Like-Minded People. Ethnography of a Prepper Convention in the United States

Sébastien Roux 

How to face the end of time? In the US, since the late 1960s, survivalists, or preppers, have developed strategies and techniques to survive the (many) perils that, they believe, are threatening society – such as a nuclear catastrophe, migratory invasion, a solar flare, a new civil war, climate disruption, etc. Drawing on the observation of a prepper convention, this article describes the material and discursive world of contemporary American survivalism.

@picture : Demonstration of the “defense” capabilities of trained dogs. Credits: Sébastien Roux. All rights reserved.

Genèses : Public Lands

This dossier examines the socio-historical processes that, in the United States, brought public lands into existence as a governmental issue—turning these often vast territories into defining sites of a certain national identity, while remaining ambiguous, plural, and contested spaces where sometimes contradictory missions intersect.

Summary: 

• Introduction. 

Marine Bobin et Sébastien Roux 

• How can a territory be controlled for 10,000 years? State futurology and the management of radioactive waste in the United States (1980-1992)

Thomas Grillot

• Honoring Chaco: management of public lands and Native American sovereignties in the United States

Marine Bobin

• Masters of Empire: The policy of stewardship in the American West

Anne-Lise Boyer et Sébastien Roux

Resisting The Future: Preparedness, Degradation, And ‘Inquietude’ Amongst Survivalists In Contemporary France

Sebastien Y. Roux and Cédric Lévêque 

In France today, an increasing number of people consider themselves to be “survivalists”. Presuming an inevitable crisis, they are organizing themselves to acquire and develop the skills, techniques, and knowledge they believe are necessary to survive the potential dissipation of mainstream ways of life. Based on ethnographic data collected in the Southwest of France, this article aims at understanding the motivations surrounding “preparedness” – as well as the discourses it generates and the practices it engenders – by repositioning them within the political and social context in which they emerge. For the most part, French survivalists develop traditional anti-liberal discourses, values, and practices, wherein notions of disaster, or collapse are used as vehicles to promote a conservative political agenda. However, for some, prepping may also be a way to confront a feeling of the degradation of their lives, transforming survivalism into a paradoxical way of re/affirming one’s place in the world.

Killed for Good: Hunters, Biologists, and the Ethical Paradoxes of Wildlife Management in North America 

Sebastien Y. Roux and Amandine Reist. 

Built over the 20th century, the North American model of wildlife management relies on a dense network of professionals and institutions who share a certain consensus on hunting as a useful, even necessary, practice for the conservation of endangered wildlife. After describing the moral economy of hunting in the United States, this article looks more specifically at biologists in wildlife management agencies to question how they participate in organizing, maintaining, and justifying the sport. Based on interviews and observations conducted in Arizona, a state with an excellent reputation for the “quality” of its game, we examine how professionals of the bios approach their vocation when it is challenged by the paradox of death as a necessity for the protection of life. 

@photo credit : Amandine Reist

Drought and its solutions under debate. The case for water shortages in Arizona's semi-arid climate

Anne-Lise Boyer,  Brigitte Juanals,  Jean-Luc Minel

This photo-documentary (doi: 10.60527/7m6q-1453/) focuses, in the period of climate change which has begun, on the drought of anthropogenic or climatic origin, which is imposing itself in environmental news and the public debate. Because drought affects human actors as much as the ecosystems of which they are part and which suffer its impacts. This environmental news, which tends to become a global phenomenon, is now affecting countries in the North and South on a global scale. It poses crucial problems to understand and resolve.

(P)reserving the environment in the United States, geohistory of the ambiguous relationship of a society to its territory

Anne-Lise BOYER and Marine BOBIN.

The United States is marked by environmental predation and extractivism, by a culture of open spaces and wilderness, and by an early tradition of applied ecology. This oscillates between two contradictory trends, preservation and conservation, testifying to the ambivalence of the relationship with “nature”. The notion of (p)reserved space embodies this tension: preservation can aim both to protect nature and to put resources in reserve to exploit them later, hence a recurring renegotiation of protected areas and the degree of protection.

“Locking In” Desalination in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands: Path Dependency, Techno-Optimism and Climate Adaptation

Iglobes fosters collaborations across globally innovative research universities with this new article written by Brian O'Neill, Arizona State University and Anne-Lise Boyer, post-doc on the OHM project HYDECO, CNRS.

Desalination (producing potable water from saline sources) has gained notoriety globally as climate change threatens water supplies. Strikingly, Arizona – a territory lacking coastal boundaries – has developed desalination proposals to augment water supplies, which imply leveraging relations with Mexico and/or expanding inland desalting.