Shifting from a knowledge to a knowing perspective to support agroecology with Julien Blanc

Event details

Abstract

Julien Blanc will briefly present the research he has carried out in France and Brazil over the last 20 years and then focus on his current collaboration with a group of peasants in South West France from an action research perspective. He’ll show in particular how having interest for knowing (vs knowledge) enabled discussions on important issues for the group, and to a greater extent the kind of alternative pathways they are exploring. He will then discuss the necessity to reopen the black box of ‘ecological knowledge', in particular as a way to question the place and role of scientific knowledge in agroecological transitions.

Speaker Bio

Julien Blanc is an environmental anthropologist and rural sociologist. He is Senior Lecturer at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (Paris, France), in charge of the research group ethnoecology: knowledge, practices and power and lead for the Master's Degree in Biocultural Diversity. He has been working for 20 years on the emergence of food & farming alternatives and organic “transitions” in France and Brazil. He currently has a strong interest in knowing processes and ontogenetic approaches. He pursues both basic and applied research objectives, focussing on contributing to farmers’ exploration of alternative pathways to modernity, in an action-research perspective.

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