International Collaborative Colloquium
Care, Gender & Environment
(Colloquium CGE)
Ethics of care and issues of gender, for new relationships to the environment
and a shared management of its resources
From 7th to 11th of September 2015
Lyon (University of Lyon 3 Jean Moulin)
Organisators:
Hélène Guétat-Bernard (ENFA Toulouse, UMR Dynamiques Rurales),
Pauline Texier-Teixeira (Lyon 3, UMR 5600 EVS (Environnement, Ville, Société),
Pascale Moity Maïzi (Supagro Montpellier, IRC, GRED),
Catherine Larrère (Paris 1, EA PHICO).
Scientific and Political Issues
General objective
The manner in which the various collectives to which individuals belong, maintain
differing relationships to the environment challenges our societies.
Models of
development are questioned. Initiatives from throughout the world for rethinking our
environmental relations arise in a context of climate change and the demands for
equality of men and women. Political and institutional actors are unaware of, or on the
contrary may accompany such actions and reflexions. We wish to participate by
networking these initiatives, contributing to reflexion and action among the political,
academic and development communities through examination of the
interconnections between care (in the sense of moral responsibility), gender and
environment.
The concern is to begin with experiences, to discuss them and create a common
language for the academic community and the operational realms. The construction
of change in society-environmental links and the relations between men and women
requires the creation of new methodological tools, particularly in the area of
intercultural communication.
We locate this encounter in the framework of COP21 and the call to bring new voices
and visions to the negotiation on climate in December of 2015 in Paris.
Five workshop themes are proposed:
Workshop 1: Agro-food system: agriculture, fishing and grazing.
Workshop 2: Risk management and vulnerability
Workshop 3: Economic inequality and environmental justice.
Workshop 4: Waste management, water and sanitation.
Workshop 5: Environmental protection, bio- and agrobiodiversity; local environmental
knowledge; urban welfare.
Project Governance
The Colloquium adopts a collaborative approach, put in place before and during the
encounter:
-
-
Creating a network of researchers and actors of civil and professional society
(NGO, decentralized cooperation), co-construction of projects between
research and research-action;
Include graduate students in the organizing committee;
An international, interinstitutional scientific committee (Universities, IRD, CNRS,
CIRAD, MNHN, INRA, IRMa, CGIAR, Genre en Action, GRET, ENDA, WECF, Monde
selon les Femmes, Croix Rouge, elected officials).
The Colloquium is supported by teacher/researchers from four universities (Toulouse,
Lyon, Paris, Montpellier) Our ambition is to fortify the network of gender studies between
les Maisons des Sciences de l’Homme and the development and gender research of
these universities. We also hope to integrate social and environmental studies,
especially environmental ethics focused on gender and care.
We aspire to create a durable network that will operate beyond the Colloquium itself,
by reinforcing international partnerships of universities and development actors.
Scientifif and Operational structure
Principal Objectives
- Reflect on the ethic of care applied to the environment;
- Forge the keys to understanding territorial complexity and of practical tools for
action;
- Develop an interdisciplinary approach among the social and human sciences,
life sciences and environmental sciences around the issue of care and the
environment.
Specific Objectives
- Construct a network of researchers, trainers, institutions (national and local), onthe-ground actors (NGO, social movements), international (North and South)
around these issues;
- Contribute to training and construction of competences around these issues;
- Encourage young researchers (doctoral and post doctoral) to include these
questions in their work and accompany them in their design and conduction of
research projects on these issues.
Methods
- Articulate a theoretical and practical approach, be engaged in a ground
research to identify concrete innovative experiences (regional and international),
and co-construct with society, understood in its diversity, and professionals, the
skills and a mode of operation of environmental care;
- Organize a participatory colloquium (with a procedure for dialogue both before
and during the Colloquium);
- Involve operational actors in the reflexion (political institutions: the state,
collectives, technicians and elected representatives, local public service,
especially in the area of solidary cooperation, but also non-institutional: for-profit
private enterprise, NGO and associations) and inform them of the existence and
pertinence of care within environmental ethics, (environmental protection,
agriculture –environment links, food security and risk reduction related to
environmental phenomena).
Text of Scientific Framework
In a collaborative approach between the academic and operational world, through
the interaction of different assessments we will lay the foundations of a shared reflexion
for action:
- Above all, after the Earth Summit in Rio 1992, international initiatives defend the
idea that strategies of environmental protection, of sustainable economic
development and the reduction of major risks, requires more equal access to
resources, to achieve greater respect for environmental justice. In terms of
-
governance, they advocate practices of participatory management with more
involvement at the local level, that is, of economic actors, local collectives but
also of regular citizens.
