledges the existence of informal neighbourhoods, called mukhalafat in Arabic, in different ways. We shall describe this relationship through one single case study, by analyzing documents kept by the buyer of a property: Mrs. Sabbah.

The flat Mrs. Sabbah bought is located in the Palestinian refugee camp Mukhayyam al-Yarmuk. The status of its real-estate property is subject to rules different from those of other Damascus neighbourhoods. For the Land Registry Department, this land is registered as rural and belongs to the northern region of the United Arab Republic. A specific department was created in the 1940s to administer affairs related to Palestinian refugees: the Foundation for Palestinian Refugees (al-Mu'assasa li-l-laji'in al-filastiniyyin). Among its responsibilities is the administration of land in the Yarmuk area on which it has a 99 year leasehold. It is responsible for the parcelling out of the land and for its allotment to Palestinian refugees. In parallel, the municipality (baladiyya), also called the Local Council, is responsible for the issuing of building permits and the registration of house tenancy contracts.

Most of the documents consulted concern real estate transactions on different properties located within the same building, on al-Ja'awna street, in the historical heart of the Camp, on a parcel containing around one hundred buildings. The specific building we are dealing with, which is not registered in the Land Registry, was built in several stages. The initial construction comprised a ground-floor and one storey. Today, the building has four storeys. The documents kept by Mrs. Sabbah and the relating real estate transactions explain how many storeys were added to the building and how they were sold. Mrs. Sabbah's file also includes water and electricity bills plus one house tenancy contract.

These documents can be analyzed in two ways. First, we shall see how they describe the property for specific practical purposes and how, therefore, they do it in different ways. Second, we shall observe how this file, comprising various documents, reflects the complex history of this property, the specific language games which are attached to it, and its internal organization around principles of the contiguity of properties and the succession of legal deeds, in order to secure the buyer's property rights.

Documents established for all practical purposes

Mrs. Sabbah's file comprises six contracts of final sale, two special powers of attorney, one house tenancy contract, and water and electricity bills. These documents do not relate to the same property. The real-estate transactions they account for sometimes relate to unfinished storeys, sometimes to built storeys, that is, apartments. Nevertheless, the parties who take part in these transactions are related to each other through the close proximity of their properties and the successive character of the contracts (cf. infra, section 2).

As for the contracts, they [1] put the transaction under God's protection; [2] are titled; [3] declare the sale final; [4] specify the identity of the signatories of the contract; [5] define the content of the object of the transaction; [6] stipulate the modalities of the transaction (exchange of a property for money); [7] specify the date of the contract's execution; [8] state everyone's responsibility vis-à-vis the Syrian administration; and [9] specify the conditions under which the sale took place and the contract can be annulled. Moreover, some contracts also [10] mention the payment by one of the parties of a fee to the broker and [11] account for the registration with the Ministry of Finance. The first party Ahmad ... The second party Khaled ... [4] We have agreed upon the transaction ... according to the following provisions: 1-The first party sold to the second party in a full and final way the extension situated … in return for what was agreed upon. /The first party/ committed itself to the payment of the commission to the intermediary person. [5] [6] 2 -The second party accepted to buy the extension ... in return for its balance ... [5] [6] 3 -The second party paid to the first party … the sum of … The remainder ... will be paid according to the special conditions… indicated on page two. [9] 4 -The first party declares having received from the second party the sum of ... and has given the final discharge to the buying party. 5 -The first party committed itself to leave the estate... in its current condition... 6 -The first party committed itself to the payment of the sum ... immediately... starting from the date of 18/6/2001. [6] 7 -When the building of the aforementioned estate is completed, the first party announces it … If the second party does not answer, the sale is considered null and void ... [8] 8 -The expenses linked to the [Land Registry procedures] are owed by the second party... [The] taxes ... are owed by the second party ... [7] 9 -The second party shall pay the [subsidiary] expenses in case the construction of the sold estate is unfinished. [9] 10 -If one of the parties rescinds the contract ... it would be compelled to pay to the other party the sum equivalent to the value of a final sale ... [3] 11 -The address mentioned beside the name of each party … is considered as the address ... 12 -This contract was made ... in two copies ... witness / witness of the second party/ first party fig. 2 The contracts are not all identical. In Mrs. Sabbah's file, the first one (see below) was written by an attorney, as indicated by the heading of the document and the comment: "written by myself" followed by his signature and stamp. In a preamble the attorney describes the estate which is concerned by the sale and then states the completion of the sale. In the next five contracts, there is neither any preamble nor the mention of the attorney's role. However, two witnesses have appended their signatures at the end of the deed: "in the full possession of our legal and judicial capacities, we have agreed upon this transaction". These five contracts are written on standard forms, available in ordinary shops. Some parts of the form are left empty, or are more or less completed. The back of the document offers the possibility to specify the conditions of payment, the inventory of fixtures and the timetable of instalments. These specifications are different in each case, although all the contracts describe the estate which is sold.

