Main research projects

• Ongoing (2020-2025): Project coordinator of the ANR programme Ruling on Nature. Animals and the Environment before the Court (RULNAT; website: https://rulnat.cnrs.fr/); in collaboration with Vincent Chapaux (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Vanessa Manceron (LESC), and Sandrine Revet (INSP).
  

  This project studies how nature-related issues are brought before law courts and are handled by lawyers, judges, activists, and the state. While environmental issues and human-animal relationships are increasingly studied, our approach is innovative in that it relies on the ethnography of court cases and actual litigation: we undertake fine-grained descriptions of local issues and interactions, and work on archives and documentation in order to grasp the complex context and history of the case. This is combined with a comparative approach (mainly between India, Nepal, China, the USA, Argentina, Columbia, France, Italy), as judgments circulate and are referred to in arguments in various countries, with possible misunderstandings - the basic notion of ‘rights’ can be applied in different ways when dealing with local interests. Working from an anthropological angle while dialoguing with legal scholars allows a better understanding of what is at stake in current developments.




• 2015-2017: Taking Nature to the Courtroom



2017 Coordination of project Taking Nature to the Courtroom (III), Wenner Gren Foundation; in collaboration with Anthony Good (Edinburgh University). 2015-2016 Coordination of project Judicialiser la nature. Projets de développement, aires protégées et réformes religieuses en Asie du sud / Taking Nature to the Courtroom (I & II): Development Projects, Protected Areas and Religious Reform in South Asia.funded by the programme 'Dynasie' (Dynamiques Asiatiques) of the PRES héSam; in collaboration with Blandine Ripert (CEIAS), Joëlle Smadja (CEH), and Raphaël Voix (CEIAS).

Recent studies in different regions of the world have highlighted the increasingly important role played by the courts in cases involving environmental protection. This ‘judicialisation’ of environmental disputes takes on special importance in India, where, in some cases, the arguments put forwards before the court refer to modern concepts such as ecology, sustainable management of natural resources, environmental protection, and a scientific approach to nature, or, in other cases, are blended with religious or/and nationalist arguments. The project addresses these questions through the study of court cases, investigating the logic of legal files, and the discourses adopted by actors in these petitions, both the official and legal discourses and their unofficial aspects – focusing on local situations which combine jurisdictions at different levels ranging from international law to customary rights.



• 2009-2013 Project coordinator of the ANR programme Governance and Justice in Contemporary India and South Asia (JUST-INDIA); in collaboration with Gilles Tarabout (LESC). (website: http://www.just-india.net).

  Numerous cases are registered every year in Courts at different levels, as well as in state sponsored or non-state village Courts. The study follows two complementary approaches: entering into the details of verbal exchanges, of judiciary interactions and of power relationships which are displayed during the trial. The objective is to study how governance is concretely implemented in local society, through the everyday practice of justice and its formalized proceedings. following the judiciary story of cases by relying on court records, on newspapers articles and on the collection of narratives from those who have been involved. While the study of legal documents helps reconstruct the legal reasoning behind the case, people's narratives and discourses provide the contextual story where the multiple points of view of the parties are embedded in social dynamics of solidarity or conflict.




• 2005-2007 Project coordinator of the programme ATIP CNRS-SHS « Jeunes Chercheurs » The Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva. Local Mediations and Forms of Resistance; in collaboration with Nicolas Jaoul (IRIS).

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of radical nationalist movements across the world is their capacity to appeal to and influence those far beyond their immediate circle of supporters. Radical movements, by the very nature of their rhetoric, tend to impose their own categories of reference on other political actors, and thus play a crucial role in shaping the political debate, even defining their opponents' agenda. In the case of India, the project aims at analyzing the process, both top down and bottom up, which leads to adhesion, sympathy, or mere convergence with Hindutva’s radical programme. The emphasis is laid on figures of mediation between Hindutva organizations and local people. With the focus shifting successively from organizational affiliation to political opposition, passing through forms of convergence, it becomes more and more evident that the mediators involved at local level may not necessarily be members of nationalist organizations themselves, and that the influence of the Sangh Parivar is the result of a complex interaction with diverse, if not antagonist, stakes.