A number of researchers and practitioners call for giving greater emphasis to the
local level, especially to the situated knowledge emanating from the population.
This posture is well-represented in important initiatives that give priority to women
and indigenous populations (Protocole of Nagoya, Aichi Objectives, Hyogo
Framework of Action for resilient nations and communities for 2015).
Thus, while this recognition can be called an advance on the international level, it is
more difficult to see this respect transposed to the national and local territorial levels.
Whether it be in the implementation of a true participatory process that includes the
average citizen or the mobilization of women (Arawal, 2000), we are forced to
conclude that, in whatever context, governments are hard-pressed to apply these
principles, for various motives, political, economic, social and cultural. These can also
be of a psycho-cognitive order due to a reluctance to replace a model of
development and the power relations that derive from it. These obstacles can also be
related to a profound ignorance of these methods and the advantages and benefits
they can bring.
On the other hand certain risks are present:
i)
Essentialization of knowledge (indigenous knowledge, women’s knowledge) a
reification of knowledge since these are inscribed in sociocultural
constructions in constant revision,
ii)
Commodification, patenting of life,
iii)
Individualization of relations to resources (bio and agrobiodiveristy, water,
land).
Ethics of Care
The ethics of care can permit us to think about things differently: contrary to
philosophies of modernity that conceive of free, rational individuals, care insists on
interdependence (relationship to others), a contextual and particular approach. After
the first essay by Carol Gilligan in 1982 (A Different Voice: for an Ethic of Care) opened
the discussion, in 1990 Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher defined care: “An activity
characteristic of the human species that includes everything we do to maintain,
continue or repair our “world” so that we can live as well as possible. That world
includes our bodies, our individualities, our environment, that we seek to weave
together in a complex net that sustains life.” The ethic of environmental care is
inscribed in an englobling perspective of interdependence and systematic relationship
with the living and non-living world. It is part of a daily management of personal
relations to things: It is concerned with the justification of actions by relinking to feelings,
emotions and well-being. This ethic is called feminine (because it is socially constructed
on the feminine side) but is not proprietary to women (the role of men insufficiently
appreciated). The interest of environmental care is to question the reasons and the
historical effects of the lack of consideration of this essential and ordinary domain of
human life. All the philosophical thought of modernity is founded in the West on the
devaluation of practice, on the life of the City in detriment to the household, as a
shared concept of the world. The enunciation of a new formulation of interdependent
links and caring among individuals permits a new way of objectifying the organization
of society: it opens a political and scientific proposal.
The Colloquium seeks to reflect on issues of environmental care and gender, starting
from facts (women are particularly implicated) but proposes an analysis that shows that
i) care is not limited to women (we need to recognize and analyze the activities of care
carried out by men or shared between men and women) ii) disarm the criticism of
essentialism and differentialism (we are in a social construction that places women on
the side of caring; we denounce the possible instrumentalization of women associated
with the denial of self and in favor of giving to others, as a means of maintaining
hierarchical relations.) iii) Care is not restricted to the domestic realm of the family; iv)
reflect on the articulation between dominant masculinity and dominated masculinity,
(in the sense of caring, of sensibility in men can be socially and culturally undervalued)
The Colloquium seeks to open new perspectives of action and research. It should
permit the continuation of work initiated by Karl Polanyi (1983) reflecting on the
articulation of the different principles and institutions that create value (Guérin et
Nobre, 2014 ; Hillemkamp, Laville, 2013 ; Lemaître et Degrave, ; Sabourin, 2013) (among
principles of i) reciprocity (in the context of social and solidary economy: NGO,
cooperatives) ii) redistribution (by the state and the territorial collectives) iii) sharing (by
families) commerce (the markets).
The objective is to understand how each institution can incorporate care in its actions
to prevent the environment from being reduced to a commodity. The intention is to
work from theoretical foundations and practical experiences (NGO/social movements
/Syndicates, the state and territorial collectives [local governments], educational and
research institutions, families and civil society, businesses. ) can find a place for policies
that concretely value gender equality and rights (women, men and youth) and the
preservation of environmental resources within the constraints of adaptation to climate
change. This framework of theory and action should make relationships, either
conflictive (hierarchical or of exclusion) or of cooperation (solidarity, collaboration,
transmission) evident in each institution. To take seriously the issue of environmental
care is not to cloister care in the family household or in women’s tasks, and to
understand the articulation of the play of actors assuming responsibility and recognizing
issues of equal rights. To speak of care is to cross environmental and social concerns
and understand the different levers of action.