All these sale contracts present themselves as final and binding. In signing this document, the owner gives up all his rights on the estate to the buyer. The transfer of the property and the price of the transaction are the subject of two provisions stating the action accomplished by the two parties. The transaction is not registered in the Land Registry insofar as the property itself is not registered. Thus, the buyer's rights are not guaranteed by the Land Registry. However, the transaction is registered, as far as the first three contracts are concerned, with the Ministry of Finance, as indicated by the stamp on the back of the documents: this will give it legal force and will serve to testify to property rights. The fourth, fifth and sixth contracts are not registered with the Ministry of Finance. The transaction they refer to might be reinforced by the power of attorney given by the seller to the buyer, as is the case with the fifth and sixth contracts. There is, moreover, a handwritten note on these last two contracts, as well as on the third one, which stipulates this procedure indirectly when it characterizes the transfer of the property: "the sale consists of a special power of attorney."

The two powers of attorney completing the file also show repeated features like [1] a heading, [2] the civil status of the public prosecutor and of the beneficiary of the power of attorney, [3] the public prosecutor's statement and signature, [4] the description of the property concerned by the power of attorney, and [5] the number under which it was registered by the notary. Each power of attorney also defines precisely [6] the competences which have been delegated. Officially written by the public prosecutor, the power of attorney mentions, at the end of the document, [7] the signature, stamps and statement of the notary testifying to the respect of procedures and to the authenticity of the deed. Finally, it is dated [8]. Registered after payment of the legal taxes and the required stamps...

The text of these two powers of attorney forms is identical, and the handwritten parts are the same except for slight details. These powers of attorney concern the last two transactions and correspond to the last two contracts which were also kept by Mrs. Sabbah. There are two types of power of attorney: general, through which somebody confers powers to somebody else for any transaction that concerns him/her; and special, through which somebody confers powers to somebody else for any transaction concerning a particular property.

The powers of attorney enclosed in Mrs. Sabbah's file are special. The person who sold the property to Mrs. Sabbah conferred to her all the transactional powers concerning this property. In this power of attorney, as in any special power of attorney, the buyer and the seller do not appear as such: the buyer is the prosecutor and the seller is the person to whom the powers are conferred. The power of attorney aims at giving the appointed proxy the capacity to act vis-à-vis the said property as its owner. It gives the right to make transactions, not the right to ownership. So, one can raise the question as to why a power of attorney must be made by the seller to the buyer while normally the sale implies the transfer of all the rights bound to the property. This leads us to question what the power of attorney accomplishes formally and allows indirectly.

The power of attorney is a deed registered by the notary, who is an employee of the Ministry of Justice. It has an official character which affects the whole real-estate transaction. Since the sold property is of a certain type (i.e. a flat in a building constructed on rural land which is not divided into plots and belongs to the state), the transaction cannot be registered at the Real-estate Office. Hence the power of attorney. In other words, the power of attorney serves as a means to testify to a transaction that cannot follow a normal course. The same holds true for the registration with the Ministry of Finance in the first three contracts.

