Ecological and health issues are at the heart of social issues that concern both human beings and plant and animal species. Researchers in this area consider environmental and health issues jointly, from the point of view of how they have been socially and historically shaped.
To govern, to designate as heritage, to protect, to care for or even to cure humans, animals and plants places intention and action in a primary logic of care that entails certain harmful secondary logics, which we interrogate at the same time. Our different research projects question the perceptions, ambivalences and contradictions connected with the dynamics of care: how they generate greater wellbeing for some, and for others, possibly and at the same time, inequalities and the destruction of the living world.
Interfaces and globalized circulation are major themes of our research, whether this concerns boundaries of the normal and pathological, the global and the local, the professional or private world, or the objects we manufacture. We try to understand how people view the relationship with their environment, their job, and the care they dispense, deploy or are in charge of promoting. Some research projects question institutional and communicative forms expressing how the interactions between societies and their natural environment have evolved. Others analyse forms of contemplative activism (meditation, yoga or contact dance). Surveys focus on media communication around exhibitions on major social issues such as environmental health, food or the history of the struggles against AIDS.
Anchored in their respective disciplines – anthropology, sociology, history, geography, language sciences – the researchers maintain an ongoing dialogue with other sciences – medicine, neuroscience, biology, chemistry, ecology, epidemiology, archaeology – and other professional and cultural backgrounds that are also mobilized around issues of ecology and care: ethics boards, care institutions, media, museums, architecture, NGOs, and cultural and scientific communication.