Furthermore, the Colloquium proposes to reverse the value system, thinking of
environmental care as an addition to social, cultural and economic value. Since the
practices of care have been devalued, ignored by the history of modernity and
industrial capitalism, contemporary issues of environmental crisis require this political
rupture. The emphasis on participation seeks to overcome the usual difficulties of
mobilizing local participation such as the diversity of levels of commitment and of
facility of speech. Taking into account the voices/views of women accords them their
place in the management and protection of the environment. Their practical
experience (in relation to food provision and in some cases collecting water and forest
products) explains their particular concern with questions of precaution, attention,
caring (plants and animals), and how these concerns are socially constructed. Far from
a differentialist or naturalist position, the idea is to appreciate their knowledge and skills.
Addressing gender is not merely a question of equal rights but a way of thinking of a
new model of development. The constant is to maintain unequal access to resources.
Not taking gender into account reinforces unequal relations of power. Women
question the inequality of power relations from within the family. They support the social
movements that the actors of cooperative and solidary economics sustain. Training to
reinforce women’s empowerment is essential. Support for change assumes a
recognition of the delay of individual recognition articulated to social engagement.
The approach of care introduces into the heart of the debate the primacy of social
interaction and collective articulation. The World is a house to share but a house
liberated from all forms of domination.
Thus to subscribe to an approach of care is to vindicate the adoption:

Of an ethical posture (struggle against unequal access to
resources, to rights,) better social acceptability of institutional
measures; integrate the diversity of environmental usages
according to practical engagement and gender roles.

Of effective research, especially in the area of agriculture and
environment, food security and environmental policies.

Of questioning the mode of development: a matter of
discussing, eventually instructing a political and economic
argument in favor of an alternative model of development.
This assumes a long process of recognition and acquisition of
skills before pretending to involve socially marginal groups.
The major concern of the Colloquium is, starting from first principles, the discussion in five
workshops, conceived as places for the exchange of experiences and the
development of concrete proposals. The objective is to construct durable working
networks between the academic and the political and operational communities.
Achieving change in the relations of society to the environment requires
methodological and pedagogical tools. The initial postulate is that the approaches of
care and gender can promote the understanding of the issues of our time.
The next scheme sum up the potential of change, that we shall discuss during the
colloquium. It leads to five presentations by workshop, which are a beginning for our
reflexion.
Workshop 1
Agro-food System: Agriculture, Fishing and Grazing
“From production to consumption: Experiences and innovations rethinking models of
agriculture through the lens of gender and care”
The food crisis of the 2000s has brought anew the issues of rural society, agriculture and
food to center stage. Critics point to the different effect of the neoliberal model:
environmental, economic and social effects. This workshop objective is to examine
alternative experiences to this model- in production (agriculture/Fishing/Grazing) and
conservation/transformation/consumption of food—but also innovations in the relations
of producers and consumers. The inclusion of gender and care will derive from an
apprehension of these experiences through the analysis of the social relations that
transverse them rather than for their specificities. The gestures and actions of care
include planting, cooking, nourishing, caring for neighbors and home in the cultural,
affective and material dimensions.
In effect, gender and the ethics of care can be seen as a conceptual framework for
analyzing the social relations between men and women in agro-food systems. Nonethe-less, gender relations are often ingnore in these analyses. Thus, the sexual division of
labor, distribution of resources, unequal power of decision and of access to resources
and to agricultural land and technology, confer on women specific roles and skills that
need to be analyzed. Due to such inequalities, women can, within the diversity of their
situations, value attitudes of precaution and attention to environment.
The questions posed around food involve both the social, economic and the
environmental and public health dimensions. The transformation of the dominant agrofood systems requires the modification of all its aspects. It is a co-evolutionary, creative
societal phenomenon of collectives (producers linked to consumers) engaged in
innovative practices accompanied—encouraged or contested—by public policies.
Agroecology (in its three dimensions of dialogues of knowledge, political engagement
and society/environment relations) presents the opportunity to produce ‘Otherness’. For
a good number of women and men it is a way of enhancing their participation in the
construction of agricultural skills and to promote sustainable forms of production. The
relationship to food, health and preservation of the environment and territory are
emphasized in the discourse and practices of women as a basis for an alternative
model of rural development. Due to the implicit and explicit knowledge of peasants,
within the diversity of their conditions, these social innovations are, at the same time,
means of valuing their contributions. However the agroecological discourse of public
officials contains a risk that local skills and knowledge will be standardize, when; on the
contrary, agroecology should be thought of in the context of diverse local knowledge
and practices.