The file establishing ownership: chronology, language-games and instructed action

Mrs. Sabbah's flat is located in a building whose construction lasted more than ten years. The first contract dates back to 1996 and indicates that the building is made up of a ground-floor and one storey. The fifth contract, dating from 18 January 2006, concerns the third-floor flat and a room built on the fourth floor. Thus, three storeys have been added between 1996 and 2006. These contracts do not all concern the same property. However, they are linked to one another, not the least because they are all included within the same file. Two issues come to light in that respect: on the one hand, the existence of Mrs. Sabbah's property depends on the existence of the storeys on which it is built; on the other, it is only possible to testify to the ownership of Mrs. Sabbah's property on condition that one can establish the ownership right of the person from whom she purchased it. It is for these two cumulative reasons that she keeps the file of the successive contracts which lead to her ownership.

The close examination of Mrs. Sabbah's file makes it possible to account for three major features of this process: first, the chronology of the building and the transactions carried out on the different storeys; second, the inventory of the real-estate jargon and language-games; third, the description of the principles of the physical proximity of the properties and the successive character of legal instruments leading to the ownership of the flat, which bring together all the documents.

The Chronology

The inclusion of all these documents in one and the same file raises a question which can be answered through the examination of the many links which bind these documents together. Among these links, there is the succession of these documents in a chronology that led to the construction of the building in its present form and to the acquisition by Mrs. Sabbah of the ownership of the third-floor flat. Hereinafter follows the summary chronology which can be established on this basis.

The first contract, dated 8/12/1996, concerns the sale of one half of a storey suitable for development, of a surface area of 27 m 2 , on the second floor of a building comprising a ground-floor and a first storey of a surface area of 60 m 2 . The second contract, dated 18/6/2001, accounts for the selling of an extension of 27 m 2 , located on the third floor, and of the storey suitable for development above it, that is, a potential extension on the fourth floor. The third contract, dated 27/3/2004, concerns the third-floor extension. The fourth contract, dated 18/1/2006 concerns the third-floor extension, plus the non-built storey above it. The fifth contract, dated 18/1/2006, concerns the same third-floor extension, plus the storey above it which is now built. Finally, the sixth contract, dated 5/4/2006, concerns the third-floor extension again, without any mention of the room located on the fourth floor. It is only through a discussion with Mrs. Sabbah that we learned this room belonged to her. This room is only partly built and its roof is made of sheet metal. Access to it is through the flat's kitchen.

Real-estate language games

Real-estate and transactions regarding it are formulated with words. We will describe these words and their connections to one another, through what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls language games. These games accomplish the literary inscription of a material reality (Latour, 2002). They produce descriptions that aim at making things, people and actions enter the realm of categories acknowledged by the law. This is what lawyers know as the characterization process, the main feature of which is to be consequential. We will describe and analyse the main categorization elements of Mrs. Sabbah's file as used in contracts and powers of attorney, i.e., the land, the building, the storey and the flat.

References to the land in the documents of this file mix geographical commonsense and legal administrative terminologies. Some of the contract forms indicate that the real-estate is of a mulk type, which points to private ownership. The preamble of the first contract specifies that the plot of land is situated "in Damascus, camp of Yarmuk, al-Ja'awna street, alley (jâdda) number /10/ … on plot ('aqâr) number /1081/ Shaghur Basatin." The first half of this account is an itinerary to follow. It starts from a general location: Damascus, and ends with the precise location of the plot of land, alley number /10/, which one reaches as if we were taking a taxi, via al-Ja'awna street. The second part of this account locates the land with the technical words specific to realestate administration: the real-estate number (1081) and a name (Shagur Basatin), sometimes preceded by the mention "district" (mantiqa), which designates a specific real-estate entity. 1 The next contracts are much briefer regarding the description that locates the land: geographical references are no longer indicated; only the administrative terminology is kept; the real-estate number is mentioned, but there is another term corresponding to it, that of "report" (mahdar).

The association of a number (1081) and a real-estate name (Shaghur Basatin) shows that the word "report" refers to the real-estate and, therefore, this number has a real-estate nature.

