Contenu du sommaire : La chasse et la cueillette aujourd'hui

Wood-Pigeon Hunting in the Moors of South-West France The burning of palombières (the cabins where hunters, after setting out decoys, await the flights of wood-pigeons which they then shoot or catch in nets) is a fairly frequent occurrence in the Landes, where they are the focus of several important aspects of local-society. Located on the sites of former palombières and built by the men who use them, the cabins enable their builders to reconstitute houses which communicate with the sky and with the birds that are called dow by «singing». Thus they become the theatre of a variety of conflicts. They may be burned to the ground in order to get rid of a city lawyer, to attack a counter-revolutionary or to prevent a hunting ground from being rented out. Guns are fired off to frighten pigeons away as a result of political disagreements or personal enmity. The role of wood-pigeon hunting in the life of the hunters is consequently so important that it has become an essential expression of a regional identity that has been proclaimed and defended fiercely for decades.

Gathering and Eating Black Bryony in the Region of AIM, Carmaux and Castres Black bryony (F. tamier ; L. tamus communis) is a plant found throughout the French countryside. More commonly known and widely used under the common name «herbe aux femmes battues», each spring it inspires the inhabitants of the region of Albi, Carmaux, Castres with an extraordinary gustatory passion for its shoots — a passion so strong that they will travel as far as two hundred kilometers from their homes to find it.

Thrush Snaring in Sardinia The author studies the modalities of snaring in southern Sardinia from the perspective of the knowledge of nature involved in the different operations as well as from that of the snaring techniques, the social organization and the unwritten rules governing this activity.

Consuming Wild Space The products of wild (non-cultivated) space have a privileged place in provençal cooking. Even a cursory inventory of these gathered products reveals their importance. Their use in cooking confirms this. Among the factors which explain the value given to these products, the following are retained : culinary aesthetics, their economic contribution, the break with everyday habits, the search for an effect of temporal displacement, the striving for rareness and culinary skill. It is in terms of one or another of these criteria that the products of wild space are consumed in provencal kitchens.

Aspects of Gathering in the Swiss Alps In this article which focuses on the evolution of gathering in the Swiss Alps, the authors show that despite the regression of their economic importance certain practices, such as the harvesting of wild hay, have retained a symbolic significance and a pedadogic function.

Hunting, Farming and Fishing in the Dombes The Dombes is a humid zone in the département of the Ain. Manmade ponds are farmed there according to a crop rotation system that alternates fish-farming with the cultivation of cereal plants. The natural conditions created by the ponds are extremely favorable for hunting. Existing land property structures have favored private and urban hunters, and this trend has been furthered by the increasingly widespread practice of renting out hunting rights. Nevertheless the inhabitants retain stalking rights (droits d'affût) for duck hunting. Agriculture, which has become very dynamic in this region, makes almost no concessions to hunting. Few farmers exercice their right to hunt. There is an increasing interest in pisciculttire, but hunting is not impeded by the farming of the ponds, which is very uneven in terms of commercial development. Agriculture, pisciculture and hunting have found a relatively satisfying modus vivendi in the Dombes.

A New Form of Gathering (A Case Study in Northern Alpes : Les Allues) Socio-economic change this century in the Northern Alps underlies formal and functional modifications in peasant gathering in the high-altitude commune of Les Allues (Tarentaise, Savoie). A move away from an agro-pastoral subsistence economy and towards a tourism-based moneyed economy has resulted in a radical drop in gathering for traditional alimentary purposes. The new form of gathering which has emerged, while heavily influenced by dominant urban society norms and knowledge, has nevertheless retained several recognizable aspects of the traditional system.

«Seasons» for Selling, «Seasons» for Eating . Present-Day Accounts of Old-Time Gathering in the Margeride Gathering, at first sight a marginal agricultural activity, presents us with a double paradox in the Margeride : on the one hand its upsurge is a recent phenomenon and is due mainly to the quest for a supplementary and, where many farms are concerned, indispensable source of income ; an on the other hand the traditions contemporary gathering is rooted in were already strongly marked by mercantile preoccupations. Hence we are witnessing the evolution of a practice from 1920 to 1950 and from 1950 to 1980 rather than a change of customs. On the basis of a comparison between the memories of the inhabitants and the objective facts, the author tries to establish the economic dependency of the gatherers in the past and the precariousness of their living conditions, and to contradict the current idealization of the peasants' relationship to «Nature» which has sprung up in the wake of certain ecological ideas, the vogue for «natural medicines», etc.