Food provisioning is foregrounded in the role of women as providers of care or of family
food security. Initiated surrounding urban gardens and alternative food networks are
the times and places of the creation of new solidarities founded on links of producers,
knowledge and food. These circuits of proximity reveal the social concerns around food
and the need for reassurance of healthful products but also to restore social meaning
to what is eaten.
Taking into account care and gender allows us to analyze how the dimensions of
attention and precaution are inscribed in [a flat earth englobling?] perspective that
takes into consideration inequality of access to resources of men and women. This
workshop will endeavor to analyze the practices but also the struggles within the
peasant movement by giving a voice to men and to women. Environmental care and
gender ehlp conceptualize a social and environmental critique of the forms of
production and consumption while examining alternatives to conventional models.
Workshop 2:
Disaster risk reduction and vulnerability
The inevitability of a globally vulnerable world, recognition of the impossibilty of risk
“zero” and of societal capacities to cope with disasters led Beck to the expression of a
new modernity, that of "risk society" (Beck, 1986). Tronto offers a rereading, criticizing the
view that remains "dependent on the old model of colonial society based on an
unfortunately lost control, remaining deaf to the social question" (Tronto 2012). It
proposes to "rethink the social State as opposed to the lamentations of the risk society".
Addressing vulnerability, two attitudes are possible: aggression, or "take care" (care).
The first case is the dominant choice made at least into the 70s, though it continues
today, a risk management that focuses on the control of hazards considered in the
extreme, against which you must battle. Similarly a technocratic, top-down attitude, is
adopted from exposure of people with extreme measures of forced displacement
under the pretext of reducing vulnerability, without providing adequate alternative
housing, causing in the end greater socio-economic marginality and thus vulnerability.
The second case is a care attitude: a careful, relational approach, in which it is
assumed that people and the environment are interdependent.
(1) Everyone is active at different levels to give or receive care, individuals, men and
women, depending on their constraints and their assets, become "autonomous" and
able to be themselves.
(2) All humans are vulnerable and fragile at different levels and times in their lives, and
need to rely on others for care and support, knowing that men and women do not
necessarily face the same situations of fragility and ill-being; also knowing that the care
is not "considered assistance given to vulnerable people as helpless and passive
victims".
(3) All individuals possess the knowledge and capabilities to enhance risk reduction and
crisis management.
Even if at the international level, the major initiatives recognize the limited capacities of
marginalized and vulnerable groups, and the need to involve them in a more
participatory approach while strengthening institutional arrangements (see Hyogo
Framework for Action for Resilient Communities of 2015), a paradox remains, however:
solidarity, democratic spirit and institutionalized welfare was associated with a
decrease in citizen involvement in contexts of the “North”, while in the “South”, the
State’s failure to engage on risk reduction resulted in bottom-up community initiatives
not picked up by the institutions and in the end with no major impact on reducing
vulnerability to large scale. The challenge: to recognize and reinforce the benefits and
expertise of a State that provides security and has responsibility for managing the risks
to women and men, but also promote a new "hybrid" system that combines regulatory
management and citizen participation legitimized by the knowledge and action of
"care" that give value to everyday "invisible" practices.
Work on risk management focusing on Care and Gender imply fair decision-making
based on a system of shared management of everyday resources, taking into account
social interactions (gender, class, generation, etc.) and the contextual recognition of
men and women but also their unequal access to decision-making and their socioeconomic responsibilities that may differentially expose them to risks. In addition, we
seek to integrate risk into daily development issues, recognizing that the causes of
vulnerability are rooted in a lack of access to resources and marginalization in
everyday life, disaster being only indicative of precariousness (Wisner et al., 2004, 2012).
They are part of an early risk reduction approach, conceived as an opportunity to
further community economic benefits. All these elements appear central to the current
operational concerns. It is necessary to examine the feasibility and the tools to
implement them in a context where environmental change increases risk exposure.
References:
Beck U. (1986) – La Société du Risque, Sur la voie d’une autre modernité. Flammarion,
521p.
Tronto J. (2012) – Le risque ou le care ? PUF, Paris, 51 p.
Texier P. (2009) - Vulnérabilité et réduction des risques liés à l’eau dans les quartiers
informels de Jakarta. Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris Diderot, Paris, 460 p.