The building in which Mrs. Sabbah's property is located is not always mentioned in the documents of the file. When mentioned, two types of terminology are used for the designation of the land. The administrative type copies municipality terminology. It mentions "the building (binâ') known as the house (manzil) number /11/ according to building permit number /177/."

The number (11) associated to the "house" refers to a document, i.e. the building permit, which is not included in the file. It testifies to the registration of the building in municipality records, whereas, as we already know, the real estate plot on which it is located is itself registered in the Land Registry. The second type of terminology is related to commonsense. The term "house" (manzil) is used in a domestic more than a legal sense. Moreover, the building is designated in some documents as the "Idriss Building", which refers to the original owner of the plot of land.

All the properties the successive contracts and powers of attorney refer to are located within the same building, in a vertical axis, according to the constructed or non-constructed nature of the surface area which is sold. If the property is not built, the documents speak of a "storey" (sath);

the floor of which is itself specified with regard to the construction on which it is built: either it is above it ("what overhangs it": "ma ya'luha"), or it is situated above ("above the storey": "zahr al-thani fanni" and "sath al-thani fanni"), or it is associated with it ("with its storey": "ma'a sathiha" or "ma'a al-sath). However, in the first contract, the storey where the surface property is located is not only given in relation to the storey situated below; it is also complemented by a reference to the surface situated above: "half the storey of the second floor" (nisf sath al-tabiq al-thani fanni). When it is constructed, a property is situated vertically in the building by reference to the floor, either implicitly ("the third": "thalith fanni") or explicitly ("of the third floor": "min al-tabiq al-thalith fanni"). Thus, the term "fanni", which means literally "technical", when associated with a number, refers to a floor, with or without the prior mention of the term "floor" (tabiq) itself. Note that without the term "fanni", the association of the number with the word "floor" would have another meaning, that is, it would designate the floor situated below, the ground floor then becoming the first floor.

The property which is sold is sometimes described, when it is developed, using a general term like "extension" (mulhaq) or "flat" (shaqqa). The content is sometimes specified by the introduction of the formula "made of" (mu'allaf min), through the adjunction of words linked together with the conjunction "and", or simply through their juxtaposition to one another. In other contracts, the terms "extension" or "flat" are just not mentioned. The composition of the property can be given directly -"a room" (ghurfa), a living room (salun), a bathroom (munfa'at), with its storey (ma'a sathiha) -or indirectly, through the reference to the number of the registered plot on which the building was built, so that the constructed property and the plot on which it was constructed are confused : "… real estate 1081 of the district Shaghur Basatin which consists of a room, a living room and a bathroom" (al-mahdar /1081/ min mantiq Shaghur Basatin wa-lladhi huwa 'ibaratan 'an ghurfa wa salun wa munfa'at). Note that the term "extension" becomes a "flat" when a room is appended to it. Then, the property is formulated in the following way: "a flat… with its storey… there is a room on the storey (ghurfa 'ala sath)".

"an extension… a room and a bathroom and the building (bina') overhanging them" is once mentioned. Sometimes, the surface area (masaha) of the property, i.e. 27 m 2 , is indicated, as well as its orientation-"South" (ittijah janubi, janubi, or qibli). The contracts also specify the fact that there are water and electricity meters, which indicates the state of completion of the property. These meters are also used for legal recognition of the property.

There are language games operating in the description of the property that is sold. The notion of language game is borrowed from L. Wittgenstein (1963) and refers to the fact that words take their meaning from their association to one another and through their context of use. A specific language corresponds to any activity with which people are familiar. The meaning of words is not given outright; it comes from words which, once combined, look similar to those other combinations specific to the many domains of life and language, like the law. Language games can share a family resemblance which shows the type of domain to which they belong. The notion of family resemblance is also borrowed from Wittgenstein, and it means that words associated with an activity share a number of features and therefore often constitute a lexical field. The many language games are learned through the familiarity people acquire with their environment, its working, the forms of life to which they are associated, "the social practices of a linguistic community which are so deeply rooted that the speakers do not even think about it" (Dupret, 2006 : 63 ;Schulte, 1992 ;Wittgenstein, 1961).