Types of Gathering, Conflicts and Controls A propos of the changes affecting gathering in the Margeride, and especially the development of the market for «natural products», the author examines the attempts to regulate these practices. What interests do the regulations tend to serve ?

The Local Organization of Hunting : Collective Self-Defense and Conflict Settlement Hunting has become the focus of competitive and conflictual practices relating to space and nature. Protection against the intrusion of «strangers» of urban origin, resistance to state control, diffuse repression of dissenting owners of hunting rights (resulting sometimes in the establishment of private hunting reserves) : communal hunting associations constitute veritable collective mutual- defense organizations. Based on a hierarchical definition of membership, they revive ties of local solidarity.

Gathering Regulations and the Appropriation of Space : The Roya Valley in the Alpes-Maritimes The installation of the Pare National du Mercantour has created some friction in the upper valleys of the AIpes-Maritimes. Among other things, the regulations relating to gathering have been viewed as restricting the traditional rights of the villagers. Has this really been the case ? Can one really speak of a «free» past and a «regulated» present, as do the inhabitants of the Roya Valley ? What are the actual pratices and what representations can one discern in the reactions to the park ?

The Spread of Hunting and Changes in the Social Uses of Rural Space On the basis of a study of the statistics of officially registered hunters (which allows him to establish the evolution of the number of hunters from 1945 to 1980 and their distribution by département in 1954 and again in 1975) supplemented by other investigative data, the author suggests that the spread of hunting is not a direct function of the size of the rural population. Property structures, the structure of farming and resource development, access to hunting territory, the nature of the relationship between town and country, and, finally, the cultural orientation of societies marked by honor values : all these appear as determining factors explaining the practice of hunting. Recent changes (the various modes of de-ruralization and de-peasantification), the dissociation between farmers and hunters and the increasing autonomy of an economic circuit of game production : these tend to increase the contradictions between the different social uses of the territory, including hunting.

Economic practice, symbolic practice : The Case of Gathering As agriculture becomes an increasingly converter of energetic and chemical inputs into food outputs, gathering remains one of the last ways of direct picking on nature. Gathering is not only a gesture, but mostly a practice of which place and significance are defined by an historical form of social relationships. Contributing to content life needs of societies or social groups, it consists in an economic practice that may be characterized as a form of available ressources appropriation. Such a form is related to production of relationships. Besides, gathering of wild plants becomes more and more an entertaining activity for citizens : so it appears as a symbolic practice. However, these two aspects,economic and symbolic, may not be separated : they penetrate each other and are both present in every actual behabiour of gathering as shown by local studies.

Ritual and Adaptation Strategies : Hunting in the Woodlands of Western France (Vendée) If coursing deer with hounds has long been and still is in many regions an expensive, exclusive sport, this is not the case in the Vendée where it involves the whole rural community. Here village shopkeepers, factory workers, farmers organized their own hunting establishment (équipage) and managed to involve, to their advantage, the local gentry and the old and new bourgeoisie. The study focuses on the relationship between the ritual aspects of the hunt and modernization processes. Using both ethnographic and historical data, the paper shows the transformations in the social and economic make up of the hunt through two great periods : before and after the Revolution and after World War II when the «green revolution» occurred. The author argues that persistent cultural codes and values are the key to understanding the dynamic and creative role of ritual in social change. She shows in particular how the creation of the new hunt has been made possible only through a traditional system of exchange which operates among the members of the hunting establishment and, outside of it, between different types of hunters. Hunting itself is shown to embody these values and to celebrate the successful adaptation of the regained community in the face of the disruptive conditions of modern life.

Villagers, émigrés and Strangers : Conflicts Around a Hunting Territory in the Mountains The analysis of a conflict between hunters and the mayor of a small mountain community reveals (beyond the classical discourse of land-use conflicts between farming, hunting and tourism) a two-fold issue : on the one hand, there is the hunter's relation to the community (non-farmers and even non-rurals, the hunters — called «émigrés» — no longer live in the village but have maintained symbolic ties with it) ; and on the other hand, there is the plan for controlled development of agriculture and tourism (and which the mayor defends against the attack of the émigrés, who are hostile to change). What makes this example particularly interesting is the fact that the agricultural lands (which are a minority) and the hunting territory (which is vast and consists mostly of communal land unsuitable for farming) are clearly distinct from each other. The farmers (who do not hunt) are therefore not directly concerned by the conflicts revolving around hunting.

