Ethno-thing and the anthropology of space
Ethno-things: epistemology and anthropology of practical knowledge
Place : Vieille-Charité Center, Room C
EHESS Seminar - Marseille, UE683, organized in partnership with the CREDO seminar.
Éric Vandendriessche (referent),
Sébastien Galliot,
Frédéric Joulian
Béatrice Collignon (Geographer, Bordeaux Montaigne University / UMR 5319 Passages)
From the ethno-geographies of the 1990s to vernacular knowledge and representations - hypotheses on the reasons for this abandonment
In the early 1990s, under the impetus of Joël Bonnemaison in particular, the work of several geographers, especially doctoral students, turned towards the study of ethno-geographies, understood as ethno-sciences. At the end of the same decade, the term disappeared from the communications and publications of the same geographers, and their research was reformulated around “vernacular knowledge” for some, “representations” for others - the majority. With the exception of one or two publications, these reorientations were never made explicit.
The seminar devoted to “ethno-choses” will provide an opportunity to formulate some hypotheses on the reasons for abandoning a field of research whose initial results were nonetheless promising. Over and above strategic choices linked to institutional issues (positioning of laboratories in line with CNRS policy), it is the operationality of the notion for a human geography whose approaches are in the process of being reorganized - mainly between spatial analysis, social geography and cultural geography - that is weakening.
My presentation will draw on the evolution of my own research and terminology, devoted to the geography of the Inuit of the central Arctic (Canada), to shed light on the reasons for the short life of work on ethno-geographies, and to question the idea of their continuation under other names.
Eric Pearthree (archaeologist, independent researcher)
Across the sea of stars: Inter-island navigation in Oceania
The settlement of the western and central pacific islands from 2 to 4 thousand years ago followed by that of east Polynesia in the last millennia depended on highly developed sailing canoe technology as well as the invention of inter-island navigation techniques that allowed finding islands days or sometimes weeks of sailing out of sight of land. Early explorers recorded enough about the canoes to fill several books but outside of a few brief notes very little was saved about their navigation practices. The only region that continued to fully practice this art and to train master navigators were the 26 atolls of the central Caroline Islands. The findings of Thomas Gladwin and David Lewis who apprenticed under some of these navigators in the 1960’s will serve as the base of discussion here. The bits of navigation lore that were recorded from other archipelagos suggest that the system described here or something very like it was once universal in Oceania.
