Accueil » Sommaires » revue : Etudes rurales » no 115-116, 1989

Contenu du sommaire : Hydraulique

Revue Etudes rurales Mir@bel
Numéro no 115-116, 1989
Titre du numéro Hydraulique
Texte intégral en ligne Accessible sur l'internet

  • Génie rural et génie paysan. Sociétés rurales et techniques hydrauliques en Afrique

    • Introduction
      • Sociétés rurales et techniques hydrauliques en Afrique - Yasmine Marzouk p. 9-36 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
        Rural Societies and Hydraulic Techniques in Africa It has often been said that there is no tradition of hydraulics in Africa. Modern irrigation, designed by engineers and necessitating the intervention at the State level, has neglected the diversity of peasant farming methods. An anthropological look at the "technical facts" enables us to see three types of such methods : storing water in and on the ground ; drawing water out of lowlands and pits ; and gravitational systems. The three types are installed in ancient agricultural craddles and often stimulated trade in cereals during precolonial times.
    • Riz des femmes, riz des hommes au Guidimaka (Mauritanie) - Véronique Blanchard de La Brosse p. 37-58 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      Women's Rice, Men's Rice (Guidimaka, Mauritania) During precolonial times and even still in the first half of the 20th century, Soninke women actively participated in interregional trade. Nowadays, since, unlike men, they do not have the possibility of emigrating, they are the main victims of the village economy's decline. Out of their own production however, they still assume obligations (in particular, providing most of the goods redistributed during marriages) that condition their social status. Their situation has worsened since, in 1981, a National Company of Rural Development introduced irrigated rice as a crop for men, whereas rice production had been in women's hands. The latter's refusal to give up their own fields (and particularly paddy-fields) and go and work in the fields managed by men is the major reason for the non-expansion of irrigated rice in Guidimaka.
    • État et paysans dans les systèmes hydrauliques de la vallée du Nil (Egypte) - Christine de Sainte Marie p. 59-91 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      The State and Peasants in Modern Egypt's Hydraulic Systems Until the Aswan dam's reservoir was put in use 25 years ago, the Egyptian "agricultures" were so numerous as the ways to use the Nile's waters : methods, practised for 5000 years, using floodwaters ; methods for drawing water from lowlands and along the river banks ; methods using dams during the 19th century to intensively farm irrigated land. Attention has been focused too narrowly on bid hydraulic projects designed and managed by the State rather than on the irrigation techniques and social organization at the village- and field-levels. By following the water course beyond the public system, we can observe the complexity of relations between peasants and the state.
    • L'eau du désert. Usages, techniques et maîtrise de l'espace aux confins du Sahara - Edmond Bernus p. 93-104 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      Desert Water : The Uses, Techniques and Control of Space on the Fringes of the Sahara In desert areas, water holes are nodal points in a network covering a whole territory : from these centers of an inhabited space, trails spread out over the land. The reader will find an analysis of the techniques of water-catchment used by herders and farmer-herders in Tuareg areas, as well as the often too sophisticated ones used by mining companies or in development projects. By studying how space is used and water controlled, a comparison can be made between the ways the desert and the forest figure in nomad's and medieval mankind's imagination. The desert, like the forest, is ever more colonized, controlled and even changed into a tourist attraction.
    • La culture irriguée en pays haoussa nigérien. Aspects historiques sociaux et techniques - Claude Raynaut p. 105-128 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      Irrigated Agriculture in Hausa Areas of Niger : Historical, Social and Technical Aspects By analyzing irrigated gardening techniques in the Maradi area of Niger, light is shed on the remarkable capacity of the peasant's technical system for reconciling an ancient heritage with contemporary economic and technical innovations. This dynamism in gardening did not occur by chance. For a long time and in many ways (land rights, intensified agricultural practices, the individualization of work, integration into the market), this activity has harbingered changes that would be taken up much later in nonirrigated farming. This small-scale peasant horticulture is now threatened by artificial competition from the irrigated perimeters.
    • La colline et le marais. La gestion des bassins versants au Burundi et au Rwanda - Lidia Meschy p. 129-151 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      Hills and Lowlands. Managing Catchment Basins in Burundi and Rwanda In Burundi and Rwanda, the layout of fields in the lowlands suggests a collective management of land and water resources in each valley. But this is not so. Land is used on an individual, sometimes precarious, basis with no regard for neighbors and as a function of biotopes, the lowlands being complementary to the hills. In the lowlands, the interventions of local and then colonial authorities disturbed the peasant system and eventually made it diversify and improve. Knowledge of the history of land use makes us cautious about adopting the theory linking population size to agricultural progress ; it also helps disprove the reputedly foreign origin of certain techniques. The first travelers mentioned farms in the lowlands and, more importantly, an astute (no longer existent) system of irrigation on the slopes. Has this heritage been taken into account during recent transfers of "efficient" techniques ?
    • Note critique
    • Principes d'aménagement paysans. Comparaison

  • Recherche et méthodes

    • Quelle autosuffisance alimentaire pour le Cameroun ? Quelques repères méthodologiques - Jean-Claude Verez p. 195-221 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
      How Is Cameroun S elf- Sufficient in Food ? A Few Methodological Points Dependency, security and self-sufficiency are notions used to characterize the food situation in various sub-Saharian countries. There is no obvious ways of measuring such indications. In a context of strong population growth and accelerated urbanization, there is every reason to expect increasing food imports and, eventually, greater dependency ; but the Camerounian example shows that there is no automatic correlation between urbanization and food dependency. Cameroun is now relatively self-sufficient even though it, too, has to deal with the growth of the population and of cities. This self-sufficiency, which costs indirect imports, can be set down to a choice in economic and agricultural policy. This choice will turn out to be right in the long run if agricultural production grows to satisfy the population's food needs.
  • "Faire de la parenté, faire du sang". Logique et représentations de la chasse à l'espadon - Serge Collet p. 223-250 accès libre avec résumé en anglais
    "Making Kinship, Making Blood". The Logic and Images of Hunting for Sword fish The history of hunting for swordfish in the Strait of Messina goes all the way back to the detailed description by Polybius. How has its recent development led to very restrictive strategies for mobilizing the resources of the kinship system (which, with strong agnatic tendencies, is based on cousin marriages) in order to gain access to and control over fishing zones ? The way zones are shared is homologous to the highly endogamous structure of marriage practices. The latter, by "making kinship" through the exchange of sisters, have enabled a group of fishers with the same patronymic to reproduce itself as an "aristocracy" within this very ancient fishing society and thus control fishing zones. This practice is both the social form and goal of the hunting/fishing expedition : an exchange of prestigious honors between man and swordfish. A noteworthy expression, "making blood" is used to refer to this expedition, which symbolically expresses a way of appropriating nature.

  • Campagnes politiques

  • Chroniques scientifiques

  • Résumés/Abstracts - p. 305-312 accès libre
  • Livres reçus - p. 313-314 accès libre
  • Erratum de l'article de Pierre Bourdieu : "Reproduction interdite. La dimension symbolique de la domination économique" (Études Rurales 113-114 : 36) - p. 1 accès libre