Bruno Latour explains that in the case of documents, language games achieve the literary inscription of a material property. He stresses the transformation the writing exercise operates on the primordial object, and raises the question of the selective character of writing which proceeds through shortcuts and hides the mechanisms operating in that very activity (Latour, 1996: 43).

Literary inscription also has the capacity to establish facts and to make them enter into categories so as to become useful for all further practical purposes. This especially holds true in the domain of law. The writer of a contract, for instance, elaborates it for all practical legal purposes (Dupret, 2006: 249). This is often done by obscuring the biographical details of the object of the contract and of the practical conditions of its writing (ibid.: 162). Focused on its future use more than its past, a contract testifies to the transaction which it will perhaps confirm later on.

As for Mrs. Sabbah's file, the language games we described produce legal forms through a process of inscription, that is, through the transformation of a real estate materiality into a literary reality. The organization of the document into several provisions, the use of stereotypical expressions and particular formulations, and the use of template forms, all give it the form of a contract and denote its legal nature. However, it would be simplistic to say that a legal document only reproduces pre-existing forms: although the legal document is the outcome of a process of form-setting, (mise en forme), it cannot be reduced to the pure product of legal formalism (Latour, 2002: 181). Producing forms is also the capacity to produce effects, e.g. legal.

The literary inscription of a material property is achieved for all legal practical purposes.

Regarding real estate, this involves producing a document testifying to the transaction and making it possible to be opposed in court. In our case, the language games in the document reveal the informal nature of the property. Indeed, it is through the association of words familiar to people dealing with real estatewords with a family resemblancethat we know it is not only about real-estate law, but also a very specific, though not uncommon, form of this law, that is, real-estate law in informal neighbourhoods.

It is clear that the documents in Mrs. Sabbah's file relate to a real estate. An element of the description of the property is given, while it does not seem necessary, to complete the meaning of another word and to attach it to the family "real-estate". The word "mulhaq", which is a predicate meaning "added" or "annexed", acquires the value of a substantive, and its meaning "surface built on the last floor of a building" comes from its being inserted in a context and associated with other words. Moreover, the repetitive use of the word gives it a conventional character, so that it can be understood without its being directly associated with other elements of the real-estate vocabulary and its meaning explained. In the same way, the word "mahdar", which designates what has been recorded, the page of the Land Registry, acquires the meaning of land parcel, then of built property, because of its association with other words. The word has taken on a new meaning through a succession of shortcuts and ellipses.

The fact that the documents of Mrs. Sabbah's file concern a real estate located in an informal neighbourhood is never mentioned directly. Indeed, the absence of any registration in the Land Registry is not explicit. The specific character of this estate is nevertheless expressed through a series of linguistic expressions. This is also the case with the use of terminology pertaining to commonsense, like "Idriss estate". The use of the term "extension" is another indicator. In Land Registry vocabulary, it refers to a room on the last floor jointly owned by all the owners of the building, which as such cannot be sold. However, in the language game of informal settlements, it refers to the flat on the last floor, which is privately owned. Lastly, the way the property is vertically located in the building, e.g. through the use of place adverbial complements, situates the construction in an informal zone: the property is located through its relationship with another property and not according to its Land Registry number. Physical topology replaces bureaucratic registration.

We see that language games formalised a material reality into a written document, bestowed it a legal status and revealed the particular character of the properties relating to the transactions. These properties which we call "informal" are designated in Arabic by the word "mukhalafat". This encompasses the idea of infringing the legal order of things. It does not amount to illegality as such, but the contradiction between the agricultural nature of a plot of land and its development. The expression does not refer to any given category per se, but to an array of practices, habitual and vague, associated by the same language game.