Boar Hunting in the Cévennes Based on the concept of game (such as considered by J. Huizinga and R. Caillois, in their classical studies on the subject), this article describes a recent form of hunting in the Cévennes — Lozère region : the track of boar. Socialisation of land and masculine sociability are set in context of a rural, desertified area, chosen to become a natural park (National Park of Cévennes).

When Popular Hunting Becomes a Sport : The Social Redefinition of a Traditional Pastime In this article the author tries to show how the emergence of a new image of the hunter — the sporting man who respects the natural equilibrium — simultaneously expresses the necessity of an adaptation to changing conditions of the hunting practice and the social strategy of certain hunters.

Boar-Hunting Passion in a Cévenol District. Boar- hunting appeared in the cévenol district of Valleraugue at the beginning of the century. At first there were only a few hunters, then small groups, and in the last ten years they organized themselves in a sort of team-game, in which the major part of the men of the district participate. This paper tries to show that such a craze is directly linked with the social change. In this district which completely lost its rural traditions, boar hunting is the only local activity which allows the inhabitants to assert their mastery over the land and their cévenol identity.Boar- hunting is a passion because it backs up an identity which was dying out.

Hunting, Hunting Grounds, Hunter's Groups. The relationships of hunters with their hunting grounds differ widely according as they belong to a local hunting society or they hunt in a private shoot. In the first case, the collective use of the common land provides natives with an opportunity to show they are autochtonous. In the second case, by hunting, people from the city show off their social domination on a land and on its inhabitants.

The Men's Share : A Woodland Hunting Society The author shows how hunting, in a forest village in the Bourgogne, has marked, during a clearly delimited historical period, the accession of the men to a truly collective life : pooling and redistribution of duties and the products of hunting, communal meals, etc.

The Reasons for Poaching : Forbidden Games in Lower Provence. The authors try to show that poaching constitutes a complex stratified reality belonging, in every case, to the realm of the forbidden but in a variety of different modes. They contrast customary poaching, which is widely tolerated, to professional poaching, which is viewed as «illegal» by local inhabitants. Observing a marked increase of the poaching phenomenon in provençal societies, they try to pinpoint the reasons for its extension and to recompose the elements of a game where the different actors - wildlife, poachers and game-keepers — successively assume the role of the prey.

The Dividing of the Ferum, a rite in Boar Hunting When a male boar is killed, it is immediately castrated. This custom, the existence of which is attested in the Languedoc and in Catalonia, is both ancient and general. For most hunters it is an act of primordial importance, for without it, it would not be possible to eat the boar's meat, which is subjected to the influence of the ferum or salvajum (the «savage»), a noxious substance, both an odor and a taste, whose seat is in the testicles. But this gesture, which is shared by everyone, draws distinctions among the persons who perform it. Seasoned hunters dispute its purpose and even its usefulness : they believe that the ferum is also carried by the boar's blood and urine and that it is present in most of the viscera (spleen, heart, liver, etc.). In general their explanations map out a physiology of the ferum characterized by a complex system of frontiers passing through these different organs. The testicles appear as the emblematic element of this physiology. The ferum, which is thought to render the meat inedible, is never altogether eliminated, but is redistributed according to a variety of hunting customs which are all very ancient however. To whom is it given ? To the dogs, whose ingestion of it is carefully regulated (the pack approaches the meat cautiously while the leaders are given the raw testicles), to the men, and specifially to the most experienced hunters (who continue to taste the ferum even though they have already tasted it at the time of their initiation as hunters). Beyond the hunting group, there is yet another distribution. It too is controlled by the hunters. Extended to the household and the village, the ingestion of the ferum, which is subjected to a variety of manipulations and a complex cuisine, dilutes the noxious substance over an increasingly large circle. Through the diversity of discourses and practices, the sharing of the ferum thus appears as the social and symbolic nucleus of boar hunting upon which a virile fraternity is secretely founded and organized in a strict hierarchy.