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Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ecological Solidarity: a new concept for integrated management of National Parks and territories. Our paper analyses the conceptual basis of the concept of ecological solidarity, a core feature of the 2006 law reforming National Park policy in France. Based on lessons learnt from the original 1960 policy, we show the multidimensional nature of ecological solidarity and how it is based on the recognition of the natural spatial interdependence among natural organisms and their physical environment. This sets the scene for a new vision of nature conservation. Ecological solidarity offers a pragmatic compromise between ecocentric and anthropocentric ethics. We designed a typology of ecological solidarities that integrates the diverse functional aspects of the organization and dynamics of biodiversity at different spatial and temporal scales. This typology departs from the previous model of central and buffer zones and sets protected areas within their wider social and ecological contexts. We outline how this gives sense to the elaboration of ecological networks and to the integrated management of cultural landscapes. Its efficient integration into land plarming and conservation management strategies will require, however, the collective exploration by local communities and stakeholders of the diverse facets of ecological solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on an interdisciplinary analysis associating sociology and biology, this paper studies the social discourses and practices concerning mosquitoes and mosquito pest management in France. The qualitative and quantitative sociological field studies involved two areas, the Rhone river delta and the French alpine valleys. Recalling the anthropocentric heritage of our western societies, our paper shows an evolution, linked to recent social changes, towards more biocentric references, a fact that is noticeable in discourses and attitudes toward mosquitoes. Rather than a radical switch, processes of cohabitation and hybridizing may be observed, combining popular and scientific knowledge, environmental, medical and social issues. The first part of this paper highlights the social and biological relationships between the insect and its habitat, i.e., wetlands. The second part focuses on the forms of articulation between anthropocentrism and biocentrism, especially through the dualism pest/useful insect. The third and last part analyses how the "taxonomic arrangements" between anthropocentrism and biocentrism have triggered an evolution of French public policies regarding mosquito pest management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the 1974 "Berg letter" to the petitions « Défendons la recherche » and « Ouvrons la recherche » in 2003, biologists have often alerted -- and been challenged in -- the public arena regarding the risks and stakes of genetic engineering. The paper first compares the scientists' public commitment on GMOs in the 1970's and in recent years. Around 1975, a short-lasting GM controversy arose from the mobilization of young committed biologists. In sharp contrast to this proactive commitment, most of the seven petitions signed by scientists after 1996 were rather reactive and instigated by destructions of GM field trials. These results a re discussed in the wider context of change in the scientists' public commitment since 1968. Among the 3217 signatories of these petitions, a correlation is shown between disciplinary affiliation and public opinion expressed on GM crops. The paper finally shows how the trajectory of the French GM controversy in public arenas has co-evolved with the competition between three epistemic cultures (molecular biology, population biology and farming systems agronomy) in framing GMO risks and biosafety, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociotecimical infrastructure required to implement environmental policies has a definite political content: it frames and influences public action, most often in an implicit way. In this paper we take a normative stance on democratic governance, which raises the need for making this infrastructure debatable. We focus on the specific case of drought management in France, which has developed an infrastructure that consists of zoning, measurement networks and threshold definition for critical flows in order to be able to assess a current hydrological situation in any place and to associate it to a specific crisis level. First we identify the various criticisms voiced by stakeholders in drought commit- tees such as challenging the infrastructure's technical validity setting out its inadequacy to a specific context, disqualifying its use due to the gap between science and the existing practice. We then suggest introducing a tool borrowed from the anthropology of techniques : the operational chain. We propose to use it to render explicit and debatable the infrastructure, its structure and content and on top of that the “regulatory science” which it stems from. This tool entails overcoming the various forms of criticism observed as well as dealing collectively with the tension between principles of justice and adaptation to local conditions. We argue that it may also provide a medium to associate lay people in the development or the revision of the infrastructure itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an ethnographical approach set on Barthelasse, an island on the river Rhone across from Avignon, our paper analyses how the issue of flooding is at the root of tensions between local interests and general policies. The island is still an agricultural area despite the influence of Avignon urban growth. Barthelasse Island has always been maintained as a floodable area to protect the low-lying city of Avignon. Such a context highlights the complexity of the relations, consisting simultaneously of solidarity and conflict, between the island farmers and the urban inhabitants of Avignon. Moreover, the river Rhone was altered in the 1970's to produce hydroelectricity. Nowadays it is no longer natural but artificial. Some areas like Barthelasse are still liable to flooding whereas others have got a better deal. The study investigates the relations between inhabitants who demand the building of new dykes and stakeholders who try to maintain a general plan for the area. Finally, the survey focuses on the people living in these risk prone areas and analyses the way they live with the risk. Confrontation between technical rationalities and the practices of inhabitants, the local and general scale of the issue and the former natural and present artificial state of the river question the idea of a "risk culture". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper shows how the representations and knowledge French sheep farmers have of their rangelands are embedded in the relations they build with their animals and the natural environment. These sheep farmers, who work and live in the causse Méjan, a low mountain area in southern France, describe their grazinglands not only as pools of feeding resources, but also as a set of more or less adequate ecological conditions for their animals' wellbeing. The perception they have of the rangeland heterogeneity involves a systemic and dynamic perspective that takes into account both these dimensions, and insists upon the importance of the seasonal changes which occur along the year in the natural environment. They learn the "milieu" to a great extent from observing their animals' feeding behaviour. We show that the modernisation process has not obliterated the importance of the affective and relational dimensions in the construction of animal herding knowledge, particularly regarding ecological knowledge. Scientists and extension services should consequently better take account of informal knowledge acquisition processes when seeking to understand the farmers' rationale and accompanying the transformation of this activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper discusses interdisciplinary approaches as opposed to increased disciplinary specialization and underlines their value in dealing with the major issues currently faced by biology and with the challenges posed by the analysis and interpretation of high-throughput experimental data. Yet researchers opting for interdisciplinary collaboration in their daily work encounter numerous difficulties. To stimulate the development of fruitful and long-term interdisciplinary collaborations, we have organized since 2002 a yearly Spring School for researchers on the small island of Berder (south Brittany). The School is supported by CNRS and Inra continuing education departments. We describe its specific features and the ways in which it meets participant expectations as regards training and scientific exchanges. This is ensured by securing a wide range of speakers, a balance between the different disciplines, synthetic pedagogical presentations and by reserving ample time for questions, debates, interactions and activities during an intensive week away from daily concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The management of nuclear energy in France was restricted until the mid 1970's to a small circle of government experts. Within the scientific community criticism against nuclear power mostly targeted nuclear weapons while the sphere of civil nuclear energy remained unchallenged. The launch of the French nuclear programme in 1974 led to the first protest against civil nuclear power and its management within the scientific community. The mobilisation of thousands of researchers against the programme, initially through a petition, the so-called "Appeal of the 400", then through the creation of an association, the "Group of Scientists for Information on Nuclear Energy (GSIEN)", beside reflecting a rupture in the relations with science, progress and decision-making processes in the nuclear field, also expressed in the following decades the appropriation of critical knowledge on nuclear risks by the actors of non-governmental organisations. The criticism raised by scientists in 1975 therefore underlies two major shifts between the 1950s to 1990s in collective action vis-à-vis nuclear risk: from the mobilisation of "distinguished scientists" against the atom bomb in the 1950s and 1960s (Joliot, Russell, Einstein, Rostand) to the politicisation of nuclear power by "critical scientists" in the post-May 1968 period (CSIEN) and finally, after the Chernobyl accident, to the rise of associations of counter-expertise on nuclear energy (creation of expert NGOs such as the Commission for independent Research and Information on Radioactivity-CRIIRAD and the Association for the Control of Radioactivity in the West-ACRO). This paper examines the crucial role that the community of physicists has played in transforming the relations between scientists, science, expertise and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bocage landscape has long been an object of study albeit by only a few scientific disciplines (history, geography…). A bibliometric analysis shows a considerable increase in publication numbers on bocage landscapes, with a switch of emphasis over the past 10 years. Initially researchers focussed on the impact of hedges and bocage structures on field functioning and on overall agricultural production while at present hedgerow functioning is being analysed for itself correlatedly with the impact of fields on hedgerows. French agricultural research first displayed an interest in the bocage in 1964 with a conference held in Rennes on the impact of hedges on bioclimatic and agronomic factors. An analysis of the papers published in subsequent years highlights the drift from the initial reasons that justified research to present research concerns. Some aspects, such as the relations between livestock farming and the bocage were never explored. Current research on the bocage displays two trends: -- research that attributes the bocage objective environmental usefulness as a resilience factor for biophysical systems: this is supported by environmental scientists in landscape ecology, hydrology and soil science in particular; -- research that invests the bocage with a subjective function expressing a specific connection with nature from a landscape, historical, patrimonial or even fantasy perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses how farmers take water pollution by nitrates into account. The author proposes a geographical approach to farmer practices aimed at confronting the farmers' values and spatial practices with the spatial delimitations of other actors concerned by a local pollution issue. The research methodology involved surveys of twenty farmers in a French rural area (Yonne department) who were compelled to take a local problem of nitrogen pollution into account in their farming practice. Two spatial entities were combined in studying changes in their practices: the farm and the catchment area. The perception of space by the farmers relates to "the farm lands" and to "individual fields or groups of fields" on their farms. These spatial categories differ from the ones used by agricultural advisers and regulations to circumscribe vulnerable areas and land units. The study of field by field adjustment of nitrogen inputs on wheat shows a diversity of space delimitations among farmers. Mapping these results allows the identification of the spatial adjustments and change of practice imposed by the consideration of pollution risks. In conclusion, these results allow a reflection on the relationships between environmental values and environment-related practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge systems in agriculture need to devise new forms of collaboration between farmers, development agents and researchers in the current socio-economic context in which the social functions of agriculture are being questioned. So far very few research studies have addressed the issue of the knowledge content to be produced in such situations. Our paper rests on the hypothesis that the synergy between the empirical knowledge of producers and scientific knowledge is able to generate new agronomic knowledge. We explored this new form of knowledge production by examining two situations: saffron cultivation in southwestern France and French truffle production, for which the technical management is a major hindrance to their development. We show that neither scientific nor empirical knowledge on their own are sufficient to improve it. On the basis of an "engineering of agronomic knowledge" approach that makes explicit and combines knowledges from different sources, we then propose four modes of synergy: (1) translating the objectives and practices of producers into action-oriented scientific questions; (2) scientifically grounding heuristic knowledge by referring it to explicative scientific knowledge; (3) linking the indicators used by the producers to scientifically measurable parameters; (4) selecting on a scientific basis appropriate equivalent plants for transposing knowledge from one to the other. These four modes are then discussed; it is underlined that this cognitive approach to the synergy between empirical and scientific knowledge could effectively be completed by analysing the socio-organisational settings in which this knowledge finds its meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Natures Sciences Sociétés is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)