Close proximity of properties and succession of contracts: the regressive reading of the file

It has been noted that the property which is sold in the last contract is not the same property which was sold in the first: whereas it was initially only half a storey, in the end a complete apartment is the subject of the transaction; whereas it was only a storey on which the buyer implicitly had the right to build, it ends up as a built apartment. It is the way the file is constituted that allows Mrs. Sabbah (as it allowed all the former owners), to establish the property's history and origin. Because the building is not registered with the Land Registry, there are good reasons to keep all the documents testifying to the transactions related to it. The file in which the documents are assembled reveals what the documents hide: the property's origin. It is through the detailed and regressive reading of the file in its entirety that it is possible to describe the many links between the documents and to establish the proximity of the properties and the chronological succession of the contracts. We saw how the documents were written for all practical legal purposes; now we shall examine the nature of the reading of these documents and of the file they constitute.

The reading of texts, documents and files consists of what Livingston calls instructed action. This notion refers to the fact that reading is an achievement relating two parts (or Lebenswelt pairs): the text and its understanding. The text must be read as a descriptive account, a guide for the action of reading. The reader develops a method of reasoning through his/her leaning on the text's clues, so that he/she can give a coherent meaning to what is read. Understanding a sentence calls for the reader's skill and capacity to mobilize the background knowledge necessary to make sense of the clues. Livingston speaks of a community of readers and of a background knowledge shared by this community. In that sense, reading is a social phenomenon revealed through people's capacity to understand a text.

Recognizing that legal documents constitute a file is a first reading clue. Guided by textual instructions, the reader relates the many different elements constituting the file that are capable of producing some legal aspect. This is what Latour (2002) calls "bringing a file to maturity". A legal practitioner will read from within the text the information which proves useful for the accomplishment of his work (Dupret, 2006). The reader's practical reasoning and capacity to call upon background knowledge make it possible to understand what is said and to pick out relevant information for the purpose of the ongoing activity, that is, for all practical purposes.

The duplication of a mistake in the description of Mrs. Sabbah's property presents a good example of this mechanism of reading for all practical purposes. It gives a clue as to the way a document is read. This mistake concerns the parcel's number on which Mrs. Sabbah's property is located. The mistake appears in the fifth and sixth contracts, together with the powers of attorney which are associated with them. The fifth contract's first page indicates parcel number "1081", whereas the same contract's second page mentions "1881". The power of attorney associated with it as well as the sixth contract (and the second power of attorney) duplicated the mistake. This shows that the person who wrote the power of attorney attached to the sixth contract was concerned mainly with the reading of the fifth contract's second page, the information of which it reproduces. In the same way, the notary who registered the two powers of attorney was exclusively interested in the fifth contract's second page, so that he did not pinpoint the mistake that was accidentally introduced (cf. infra fig. 7).

In order to understand Mrs. Sabbah's file one must go through the instructed reading of all the documents and the file. Contracts and powers of attorney are forms, except for the first contract, which guide the reader in his/her reading work. The handwritten parts, filled in according to the writer's interpretation of the form's instructions, constitute further clues for the reader, i.e. the elements relevant for the establishment of the contracts' succession and the contiguity of the properties of the transaction. They give details regarding the civil status of the signatories of the contract, the description of the property, and the date of the transaction. The succession of sellers (X sold to Y, Y sold to W, W sold to T, etc.) which can be established by the reader of the file through practical reasoning is a clue as to the historical succession of the contracts. The third contract's second page establishes the succession explicitly: "the sale took place according to Mr Close study of the first contract allows us to observe the pair text/instruction for reading. It is organized in three parts. The first part is clearly established: it presents the signatories of the contract. The second part of the contract, i.e. its preamble, groups several informational elements presented as the terms of an equation. They are bound together, within the same paragraph, through logical expressions: "considering X, Y and Z, this agreement was reached". First, there is a description of what is owned by the first signatory to the contract: he is the owner of property X. Second, the second signatory to the contract makes clear his wish to acquire a part of the property (half a storey). Third, the first signatory's intention to sell this very storey is made explicit. Fourth, it is said that the agreement is reached following the provisions indicated in the third part of the contract, which stipulates the rights and duties of each signatory.

