Contenu du sommaire : Campagnes marginales, campagnes disputées

Campagnes marginales, campagnes disputées

• Quelques systèmes en crise : une présentation de recherches - Isac Chiva p. 5-7
• Désertification ou annexion de l'espace rural ? L'exemple du plateau de Millevaches - G. Raphaël Larrère p. 9-48
  Desertification or Annexation of Rural Space ? The Case of the Millevaches Highlands. The peasants of the Millevaches highlands are loosing their hold on a soil where fallow land is expanding and even more so the retimbering undertaken by the landowners who are mostly city dwellers. The small commercial production of calf intended for meat consumption, is not doing well. An economic reconversion is necessary and we are witnessing the development of extensive stock farming which can only be successfully carried out on large farms. These, however, are still not capable of managing the totality of the untimbered expanse. All the less so that the promoters of the forest control the real estate market. As opposed to a policy which would seek to maintain a local productive activity, this development of the timbering industry serves national ends and yields profits which, for the most part, will in no way benefit the region. Such are the facts which, in the Millevaches region, are being obscured and dramatized by speeches on its inevitable desertification.
• Ressources du milieu, gestion du troupeau et évolution sociale : le cas de la Corse - François Pernet, Gérard Lenclud p. 49-87
  Natural Resources, Pastoralism and Social Evolution : the Case of Corsica. In this article dealing with Corsican pastoralism and its recent evolutions, the authors try to demonstrate the fact that each social system develops its own means of managing natural resources. They study, first, the grazing techniques made out by traditional communities. These techniques are, then, correlated with environmental factors (the seasonal yield of pastures) on the one hand and social organization on the other. The next part is devoted to the analysis of contemporary patterns of stockbreeding. The authors show that the outcome of these new patterns is the necessary adaptation to altered environmental conditions (mainly the spreading of scrub vegetation) and to economical and social change (the pressures emanating from the larger society).
• Pratiques d'élevage en Castagniccia. Exploration d'un milieu naturel et social en Corse - Bernard De Verneuil, Camille Raichon, Jean-Pierre Deffontaines, Bernard Cristofini p. 89-109
  Animal Husbandry Practices in Castagniccia : Exploring a Natural and Social Surrounding. The authors — agronomists — made a survey of current animal husbandry practices in the Castagniccia region of Corsica (maintenance, surveillance, land use, facilities...), all of which are chosen by the "stockmen" so as to develop some consistent combinations of practices which caracterize their own particular stock-breeding system. Six such practice-systems were identified, some of which ("browsing" systems) make a very extensive use of the shrubby and woody vegetation cover. Revealing both the particular economic process and the individual social standing of the stockmen, are such complex practices the remainders of grazing systems of the past or, on the contrary, are they genuine innovations of present stockmen aiming at adjusting their trade to the vacuum created by the departure of most of the local active population? The fate of Castagniccia's agriculture lies, partly, in the answer to that question.
• Agriculture et tourisme dans un milieu haut-alpin : un exemple briançonnais - Madelène Mallet p. 111-154
  Agriculture and Tourism in a Moutain Environment : The Case of the Briançonnais (Hautes- Alpes). This article seeks to understand the evolution of moutain ecosystems through that of the societies involved. In the course of the last century, the multiple inroads of the capitalist system have brought about, at Monêtier-les-Bains (Hautes-Alpes), a pronounced social differentiation which has transformed the peasants into shopkeepers or mine-workers, and induced their children to enter the tourist business or to become farmers. As for the new generation, they are neither workers nor shopkeepers nor agriculturists. Likewise lands which used to have a definite calling — collectively determined — are nowadays retimbered, mowed, cultivated or grazed according to the year and to the individual who assumes ownership over them. The confusion thus created has opened the way to the tourist-trade which has taken advantage of it to colonize the village.
• A propos du Monêtier : du rôle des contraintes naturelles paysagères et climatiques - Olivier Dollfus p. 155-157
• Élevage, reboisement et tourisme dans une zone montagneuse désertée : l'exemple de Barre-des-Cévennes - Hugues Lamarche, Antoinette Fioravanti-Molinié p. 159-185
  Stock-Farming, Afforestation and Tourism in a Deserted Mountain Area. The Case of Barre-des-Cévennes. This study relates to the dynamics of the relations existing between the occupation of the land and the social structure. It shows how the various modifications of the local social structure will necessarily lead to deep changes in the production system and consequently to changes in the occupation of the land. Planting forests is nowadays the prevailing form of space utilization. . . But already, tourist-trade introduces new elements likely to question this preeminence. The authors express the hypothesis that, in the long run, and because of the presence of the Pare National des Cévennes, the tourist-trade will develop so as to become the determining axis of transformation in the utilization of this commune space.
• L'évolution de l'occupation des terres à Barre-des-Cévennes (Lozère). Approche phyto-écologique et socio-économique - François Romane, Daniel Hubert, Michel Godron, Max Debussche p. 187-192
  Evolution of Land Use in Barre-des-Cévennes (Lozère). A Phyto-Ecological and Socio-Economical Approach. The present work is part of a more comprehensive study of a village located in a depressed area. This study inquires into the evolution of land use and seeks to determine the variables (ecological, sociological, and economical) involved. Analysis of this evolution was based upon the interpreting of aerial photographs made at different dates. As for the variables, they were determined at both the ecological and the socio-economical level, on the basis of a systematic grid of 3 000 points (one point per hectare). The authors suggest using the model of "transition matrix" for the data processing. This model is used for the set of 3 000 points or for subsets which are obtained on the basis of ecological or sociological criteria. They are trying to ascertain if the factors influencing the evolution of the vegetation are identical for each subset.