Texier-Teixeira P., Chouraqui F., Perrillat-Collomb A., Lavigne F., Cadag J.R. et Grancher
D. (2014), Reducing Volcanic Risk On Fogo Volcano, Cape Verde, Through A
Participatory Approach : Which Outcoming? Natural Hazards Earth System Sciences
(Nhess) Discussions, n° 1, pp. 6559-6592.
Wisner B., Gaillard J.-C., Kelman I. (2012) – Framing disaster : theories, models and stories
seeking to understand hazards, vulnerability and risk. In Wisner B., Gaillard J.-C., Kelman
I. (eds.) Handbook of hazards and disaster risk reduction. Routledge, Londres, pp.18-33.
Workshop 3:
Spatial justice, social movements and environmental changes
Measurable economic inequalities in income are added to visible and invisible
discrimination by gender, origin, social class, sexual preference, beliefs, personal health
issues, family structure, collective or political affiliations. Inequalities of access and
opportunity (housing, care, training, work, technology, transport, etc.) related to the
membership of social groups and geographical areas (countries, urban and rural
territory, city center vs. peripheries, ...) draw attention to environmental inequalities that
arise from the unequal distribution of benefits such as environmental health. The most
disadvantaged social groups live in the most degraded environments and suffer
disproportionately from environmental pollution produced by society as a whole
(Jamieson, 2002). These groups have less access to clean air, clean water, basic
sanitation or security of tenure and generally do not have the economic or political
means to oppose the installation of projects threatening their environment and their
health. We find these inequalities on a global scale: the countries of the South, in
addition to their environmental problems, often serve as receptacles to treat intractible
waste and polluting industries (nuclear, industrial, etc.) from the countries of North.
Because of their socially constructed roles and tasks assigned to them, women are
particularly affected by environmental injustice, more or less pronounced depending
on their class, ethnicity, age, etc. Social and environmental inequalities reinforce each
other and weaken societies and affect women in particular.
While political attention has been drawn to the seriousness of environmental problems
and the urgency to find solutions, these actions do not effectively reduce inequalities.
Citizen initiatives, new alternatives or rehabilitated older practices are organized by
groups, movements and associations of men or women. The division of labor between
men and women, with women being burdened with free care to others, sometimes
reproduced by these very initiatives; Moreover, women in the diversity of their
conditions, are not only vulnerable or victims. These initiatives show that not taking into
account the non-monetary economy is an economic and social problem reproducing
a hierarchy by gender.
With an upward momentum, the Economy of Solidarity initiatives reinvent political
methods of struggle, organization, relationship between production and consumption
(short value chains, direct sales), democracy, solidarity, barter, sharing ... It is on the
basis of democratic and solidary social networks that local actors achieve common
goals. This new form of collective organization (or territorial governance) shows that
local development depends not only economic structures or top-down decisions. It
emerges from the collective interests, shared social values and the local organization in
place. The movements for eco-justice, environmental justice and ecology of the poor
(Martinez Alier, 2014) but also the movements of rural women are mobilizing against the
environmental impacts of industrial and agricultural activities that threaten access of
those resources vital for their own survival. These social movements are organized, and
they network at local, national and international levels, and propose changes based
on social and environmental justice. Political programs, such knowledge and care
practices take into account the interrelationships between people, and between
humanity and the environment, as the foundation for rethinking economic and social
development in line with sustainability. The workshop aims to gather actors involved in
these initiatives as well as researchers and or politicians who accompanying them.
References:
Jameson 2002
Martinez Alier J., 2014, L'écologisme des pauvres,
environnementaux dans le monde, Paris, Les Petits Matins.
Une
étude
des
conflits
Workshop 4:
Water management, sanitation and waste management
The commodification and privatization of the provision of water and sanitation services,
the dominat otechno-economic approach, the separation of the management of
liquid and solid waste, often background the eco-systemic, ethical or social
considerations that would lead to more equitable and sustainable development. Social
movements contest this commodification in the name of the struggle against profit and
market forces as the main priority, advocating the defense of life, public property,
human rights and sustainable and equitable development. A guaranteed subsistence
level is the basis for new claims. In this workshop, we will consider the interest of crossing
the "ethics of care" and the social relations to analyze the issues around technical
solutions and social movements that promote the protection of the environment, while
advocating equitable access to scarce resources (including water). The workshop also
questions the issues of waste management in the context of rapid urban growth. To
face the new challenges of humanity such as climate change, requires new thinking,
paradigm shifts in ethics, values and scale, more concern for the long term, the
questioning of models consumption and human relations, the search for coherence
between policies and daily practices, between rural and urban areas, between
women and men.
