Enquêter sur des territoires à risques en transition

Based on an iterative survey of an old uranium mine, this article shows how research has been conducted around the traces left by mining in the area. By combining three survey methods, the methodological approach aimed to understand the imprint left in local memories by this industry by focusing on the informal transactions at work on the site. The process of collecting clues carried out in the region has put the main controversies associated with nuclear power at bay by focusing on the remains from industrial history. By taking an interest in the official “rubbish of history” (Ginzburg, 1989), that is to say the waste left on the territory and by collecting the pieces of the local intrigue, it is a question of giving an account social relations forged in the territory by collecting a body of evidence resulting from the relationship maintained by the local protagonists with the exploitation of uranium.