البحث بوجه عام، وبشكل خاص البحث في المجتمعات الإنسانية التي طورت ثقافاتها الخاصة ومزيجها المرجعي الخاص خلال مرحلة الاستعمار والعولمة، لا يمكن أن يتجاهل الأطر المعرفية التي تنشر هذه المجتمعات فاعليتها ضمنها، فضلاً عن الأطر التي نحللهم من خلالها. ليس الأمر مسألة تأكيد أن هذه الأطر المعرفية غير قابلة للقياس مع بعضها البعض بينما هي متساوية، وهو ما كان سيمثل نسبية صلبة بعيدة كل البعد عن الممارسات التي يمكن توثيقها. ما نحتاج إلى القيام به، بصورة أبسط بكثير، هو اعتبارها كوجهات نظر لها ترتيباتها الخاصة، لكنها قادرة تمامًا على التكيف مع وجهات نظرنا (والعكس بالعكس)، ضمن كون مشترك للمعاني يُشارك فيه على نطاق واسع. يجب بالضرورة أن يؤخذ في الحسبان التكيفات وعدم التكيف لوجهات النظر، لأنه من الناحية التقنية ليس من الممكن وصف وشرح الأفعال من دون أخذ وجهة نظر الفاعلية لمن يتصرفون، أي نقاط الإشارة القيمية الخاصة بهم.
This research axis is coordinated by Yousra Abourabi (UIR) and Jean-Noël Ferrié (LAM/Sciences Po Bordeaux)
Overall motivation
Research in general, and in particular research on human societies that have developed their own cultures and their own referential mixes in the course of coloniality and globalisation, cannot do without considering the epistemic frameworks within which these societies deploy their agentivity, as well as those from which we analyse them. It is not a question of asserting that these epistemic frameworks are incommensurable while being equivalent, which would be a rigid relativism far removed from documentable practices. What we need to do, much more simply, is to consider them as points of view with their own particular arrangements, but perfectly capable of adjusting to ours (and vice versa), within a widely shared semantic universe. Adjustments and maladjustments of points of view must necessarily be taken into account, because it is not technically possible to describe and explain actions without taking the point of view of the agentivity of those who act, i.e. their normative reference points.
This is all the more necessary in the case of controversial issues arising in situations of ‘epistemic disconnection’ and political readjustment. By ‘epistemic disconnection’, we mean the desire to break with the Western epistemologies inherited from colonialism and the rehabilitation of the local epistemologies that it marginalised. By ‘political readjustments’, we mean the desire to deploy African agentivity in the governance of the continent's states and their international relations. This agentivity is defined as the capacity of individuals, communities and state entities to act autonomously, define their priorities and actively influence their destiny in the political, economic, cultural and social spheres. It is therefore a question of Africa reasserting its sovereignty in global interactions, while proposing alternatives to Western-centric models of development and governance.
Crucial issues such as the environment, health and security mean that pluralism and epistemic antagonisms have to be taken into account, because they do not arise in a single world and involve differentiated communities of stakeholders, each with their own epistemic practices and sets of references, and these are articulated in ways that both complement and oppose each other. To take a simple example, defining a natural area as a reforestation area involves not only engineering wood resources but also taking account of local knowledge in the local perspectives of the different communities involved in reforestation, which implies the coexistence of different epistemes, such as that which makes the environment a natural space and that which makes it a place inhabited by non-humans, or that which makes it a close-knit community territory while another makes it an administrative territory with abstract properties. We cannot ignore the concatenation of histories and cultures from which African societies have emerged, and we cannot reduce it to a simple question of development.
As Claude Lévi-Strauss pointed out, we work on human societies, not like astronomers on planets that we can look at from a distance. Natural and technical issues are irremediably embedded in the epistemes that structure expectations and guide actions. Nor can these epistemes be viewed from afar: they are at the heart of who we are and what we do. Taking them into account and their concatenation is all the more essential when it comes to developing research geared towards public policy, i.e. towards transforming the living environment of human communities.
Integrated activities
This axis includes two types of research: (I) research on epistemic practices linked to scientific activity and the contextuality of epistemes, and (II) research on specific subjects (implementation of environmental programmes, climate migrations, etc.).
- Research on epistemic practices focusing on the following topics: Epistemology of interdisciplinarity and African governance of public policy: normative trends, agentivity and decoloniality. In both cases, the aim is to clarify research practices (in this case, practices oriented towards interdisciplinarity) as well as to manifest the epistemes at work in public action.
- Research on specific subjects: the Entanglement of environmental normativities (with fieldwork in Morocco and Senegal) and the Categorization of climate migrants. These two research projects are concerned with the normativities inherent in the territorialization of environmental policies and the production of a categorization of climate migrants, activities that are both political (in the sense of policy and politics) and epistemic.
Academic validation
This axis has benefited from the recruitment of three doctoral fellows, financed by a doctoral contract from the University of Bordeaux (on climate migrants), an ANR-CNRS doctoral contract (on environmental normativities) and a UB-IPORA doctoral contract (on interdisciplinarity), as well as two IPORA grants in the form of initiation projects (on environmental normativities and interdisciplinarity). It will give rise to a collective work to be published by Palgrave (contract signed). Several articles are currently being written. It has also led to the launch of a number of cooperative ventures, notably with Cheikh Anta Diop University and the CNRS's ESS international research laboratory (which, in addition to Senegal, has opened the door to Burkina Faso and Mali), the University of Vienna (Geography Department) and the University of Bari (on climate migrants).
