OHMi Estarreja: an ecosystem highly anthropized where contamination is the unifying element towards interdisciplinarity

The Estarreja area (North of Portugal) has been subject to intense industrial pollution and host the second largest chemical industry complex in the country, which produced mainly ammonium sulphate, nitric acid and ammonium nitrate, but also synthetic resins. The CNRS’ Human–Environment International Observatory of Estarreja (OHMi Estarreja) aims to study the multiple effects of this industrial activity on the man-environment relationship, considering the temporal dimension, marked by changes in industrial practices. Another OHMi Estarreja originality is that human health projects are being carried out at the local level, under a double geochemical and socio-behavioral approach. Lastly, the Estarreja region is also part of one of the most important wetland ecosystems from Portugal, the Baixo Vouga Lagunar. This area is highly vulnerable and currently faces a set of natural and anthropogenic pressures. The overall interdisciplinary understanding of the risk induced by the chemical complex was possible by several complementary approaches: (a) spatial-temporal evolution of the contamination level, (b) health studies of the Estarreja population, and (c) societal changes in Estarreja area. The results showed a complex relationship between industrial pollution and health risks. During these first 10 years of OHMi existence, the bibliographic research as well as the study of the titles of the funded projects clearly show the interdisciplinarity in place to address this complex issue of human–environment interactions

La « recherche collaborative » en environnement : des pratiques innovantes aux dynamiques normatives

In the environmental field, the sponsors of researches are in demand of an interdisciplinary science and co-produced with the recipients of the research, to the point that this demand is sometimes qualified as an injunction. Between 2011 and 2017, the philanthropic network ‘Fondation de France’ recognized as being in the general interest, supported scientific projects by the Call for Littoral research of its Environmental program. It aimed to encourage innovative research, which support civil society in its mobilization and participation in scientific processes, for a more democratic science. This contribution shows that despite the multiplicity of their purposes and research themes, most of the projects selected during this period did not employ collaboration with non-professional researchers in order to open up science to make it more democratic. Rather, it aimed to improve the effectiveness of research, of which the objects are complex, and require the support and adaptation of populations. By taking up the demand for collaborative and interdisciplinary research without questioning the methods of scientific production, the organization has enabled the renewal of certain postures that are more normative than innovative in scientific production.Dans le champ de l’environnement, les commanditaires de la recherche sont en demande d’une science interdisciplinaire et co-produite avec les destinataires de la recherche, au point que cette demande est parfois qualifiée d’injonction. Entre 2011 et 2017, le réseau philanthropique reconnu d’intérêt public « Fondation de France » a soutenu des projets scientifiques via l’Appel d’offre Littoral au sein de son pro­gramme Environnement. Cet appel visait à encourager des recherches novatrices, supportant la société civile dans ses mobilisations et ses participations aux processus scientifiques pour une science plus démocratique. Cette contribution montre que malgré la multiplicité de leurs finalités et thématiques de recherche, la plupart des projets retenus au cours de cette période n’employaient pas la collaboration avec les non-professionnels de la recherche afin d’ouvrir la science pour qu’elle soit plus démo­cratique. Elle visait plutôt à une meilleure efficacité des recherches dont les objets sont complexes et nécessitent l’adhésion et l’adaptation des populations. En reprenant à son compte la demande d’une recherche collaborative et interdisciplinaire sans questionner les modalités de production des sciences, l’organisation a permis la reconduction de certaines postures plus normatives qu’innovantes de la production scientifique

Séverine Louvel, The policies and politics of interdisciplinary research. Nanomedecine in France and in the United States

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Les collaborations inter- et transdisciplinaires dans les « sciences de la durabilité ». La fabrique de nouvelles relations dans les Observatoires Hommes-Milieux

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Do you need a laboratory if you have a project? How projectification transforms public research and research collectives

International audienceIt is common nowadays to observe the generalization of project-grant programs for public research funding (Larédo and Mustar, 2001). Nonetheless, its concrete effects on labor organization and scientific collectives have been little studied to date. While programming by project tender is a specific and ancient instrument of research public policy and financing mechanism (opposed to recurring funding), entities that are called “projects” considerably differ. From short-term contracts to large-scale programs, acting as a financial extension or temporary institution. This is evident concerning Big science communities (Vermeulen, 2009), organized around long-term equipment projects exceeding individual laboratory scale in contrast to collectives who work on a succession of small projects (in funding and duration). Building on recent research recognizing that funding mechanisms are inseparably policy tools, research structuring, and knowledge production (Gläser and Velarde, 2018), this panel investigates the transformations project-grant programs bring to research along three axes.A first axis will explore how projects fit into other spaces: some remain budget-dependent on laboratories when others create a temporary institution, blurring boundaries between projects, teams, and laboratories.A second axis will examine division of labor within research projects, the composition of associated collectives (researchers from diverse status, research administrators, private or public actors), and their role into shaping careers and scientific trajectories.A third axis will analyze how collectives understand the political motivations behind project funding, produce normative assessments and their role into shaping these policies. The New Public Management doctrine promotes projects as a more accountable form to steer research toward social priorities areas. Researchers may embrace project ambitions for an interdisciplinary and socially relevant research, or reject it, invoking serendipity for instance.The panel welcomes empirically supported contributions from various countries and diverse entities (university, agencies, ministries, foundations...). They can be cross-axes

Les Observatoires Hommes-Milieux : un exemple de formation des collectifs scientifiques interdisciplinaires en environnement ?

