Depuis l'expansion du web, de nombreuses applications cherchent à répondre aux besoins d'utilisateurs ou de machines aux origines culturelles variées. De ce contexte de diversité culturelle émerge de nombreux conflits liés à des conceptions du monde différentes. Proposer des services adaptés requiert l'intégration au sein du système d'une forme de conscience culturelle. Une conscience culturelle artificielle est composée de représentations et de médiations culturelles formelles offrant au système les moyens pour interpréter les cultures représentées et déterminer leurs différences. Jusqu'à présent les représentations utilisées dans le développement des systèmes culturellement conscients sont issues de modèles universels ou ``étiques''. Ces modèles grossiers, bien qu'ils soient adaptés, limitent la compréhension possible des cultures représentées. Par conséquent ils constituent un goulot d'étranglement dans le développement des systèmes culturellement conscients.Cette thèse explore le développement d'une conscience culturelle artificielle plus fine sur la base de modèles culturels spécifiques à chaque culture dits ``émiques''. J'étudie la construction, la formalisation et la médiation des représentations culturelles émiques. Mes contributions principales sont la conception et la validation, d'une part, d'un nouveau processus ethnographique semi-automatique de construction de modèles émiques via la fouille de textes et, d'autre part, d'une conscience culturelle artificielle émique fondée sur l'alignement d'ontologies culturelles issues de ces modèles. / With the growing web, a number of applications seek to meet the needs of users or machines having diverse cultural backgrounds. From this context of cultural diversity arises conflicts linked to different world conceptions. Offering adaptated services requires the integration of a form of cultural awareness in the system. An artificial cultural awareness is composed of formal cultural representations and mediations providing the system with the means to interpret the represented cultures and to determine their differences. So far the representations used for the development of culturally-aware systems come from universal or ``etic'' models. Those coarse-grained models, even though they are adapted, limit the possible understanding of the represented cultures. As a consequence they constitute a bottleneck for the development of culturally-aware systems.This thesis investigates the development of a finer-grained artificial cultural awareness based on cultural models specific to each culture called ``emic''. I study the construction, the formalisation and the mediation of these emic cultural representations. My main contributions are the design and validation of, in one hand, a new semi-automatic ethnographic process for building emic models through text-mining, in another hand, an emic artificial cultural awareness based on the mapping of cultural ontologies coming from those models.

The study sought to uncover the constitution of migrant women's agency as they rebuild their lives in Australia, and to explore how contact with any publicly funded services might influence the capacity to be self determining subjects. The thesis used a framework of lifeworld theories (Bourdieu, Schutz, Giddens), materialist, trans-national feminist and post colonial writings, and a methodological approach based on critical hermeneutics (Ricoeur), feminist standpoint and decolonising theories. Thirty in depth interviews were carried out with 6 women migrating from each of 5 regions: Vietnam, Lebanon, the Horn of Africa, the former Soviet Union and the Philippines. Australian based immigration literature constituted the third corner of triangulation. The interviews were carried out through an exploration of themes format, eliciting data about the different ontological and epistemological assumptions of the cultures of origin. The findings revealed not only the women's remarkable tenacity and resilience as creative agents, but also the indispensability of Australia's publicly funded infrastructure or welfare state. The women were mostly privileged in terms of class, education and affirming relationships with males. Nevertheless, their self determination depended on contact with universal public policies, programs and with local community services. The welfare state seems to be modernity's means for re-establishing human connectedness that is the crux of the human condition. Connecting with fellow Australians in friendships and neighbourliness was also important in resettlement. Conclusions include a policy discussion in agreement with Australian and international scholars proposing that there is no alternative but for governments to invest in a welfare state for the civil societies and knowledge based economies of the 21st Century.