Publications
In line with the principles of open science, Iglobes maintains a dedicated HAL-SHS collection. Here you can find announcements and abstracts of our latest publications.
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.
Political Ecology as an Addition: On Environmental Justification for Childfreedom
Clarisse Veaux and Sebastien Y. Roux.
The “ecological crisis” would revolutionize our reproductive behavior. Alerted by the non-sustainability of a supposed overpopulation or concerned about a future announced as apocalyptic, more and more individuals would choose to renounce procreation and would refrain from having children, out of ethical concern. Based on a recent study among a young generation of childfree individuals, we show how environmental concerns are indeed influencing some family arrangement choices. However, our interviews also demonstrate that the ecology, if present, is a secondary ethical argument that legitimizes - or even ennobles – a previous desire for a childfree life. By giving voice to the arguments of those individuals, notably women, who choose not to have children for ecological reasons, the article shows that their concern, less than a shared trend, is in fact inscribed in a singular context where the will not to procreate remains tainted by a powerful stigma, calling for justification and avoidance strategies.
“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.
No Kids, More Life? On Environmental Concerns Among Childfree Communities
Sebastien ROUX and Julien FIGEAC
Based on an ethnographic analysis of childfree communities, and on the lexographical processing of Internet posts, this paper analyses the evolution of speech about childlessness in the English-speaking world. Over the past dozen years, environmental fears have progressively emerged as a main concern among the Internet pages and groups that we studied. While childfree communities have been long divided between those who lament their infertility and those who defend a life without children, new “antinatalist” discourses have emerged that place population reduction as a legitimate political aim and/or a valid ethical proposition. Childfree life, seen as neither a curse nor an opportunity, tends to be more frequently associated with an altruistic decision in the face of impending ecological disasters. By describing these discourses, and retracing their evolution and distribution, this paper studies the emergence of new ethical concerns that defend childfree lives as an ecological choice and a new approach to population growth.
