L’objectif de cette recherche est de promouvoir une nouvelle approche de l'analyse des systèmes urbains régionaux, tenant compte du progrès technologique et des évolutions contemporaines dans les modes d'organisation de la vie et du travail. Nous avons souhaité expérimenter la « Théorie des villes en réseau » sur notre cas étude. En effet cette approche est évoquée comme un « modus operandi » alternatif par d'éminents géographes, sociologues et économistes parmi lesquels Manuel Castells, Roberto Camagni, Georg Simmel et Jan van Dijk. La « Théorie des villes en réseau » présente deux avantages principaux en comparaison des théories traditionnelles. Ces avantages résident dans la prise en compte de deux phénomènes postérieurs aux théories traditionnelles : d’une part, la prise en considération de nouveaux contextes socio-spatiaux ; d’autre part, l’appréhension de l’évolution des processus de transmission de la connaissance. / With the purpose to promote a new approach to the analysis of regional urban systems which takes into account the technological progress and the contemporary evolutions in the ways of organizing, living and working, we felt compelled to seek the evidence of the “City-network” theory as an alternative modus operandi evoked by some prominent geographers, sociologists and economists such as Manuel Castells, Roberto Camagni, Georg Simmel, Jan van Dijk and others. The advantages of the “City-network” theory as compared to the traditional theories are in understanding that there are new socio-spatial contexts and that the contemporary knowledge travels along “pipelines” between cities, towns, cultures which are neither spatial nor strictly hierarchical. The network is seen as a structure where the nodes are cities and towns connected by the link of different nature, through which socio-economic flows are exchanged.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study examines the history of Indian-settler legal relations in Indiana, from the state’s pre-territorial period to the late-nineteenth century. Through a variety of interdisciplinary sources and methods, the author constructs a broad narrative on the evolution and co-existence of Native and non-Native customary legal systems in the region, focusing on matters related to marriage, property rights, and testimony. The primary thesis—which emphasizes reciprocally formative relations, rather than persistent conflict—suggests that Indiana’s pre-modern legal past involved an ad hoc yet highly effective process of cultural brokerage, reciprocity and inter-personal accommodation. That the American Indians lost much of their self-governing status following the period of contact is clear; however, a closer look at the ways in which nations historically defined, exercised, asserted, and shared jurisdiction, reveals a more intricate story of influence, authority, and concession. During the French and British colonial and American territorial periods, settler society adjusted to and often accommodated Native concepts of law and justice. Through a complex order of social obligations and community-based enforcement mechanisms, a shared set of rules and jurisdictional practices merged, forming a hybrid system of Indian-settler norms that bound these individuals across the cultural divide. When Indiana entered the Union in 1816, legal pluralism defined jurisdictional practice. However, with the nineteenth-century rise of legal positivism—the idea of law as the sole command of the nation-state, a sovereign entity vested with exclusive authority—territorial jurisdiction and legal uniformity became guiding principles. Many jurists viewed the informal, pre-existing custom-based regulatory structures with contempt. With the shift to a state-centered legal order, lawmakers established strict standards for recognizing the law of the “other,” ultimately rejecting the status of the tribes as equal sovereigns and forcing them to concede jurisdiction to the settler polity.