• Intégration de l'agriculture et décomposition de la société dans une région reculée : le cas de la Piège (Aude) - Michel Cohou, Bernard Kayser p. 193-218
  Agricultural Integration and Social Disintegration in a Backward Region: the Case of the Piège (Aude). This article, the result of field-work carried out by a team of research workers belonging to the RCP 257 of the CNRS, analyses the economic and social evolution of eight communities located in the Piège, a small hilly region some seventy kilometers to the South-East of Toulouse. In the last fifteen years, the agrarian restructuration has been completed. The poor peasant, as traditionally existed, has disappeared, anf a few wealthy landowners now coexist with a new "middle-class" peasantry, resolutely modern in its outlook — a group however in itself far from homogenous. Active life is thus concentrated in the scattered farmsteads while it is dying out in the villages, eaten away by emigration. Collective land-control has disappeared, giving way to the solitary confrontation of the individual farmer with the ecosystem he has to deal with at this own level; a confrontation which leads to a constantly increasing "artiflcialization" of the production system, with all the costs and risks it entails.
• Mécanismes sociaux de transformation d'un écosystème fragile : la Camargue - Bernard Picon p. 219-229
  The Camargue : A Fragile Ecosystem and its Social Mechanisms of Transformation. A recent research on a rural peri-urban area (the Camargue) led us to a typology comprising six ways in which society modifies the physical space. This typology takes into account various conceptions of productivity representative of the main economical and ideological trends. The various uses of space in Camargue ranging from industrial agriculture to the integral protection of a natural milieu are the result of a long succession of economical interventions, often contradictory, on a specific lacustrian site.
• Utilisations sociales et conflictuelles des landes bretonnes : l'exemple de Lanvaux - Hugues Lamarche, Bernard Geffroy p. 231-250
  Social and Conflictual Utilizations of the Breton Moor: The Case of Lanvaux. As far as we can go back in the history of this region, the moor ever held an essential part in the social relations of production and in their transformations. At first and for several centuries, the moor was the foster-mother of the local peasantry; afterwards, it was deeply "maimed" and neglected because of the intensification of agriculture; today, it is again "coveted", but in a quite different way ; not as it was formerly: in view of agricultural needs, but rather of urban ones. According to the authors, this new form of development of the moor can be entered in the present stage of that new spreading out of the capital over the rural space, which is recorded all over the French country.
• Les landes de Lanvaux aujourd'hui. Un révélateur des transformations de l'imaginaire paysan - Nicole Eizner p. 251-256
  The Lanvaux Moor today: An Indicator of the Transformations of the Peasant Imagination Process. Traditionally associated with the life of the peasants, the Lanvaux moor has ceased to be so, and is actually becoming marginal land through the action of modern agriculture, i. e. the consolidation of holdings and mechanization. Regional perception of the moor has changed likewise, as well as its role in the symbolic and imagining process. Tales and legends are waning from the popular mind, while, to make up for it, there emerges a local passion for archeology (the moor has Megalithic, Gallic and Roman remains); as if the contemporary farmer, just as his urban cousin, felt the need to reclaim his roots and recapture his past in order to compensate for the laying "waste policy" that goes with economical development.
• Rente foncière et gestion des ressources naturelles. Quelques remarques sur la rente foncière dans une perspective interdisciplinaire - Marcel Jollivet p. 257-274
  Ground-Rent and Natural Resources Management. Some Remarks on the Ground-Rent in an Interdisciplinary Perspective. The renewed interest for marginalized agricultural areas has produced attempts, on a scientific level, to conduct interdisciplinary researches associating biological or ecological sciences, and social sciences. An examination of the evolution of the concerned areas shows the prime impact of the ground-rent. Consequently, this concept is at the core of any interdisciplinary proceeding, and it appears as the eventual tool of a real interdisciplinarity. But whether it be taken in a strictly marginalist meaning or as the transcription of a class relation, the orientation of interdisciplinary researches will not only be different but strictly opposite. This article points out the opposition and endeavours to demonstrate that in order to give a clear report of the evolution of the agricultural utilization of the land, it is necessary to consider the ground-rent as the expression of the fundamental social relations upon which an economical system has been based. According to the author, all interdisciplinary inquiries must be devoted to the close scrutiny of this hypothesis and of its ecological consequences.
• Photographie aérienne et espace rural - Jean-Paul Gilg p. 275-315
  Aerial Photography and Rural Space. Aerial photography, and more generally remote sensing, aim at ensuring the spatio- temporal continuity of observation. Thus they implement a regional approach to the problems of rural space. The volume of the data and wealth of information are such as to require the use of manual and automated methods, in order to obtain accurate results. Through a series of case analyses, this paper suggests some methods applicable to the study of land-use. More specifically adapted to the static and dynamic description of the material forms of land-use, remote sensing provides also explanatory information, the deciphering of which requires an investigation into the correlations between landscape features and socio-economic features. Remote sensing does not cover all the information needs of any given thematic problem. It should be combined with other methods of data collecting.