Contenu du sommaire : Mélanges 2006

How does one comprehend the landscape in terms of its multiple temporalities : the temporality of its variable ecological factors, the temporality of its social history, and the temporality of its representations ? The lability and plasticity of the real landscape contrast with a certain rigidity in the perceptive codes used by the landscape « reader ». Would the cultural unconscious deprived of picturesque images be able to find references in a changing environment that has no longer anything to do with certain out-dated fantasies of the memory ? When the loss of a reference framework clouds the understanding and returns the observer to a state of generalised opacity, the landscape becomes uncertain. Is there not a danger of it disappearing altogether if the beholder no longer knows how to contemplate it ?

In his study of the territorialisation of a natural climbing site by a small group of climbers, E. de Léséleuc described the construction and operation of a community type of organisation that was particularly closed to other participants and anchored in a public space that the members of the « community » were tending to privatise. According to the author, this form of collective withdrawal, based on defensive territorialisation, is an essential component of so-called sports of the « great outdoors ». Drawing on two earlier unpublished studies on this question, the present article discusses the possible generalisation, in the field of rock climbing, of this social and spatial configuration. We identify the specific characteristics of this physical activity and the diversity and complexity of socio-spatial forms of organisation associated with it, enabling us to put into perspective the role of a « defensive communitarianism » that might be assumed to be dominant.

Summary : This article looks at the international opening of a regional pressure group based in Switzerland, the Groupement de la population de montagne du Valais romand (French-speaking Valais mountain population group). Three factors explain how this opening came about in the nineties : debates about Switzerland's membership of the European Economic Area, providing a fertile terrain for cross-border and international cooperation, fear of outsiders taking over the region via the Alpine Convention, which was to become a federating theme, and the organisation of mountain dwellers' interests on a European scale, which acts as a sustainable driving force behind the relations set up. In turn, this international opening was to change the « geography » of the group itself.

Social geography tools are used to examine agreements - or disagreements - and to conduct a diachronic analysis of land-use planning documents in four peri-urban communes. It is shown that these documents tend to move away from representations of agricultural activity towards representations of agricultural space where landscape and environmental functions are combined with the agricultural function. In these constructions, the policies adopted at the intercommunal scale are used to support and legitimise choices made by each commune, choices that go from die expression of a process of rurbanisation or peri-urbanisation, where agriculture is relegated to the slopes, to the maintenance of agriculture in those areas where its potential is high.

Summary : The development of ICT's and their associated uses raises the question as to how these can tie in with the notion of sustainable development. Although the most common approach consists in examining the possible impacts of ICT development in economic, social and environmental terms, the ability of information processing and communication technologies to be integrated within these three dimensions has still to be explored. Taking the notion of territory into consideration would seem to be a suitable way of answering this question. This is how two research teams came to exchange synergies and work together on a comparative analysis of the logic behind the installation of networks and the development of uses in the Maurienne and Vésubie valleys. This article presents the first results of the research programme, following identifi- cation of a certain number of challenges stemming from the links between ICT's and sustainable development and a brief characterisation of the geographic area. These results underline the importance of meshing given the smaller level of investment in the area of ICT uses. However, specific uses do emerge in certain conditions, which lead to the offering and possible mobilisation of resources specific to the territories. The ability of territories to break free from the control and influence of external actors would explain the emergence of such uses. From being seen as generic resources needed to develop territories, ICT's have acquired the status of resource operators. This status has yet to be characterised.