BICTEL/e - ULg
Serveur institutionnel des thèses de doctorat

• participatory environmental management/gestion environnementale participative
• scientific field stations/ stations scientifiques
• indigenous Amazonian people /indigènes amazoniens
• non-scientific populations/profanes
• Ecuador/Équateur
• Actor-Network theory/sociologie de la traduction

Currently, protected areas and protected natural species are in a state of proliferation all over the world. Landscapes, flagship species, peoples in voluntary isolation, ecosystems, and “biological corridors” are all protected. In order to achieve this, categories of protection at different geographical levels have been mobilized. The processes that allow any one of these categories to become operational within a precise territory are more or less well standardized and have in common, amongst others things, two components that have caught my attention: Firstly, the central role of previous scientific and technical studies, and secondly, the desire to ensure the participation of the populations concerned. How are relations between scientists and the non-scientific public in participatory environmental management? This thesis seeks to answer this question, from the starting point of an analysis of the cognitive dimension of participatory environmental management, i.e. how the production of knowledge affects the modes of existence within protected areas (and consequently their human and nonhuman inhabitants). Building upon the study of daily activities that bring scientists and indigenous peoples into contact in and around the scientific field stations “Yasuní” and “Juri Juri Kawsay” (in the Ecuadorian Amazon), this research describes the relationship between ways of knowing a conflicting object (for example a natural species, a territorial boundary, an isolated people) and the consequences in terms of configuration of that object (in terms of identity, value, and fragility) and its management (administration, use, protection, recovery or abandonment). By mobilizing the approach of Actor-Network theory, this dissertation attempts to outline how mediation between humans and nonhumans, non-scientific and scientific, occurs. It also offers a reflection on how the Agency of an entity (the competence to make make distributed in the humans and nonhumans actors) comes to influence the joint actions. This research can capture the ambiguity, instability, resistance and complexity that still exist in the Amazon, with some unexpected findings along the way, by showing the changes among things and people throughout development projects, land management initiatives, and conservation and science programs. After describing the trajectory of four entities (laboratories, species conservation, territories and subjects), which meet at the Amazonian interfaces where science, conservation and development are in competition, the findings of this dissertation have met two ambitions: to consider the importance of taking into account the complexity and historicity of scientific data and to answer a broader question: What are the relevant factors to take into account when considering the possibilities for joint action between scientists and indigenous populations?

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