The preamble of this contract indirectly gives the origin of the ownership right of the property. It is grounded on the reader's practical reasoning, which seeks to read the file coherently. The seller owns the property which is the object of the transaction "in conformity with the building permit […] issued by the local committee of Yarmuk camp", through inheritance. The mention "Yarmuk camp" and the reader's background knowledge make it possible to understand that the ownership is of a particular nature. This interpretation is confirmed by Article 6 of the contract, which reads: "The two contracting parties agree […] not to breach […] the rights of Refugees Foundation on the land on which the storey is located." Although the origin of the deceased person's property is not specified, it can be deduced from the reader's background knowledge: it is the Foundation for Palestinian Refugees that attributed the parcel, that is, the permit to live in a given place (izn sakan).

Moreover, the property is not registered as real estate in the Land Registry. It is built on part of a Land Registry parcel which is larger than the property itself. This can be deduced from the use of the preposition "on": the property is not the parcel itself. Another point is added: the property that is sold is not the totality of what the first party declares as his ownership, but only part of it, i.e. a storey, to which no parcel number is given. The contract makes a distinction between the ownership of a storey and the ownership of the land, the latter belonging to the Foundation for Palestinian Refugees. In other words, we can say that the reader's practical reasoning and his affiliation to a community of readers helps him understand the meaning of the text. Considering that the second party wishes to purchase half the storey of the abovementioned floor in its current state Considering that all of the members constituting the first party intend to sell this storey in its current state, this agreement, which guarantees the rights of both signatories, in full possession of their judicial and legal capacities, was concluded as follows: The last contract, unlike the first, does not make any logical connection between being the owner and selling one's property. It mainly states the transfer of ownership from the seller, whose title is not questioned, to the buyer. The seller's right is taken for granted, without any need to mention its origin. The first provision indicates that "the first party has sold to the second party … a room …", whereas the second provision confirms that "the second party has accepted to purchase the flat …" Most of the contracts and powers of attorney make no reference to the origin of ownership. It is only through the instructed reading of the file that one can establish the connections between the different documents, give some coherence to the collection of these documents in one and the same file, and trace back the history of ownership. The impossibility to register in the Land Registry properties located in informal neighbourhoods led people to proceed indirectly and to use strategies permitting them to claim their ownership rights.

Conclusion : The documentary mechanisms of real-estate security

The detailed description of Mrs. Sabbah's file and of all its documents allowed us to identify and understand the various elements of real-estate ownership and the complex relationships they have with one another. We saw how the file's documents were written for all practical legal purposes, and that language games formulate the property and the real-estate transactions concerning a property located in an informal neighbourhood. It is the instructed reading of the file, the reader's practical reasoning, and background knowledge that made it possible to make sense of these documents. The file's documents are constituted so as to secure ownership, the origin of which is fragile. The practice of the law and its procedures, of which the file's documents are an expression, are several instructed actions, that is, usages dictated in a more or less constraining way by the norms to which people refer for the sake of securing their ownership and its authenticity. In other words, the writing of contracts, their registration with the Ministry of Finance and the use of powers of attorney certified by a notary are used as means which testify to a transaction that could not follow a normal course.

  fig. 1: 2 nd contract of final sale (front)

  fig. 2: back of the 2 nd contract of final sale

  [T]'s sale contract, which was certified on 30 June 2001 under Number [N1]; he bought it from [X], [Y] and [Z], according to the contract certified by the Damascus Tax Office under Number [N2] dated 12/12/1996."

  fig. 5 : 1 st contract of final sale

  fig. 5 : 1 st contract of final sale (second part)

Fig. 8 :

 8 Fig. 8: Land Registry plan of Parcel 1081 District of Shaghur Basatin

The third contract does not use the word "district", but only the predicate "real-estate" (al-'aqariyya) to designate the administrative entity. The adjective replaces the substantive it normally predicates.

th contract (first page): 1081 indicated as the parcel's number 5 th contract (second page): 1881 indicated as the parcel's number Power of attorney associated to the 5 th contract: 1881 indicated as the parcel's number fig. 7: tracing the mistake concerning the parcel's number

th contract: 1881 indicated as the parcel's number