The aim of this project is to describe and compare the construction of mechanical knowledge in indigenous societies of the Atacama Plateau and the Gran Chaco. We will approach the subject making four preliminary assumptions: (1) in these strongly asymmetrical social contexts, the mechanics knowledge is a place of power, of marking differences (of gender, ethnical, of nation, of dressing, etc.), and of creating social subjects. In this sense, one must retrace the evolution and local tensions of formal devices of mechanical instruction (military service, religious missions, technical education), that are also devices of control and social discipline of heterogenous and underling populations. In this context, mechanics is an asymmetrical field under tension, with legitimate and illegitimate forms, counterculture and competing circuits of mechanics. (2) In the peripheries of large technological systems (mines, sugar plantations), the process of indigenous appropriation of machines produces a singular field of heterogenous technical practices, discourses about machines, ways of naming and classifying them, identification of dangers and recalling accidents, etc. All this, allows for an anthropology or ethnography of mechanics. (3) Mechanical knowledge and its tensions lead to a production of specific series of tools, technical procedures and gesture, for which it possible to develop an archaeology, and that can be studied through models and formalization. This knowledge is inserted more largely into a local phenomenology of mechanics – the different ways to think and rationalize the machines, to classify and name them, to identify the danger and have a memory of the accidents, to assign to the machines some symbolism, estheticism or animality – this knowledge takes also part of a local sociology of mechanics – actors, divisions, associated paths that emerge – which we have to take into account; It is possible to model those material environment – tools, garbage and wrecks, makeshift workshop, working clothes, etc. ; this material constitutes the archive of those tensions. This research project calls up resources in ethnology, history and history of technology and is based on a explorative, qualitative and comparative method. We study two marginal and weakly populated areas which were lately colonized (1880-1930) by the mechanized extraction front (mines in the Andes, sugar and wood in the Chaco). The comparison between the two moreover totally different areas will permit us to understand how, with different social, technical and historical circumstances, a same technological and mechanical “stratum” is disseminated, absorbed and locally appropriated. The research is organized in three axis : (1) Ethnography of the mechanical fact in the Atacama and the Chaco will investigate the different elements of the local mechanics as well as the individual paths and learning forms; (2) mechanical knowledge, power and colonial spaces will study the formal vectors of mechanics learning (missions, technological schools, etc.) and the archives by interpreting them in the general context of colonization of these territories; (3) edge of mechanics, materialities, technology will analyze and model technological pattern by studying tools, workshops, wrecks in order to understand the tensions, the limitations and contradictions of these local mechanics. Three results are expected : (i) to collect and describe this knowledge through different corpora – ethnographic, documentary, tools and technological procedures – in digitized, indexed forms that permit a collective exploitation ; (ii) to enhance our knowledge of that problem by publishing three articles, a collective book and by preparing a monographic manuscript and (iii) to dynamize the academic and scientific collaboration between the different partners in order to develop a work in progress about history and anthropology of technology in colonial/asymmetric contexts..

The lasting of digital data, after the death of its users, raise nowadays several questions. What become of the identity data of web users after their death? Do they care about them when they are still alive? How do relatives deal with these data? How do major actors of the web, such as Facebook and Google, manage them? As any other digital and funeral practices, those post mortem digital practices are gendered. This project wants to shed a light on the gender dimension of these practices. How does the gender of the dead person and of those who pay tribute to him/her structure the memorial uses and the construction of post mortem identities? Such questions seem crucial when taking into account the multiplication of digital programs dedicated to memorial practices and the dramatic importance of social networks in relation to the aging of web users. For a few years, international research has explored the social issues raised by profiles of dead users, as well as the changes in the mourning practices on the web, but has paid little attention to gender issues. In France, only a few research projects have been conducted on the thematic. Even more, if theses works articulate digital practices and death or question the gender dimension of mourning, none develop a specific gender perspective on digital practices related to death. The study of death enlightens social structure and raises individual and collective issues such as the historical conceptions of the body and self-representation. This research project aims at analysing the memorial uses of the web and the construction of digital post mortem identities, by using a gender perspective and by revealing their social, economic, legal and symbolic issues. To deal with such interdisciplinary questions, this project relies on a theoretical framework made of information and communication sciences, gender studies, sociology, computer sciences and philosophy. It pays a particular attention to the development of innovative methods in visualisation. The implementation of this project consists in 6 different tasks. We propose to conduct a qualitative and quantitative analysis of memorial uses on the web in France (Task 1), an analysis of the transmedia circulation of tributes to celebrities (Task 2), and a semiotic analysis of the web memorials and of the post mortem identities they build (Task 3). These three tasks will be conducted all together during the two first years of the project. The results will be exploited during the third year in a multidisciplinary synthesis. The objective of this fourth task (Task 4) is to address the re-composition of gender and digital identities in the memorial uses of the web in France, in comparison with other geographic areas (China, USA). During the whole project (3 years), valorisation (Task 5) and coordination (Task 6) are conducted independently. The consortium assembles 2 partners. Partner 1 is the CIM research center, at Paris 3 University, specialised in Media Studies and digital practices (Team Media, Culture and Digital Practices). Members from the Labsic research center (Paris 13) are associated to the CIM. Partner 2 is COSTECH, at the Technological University of Compiègne. This interdisciplinary research centre focuses on the social stakes of technologies. The consortium shares common research themes, especially the social, political, economic, symbolic and philosophic stakes in information and communication technologies, and an experience in working together on previous research project (ARPEGE).