Water is an indispensable resource for all forms of life, both for direct consumption and
for derivative uses (energy, agriculture, livestock, health, cleanliness, industries ,
transport, etc.). Increasing urbanization, world population growth and industrial
development create increasing and competing needs, while the basic need of access
to clean water for human consumption, remains unsatisfied in quantity, continuity and
quality in many regions, especially in so-called South and in rural and peripheral urban
areas. These deficiencies are highlighted in the evaluation of Goal 7 Millennium
Development Goals. Women as leaders within the family and the management of daily
life, bear the main burden. But to assign them to a status of users or relgate them to the
domestic sphere creates new dependencies and removes them from effective
participation in operational decisions, technical or political. International guidelines
involve different scales, from everyday practice, through watersheds.
The workshop is intended to present the experiences and reflections of innovative
water management in situations of high stress related to its access and availability. To
think of water management in terms of "care" changes our view of this scarce resource:
how to distribute it, how to govern it for both women and men.
Concerning waste, the workshop will analyze examples of the tension between the
economic, environmental and social dimensions, between open access and for-profit,
and questions on the transformation of domestic and professional daily practices of
women and men in the development of recycling , waste reduction, changing
consumption patterns, as well as the sharing of direct and indirect benefits throughout
the value chain.
References:
Carolyn Hannan et Ingvar Andersson, “Gender perspectives on water supply and
sanitation : Towards a sustainable livelihoods and ecosystem-based approach to
sanitation”. http://www.energyandenvironment.und...
Eau et féminismes, 2010, La Dispute, collection “tout autour de l’eau”, conseil général
du val de marne.
Claire Gaillardou, 2007, Genre et eau en France, étude du PSEAU.
Workshop 5
Knowledge and management of bio and agro-biodiversity, Nature in the City
Political recognition of local and/or indigenous knowledge related to biodiversity
(including agro-biodiversity), and more broadly the necessary involvement of its users in
the conservation of the environment is recognized internationally (cf. . Convention for
Biodiversity, Aichi Targets). This is emphasized especially for thirty years by the injunction
of participation, which applies to public policies and NGO programs in the field of
biodiversity conservation as well as that of development. But beyond its common and
consensual terminology, the terms of participation are highly variable, both in the
gathering and transmission of localized knowledge, in its eventual classification useful or
useless knowledge, or in selecting those to be strengthened, transmitted or preserved.
The processes to which this variability refers involves complex social and political issues.
Faced with this global concern, two opposing visions emerge: one that rests on a highly
technical and scientific viewpoint that dominated the approach to environmental
protection into the 70s, and another that refers to a sensed and lived viewpoint based
on knowledge held by "user-experts", such as in the environmental justice movement
found on all continents. These differing visions are associated with two types of
knowledge, which tend to be categorized and apprehended in terms of ecological
utility, defined subjectively, while the ethno-ecology inextricably combines the social,
cultural and ecological.
The workshop proposes to seek solutions to improve the dialogue these complementary
knowledges and develop them, rather than contrast them, thus calling into question
their historical hierarchy. It also proposes to reflect on the operational means to capture
this knowledge from the daily experience of inhabitant and to consider its equality with
scientific and institutionalized knowledge.
Even within localized knowledge held by the users of territories, socially constructed
spaces explain the existence of shared, distinct or contested knowledge, held by
women (in connection with their daily household practices) and that of men (more
confined to their productive function recognized by society). This knowledge is based
on the constraints and social commitments situated in women and men: they are
traversed by relations of power.
Some people practice care for the environment because they maintain a closeness
with it, in the sense of a relationship and not just knowledge and practices. Taking care
of the environment in which their livelihood depends, goes beyond the utilitarian
aspect. Some societies appropriate trees as identity markers: and the conservation of a
diverse forest may satisfy cultural as much as biological needs. The question of the
landscape as a common good to be passed on also contributes to the general interest
in the cultural, ecological, environmental and social. Attitudes and daily acts of care of
the body and mind, of those close and / or of other living beings are also forms of
environmental protection of research for well-being and better health ( evidenced by
the urban and rural movements of collective gardening and nature appreciation in the
city for therapeutic or aesthetic ends).
This workshop invites us to share field experiences of everyday practice related to the
protection, restoration and enhancement of environmental resources that can be
considered as the care of the environment; to discuss hidden practices and knowledge
and methodologies to bring them to light and value them.