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Scientific outposts, with or without social sciences? How the presence of social sciences to study ecosystems transforms knowledge production in Human-Environment Observatories

International audienceScientific outposts are scientific infrastructures (field stations, laboratories, etc.) located in peripheral territories, away from conventional networks. The choice of their location is guided by the scientific interest of the ecosystems to study, presenting themselves as separate from local human societies and their history (Kervran, Lamy, Verlin, 2021).The International Human-Environment Observatories (OHM-I), a territorialized scientific policy tool of the CNRS (France), distribute small research funding through project calls. Five OHM-I are located in the Americas. Their epistemological framework is partly similar to the knowledge derived from the scientific outposts: they are situated on the margins of (post-)colonial empires; scientific work is constrained by geopolitical issues of strong circulation with a distant center, difficulty of the fieldwork, tension between producing circulable and standardized datas (characteristics of experimental ex-situ sciences) and their extremely situated nature (characteristics of in situ collecting sciences) (Kohler, 2002). However, unlike scientific outposts, OHM-I don't have physical infrastructures and focus on human-environment interactions.Based on a socio-history made of interviews with the founders of these OHM-I, ethnography of scientific seminars and documentary analysis, this proposal explores the criterias that guided the choice of locations to establish these OHM-I, as well as the controversies and boundary-work (Gieryn, 1993) engaged in the tension between constructing transversal knowledge from a diversity of places and disciplines. We will characterize their knowledge production regime related to this hybrid definition of ecosystem that involve an interdisciplinary work between nature and social sciences and its consequences on the relationship between sciences and places. This approach allows us to more generally characterize the specificity of the French "territorialized environmental sciences" (Beurier, 2025, Forthcoming)

Will we ever “learn from our mistakes”? Framing environmental problems in times of COVID-19 lockdown (France)

International audienceTo contain the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak, the French government ordered a national lockdown from March 17th to May 10th 2020. At the beginning of the spring, French people thus experienced a strict limitation of their movement in public places, with very limited access to nature. Between April 22nd and May, 11rst, we realized an online survey to question the effects of this unprecedented situation on both the people’s relationship with the nearby nature and their representations of environmental issues. Indeed, crisis and environmental sociologies question how environmental issues are requalified by individuals (Chateauraynaud, 2017) in relation with unevenly distributed resources and experiences. The inquiry focused on the sociodemographic characteristics of participants; their lockdown experience ; their environmental behaviours and daily relationship with nature before and during lockdown; and “opinion about how this crisis could transform how environment issues would be collectively engaged in the short and long terms. This study gathered in three weeks 1,200 responses, nationally, with various sociodemographic characteristics. This contribution will explore how, in times of a global pandemic, people build different and competing framings (Gusfield, 1981) of the environmental issues, with various understandings of the causal relationships between the environmental crisis and the COVID-19 outbreak. It will then examine how this is related to individual socioeconomic characteristics and material conditions of lockdown experience. Also, it will question the capacity of questionnaire-based surveys to capture how the cognitive categories used to frame environmental issues are transformed in times of crisis

La crédibilité des matériaux ethnographiques face au mouvement d’ouverture des données de la recherche

International audienceThe policies of opening research data are based on arguments of transparency, innovation and democratization of knowledge. This article aims to make their implications intelligible for communities working with ethnographic data, confronted with a transformation of the criteria for recognizing the credibility of the knowledge they produce. While researchers who practice ethnography are engaged in situated forms of sharing materials with peers, other disciplines and “source communities”, the strengthening of external control over the conditions under which this sharing takes place destabilizes the economies of credibility that structure these practices. More than a reluctance to the process of openness, the withdrawal of ethnographers from the movement appears at the end of our analysis to be the result of both the existence of alternative ecologies of empirical materials and an ethic of the margins embedded in often implicit professional norms.Las políticas de apertura de los datos de investigación se basan en argumentos de transparencia, innovación y democratización del conocimiento. Este artículo pretende hacer inteligibles sus implicaciones para las comunidades que trabajan con datos etnográficos, que se enfrentan a una transformación de los criterios de reconocimiento de la credibilidad del conocimiento que producen. Mientras que los investigadores que practican la etnografía participan en formas situadas de compartir materiales con pares, otras disciplinas y «comunidades fuente», el refuerzo del control externo sobre las condiciones en las que tiene lugar este intercambio desestabiliza las economías de credibilidad que estructuran estas prácticas. Más que una reticencia al proceso de apertura, la retirada de los etnógrafos del movimiento parece ser, al final de nuestro análisis, el resultado tanto de la existencia de ecologías alternativas de materiales empíricos como de una ética de los márgenes incrustada en normas profesionales a menudo implícitas.Les politiques d’ouverture des données de la recherche s’appuient sur des arguments de transparence, d’innovation et de démocratisation des savoirs. Cet article vise à rendre intelligibles leurs implications pour les communautés travaillant à partir de données ethnographiques, confrontées à une transformation des critères de reconnaissance de la crédibilité des savoirs qu’elles produisent. Alors que les chercheur·e·s qui pratiquent l’ethnographie sont engagé·e·s dans des formes situées de partage des matériaux avec les pair·e·s, les autres disciplines et les « communautés sources », le renforcement du contrôle externe sur les conditions dans lesquelles ce partage s’effectue déstabilise les économies de la crédibilité qui structurent ces pratiques. Davantage qu’une réticence au processus d’ouverture, le retrait des ethnographes du mouvement apparaît au terme de notre analyse comme résultant à la fois de l’existence d’écologies alternatives des matériaux empiriques et d’une éthique des marges incorporée dans des normes professionnelles souvent implicites