ECOBOOM project proposes an analysis of the contemporary transformations of the mining sector in the energy transition, and its effects on the modes of exploitation and the territories. It takes a North/South perspective, extending from extractive territories to national and global scales. It compares two parallel but connected extractive processes in the global mining arena, and investigates their connections: the energy transition metals (ETMs) boom, which concerns metals such as lithium and rare earths, and artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) supply chain, which particularly affects the gold sector. This collective research is based on the central hypothesis of the ecologization of the resources, understood both as a new rhetoric aimed at making the exploitation of certain minerals 'indispensable', and as the set of institutional and technical mechanisms linked to it. This comparison between supply chains and resources aims to take into account the complex articulation between spatial scales, temporalities and levels of socio-political organization, for which a common analytical framework is mobilized. The notion of 'moral economy' allows to take into account the production, circulation and use of moral sentiments, values, norms and obligations in the global social space, which are superimposed on the traditional political economy. The notion of 'governable spaces' focuses on the impacts of these changes, both in the global mining arena and on territories. This comparative perspective places the study of the energy transition within the more systemic process of the 'great transition' in terms of North/South environmental, social and global justice. This approach responds to the issues of the "Societies and territories in transition" axis by questioning spatial transitions, identities and territorial sovereignties, the relationships between societies and territories around resource management, and the recomposition of relations between centers and peripheries introduced by the new extractive booms. The project focuses on three research axes: 1) the discourses and devices of the rhetoric of ecologization of the resources, perceived as a new global moral economy that we confront with the moral economies of the extractive sites of ETMs and ASM (gold); 2) the implementation of this ecologization in mining territories through a more localized bottom-up approach to governable spaces, which indicates both the reorganization of material flows specific to each resource and their infrastructures, and the recomposition of forms of politicization, in terms of social and environmental justice; 3) a comparative approach between supply chains aimed at determining the driving forces that orient their respective trajectories. This analysis of discursive and material circulations aims to consider the effects of decoupling between 'green' and 'dirty' supply chains, in a context of competition between extractive territories. The comparative case studies have been selected in the North and South for their complementarity, the expertise of the project members and the new orientations of national policies towards the extraction of ETMs. The main fields are France, where a collective fieldwork will be conducted to strengthen the comparison, New Caledonia, Bolivia and Ivory Coast. They will be complemented by secondary fields (Arizona, Venezuela, Senegal, Sudan) which have been selected to serve as counterpoints to the main fields or to shed light on decoupling effects. In each field, workshops will be held with the resident populations in order to exchange views on the energy transition and to carry out joint reflections towards a fair and equitable 'great transition'.

Some studies demonstrate the riskiness of market concentration and advertising income for the media pluralism. However, to our knowledge rare researches address this question by linking market structure to business models and users’ information practices. This is the goal of our multidisciplinary collaborative project which attempts to explore the linkages between, on the one hand, evolution of industrial concentration, economic models and social practices in the media sector, and, on the other hand, the information pluralism in terms of content, sources and information presentation (P.Napoli, 2001). Another purpose of this project is methodological. It contributes to the development of innovative approaches in socio-economic framework of market analysis and in methods of linguistic representations and community dynamics.

The hypothesis we defend is twofold: 1) the immersion of the users in a "Sensory Realistic Intelligent Virtual Environment" (EVIRS) where the body is engaged from a kinematic, gestural and sensory point of view will result in: a) an increased recovery of the various procedural, episodic and autobiographical memories that are usually interrogated in the classical framework of oral archive productions ; b) beyond declarative knowledge, the possibility of capturing gestures and embodied knowledge; c) a better memorization of the knowledge proposed in mediation; 2) Collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) makes it possible, over and above traditional approaches in humanities, to develop multidisciplinary research methods and innovative mediations with a qualitative and quantitative leap in the elicitation and restitution of knowledge and know-how. The project is in the field of knowledge engineering, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Digital Humanities (DH), on the topic: "Human activity versus history and heritage of industrial and sensorial cultural landscapes" as a demonstration. Our objectives are to develop and validate : a) virtual laboratories and interdisciplinary research methods in the crossed field of human sciences and computer science based on demonstrators of strong historical and heritage interest; b) collaborative methods involving both institutional (museums, etc.) and non-institutional (workers, etc.) players in the field of cultural history and the digital preservation of industrial occupations; c) scenarios located in the SRIVE and dedicated to mediation.