The POLAL project, which associates CSO, IRISSO, CMH, CERPAS and IDEES, questions the evolutions of contemporary public policies from the perspective of food policies. Starting from the results established by the literature of a specialization and complexification of public policies and a growing porosity between public and private interventions, the project will explore two sets of questions. Firstly, we propose to understand how public action, while specialized and complex, manages to take on crosscutting issues, objectives that are sometimes difficult to reconcile, that are part of different administrative jurisdictions and require cross-sectoral interventions. Secondly, we propose to account for the diversity of interfaces between public and private spaces, the specificities of both public and private interventions, how borders are reaffirmed and finally, what does this porosity produce on public policy. To address these two main issues, food policies that will be at the heart of the project, are of particular interest, because they are both cross-sectoral and strongly depend on private actors. The project is based on three hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that the public-private interfaces, such as national consultations, advisory councils or working groups within the public bureaucracies, but also exchanges during the control activities, contribute to the reconfiguration of the interests and challenges of public and private actors. We propose to invest these arenas as intermediate spaces of public action. Second, we make the hypothesis that the careful examination of the repertoires of action of the companies or their representatives gives access to the means by which the private actors seek to influence the public action, by trying to influence public interventions and by legitimizing their intervention on collective issues. Finally, we make the assumption that the organization, the construction and the structuring of a field of expertise around food behaviours constitute resources for both public and private actors. The project explores the role played by expertise in legitimizing forms of public or private intervention and prioritizing social issues associated with food (environment, public health, health security, social inequalities). The project will be organized around 5 workpackages that explore the reconfigurations of contemporary public action. WP1 concerns the coordination of the action taken by the consortium, and is based on semi-annual meetings and the holding of an international final conference. WP2 will aim to capture the variety of the repertoire of private action, their specificities and their effects on public action, based on five surveys: on a controversy, on the action of employers, on insurance prevention actions and on expertise. WP3 questions, at the national and European level, the influence, orientation or constraint of public authorities on food supply actors, mainly producers and consumers. The investigations concern control, consultation and regulation. WP4 questions public action based on the specificities of the food chains: those of sugar and pork and that of fruits and vegetables. WP5 aims at capitalizing on the crosscutting scientific outputs of the project: on the role of professional organizations and that of expertise in public and private decisions.

Understanding how past societies responded to extreme climatic changes is crucial for gaining insight into current and future environmental challenges, especially environmental stress and sanitary conditions in the context of the present climate change impacting the Near-East. Evidence from paleoclimate data clearly indicates that climatic fluctuations in this area over the past millennium have not been homogeneous. Instead, a high degree of variability over time and across space is pointed out by hydrological changes in particular steep topography environments. These fluctuations were challenging for societies since precipitation variability can impact agriculture, food production but also sanitary conditions and the spread of disease. This project investigates the interaction between climate change and social responses since the medieval period in the poorly studied Near-East region, specifically on the island of Cyprus, and uses novel indicators for both climate and social vulnerability. On one hand, natural archives such as speleothems provide high-resolution and quantitative hydrological and temperature data to complement existing dendrochronology data as well as compiled weather data for the last century. Compilation of paleoclimate data will be transformed into climate maps of the island. On the other hand, the compiled public health archives of mortality and diseases together with past landscape maps offer new indicators to analyze social responses.

GeObs is a basic research program in Human Sciences. We propose a multi-disciplinary approach of one of the most impressive archaeological phenomenon in recent Prehistory: the exploitation of Anatolian obsidian by ancient groups to manufacture tools and prestige objects and its spatial diffusion through exchange networks among communities over the whole Near-East (including Anatolia and Caucasus). We propose to analyse the volcanic context and to characterize in detail the 13 main sources recognized in Eastern Anatolia. Indeed, they are still insufficiently known and characterized in order to allow the analysis of the diffusion from geological sources to archaeological sites. The aim of the project is to establish a detailed database and geographical information system of the obsidian sources in eastern Anatolia. We thus propose an integrated and pluridisciplinary approach for obsidian sourcing based on: 1. Intensive field research. The aim is to study the volcanological settings of the obsidians that control their fingerprint as well as their morphological settings that constraint their accessibility through time. This study will concern primary geological sources as well as secondary reworked obsidians. 2. Multi-methods characterization of obsidian. We will analyse the geological samples as well as archaeological artefacts in order to characterize their fingerprints, using chemical (LA-ICP-MS, XRF and p-XRF) and physical properties (magnetic properties, petrography, mineralogy). The geological samples will be analysed in High-Tech laboratories, whereas artefacts will be analysed using portables in-situ method (p-XRF). We will thus pay a special attention to inter-method comparison and to the validation of p-XRF method. All the results will be analysed with the help of multivariate analysis. Finally they will be interpreted using the results of field investigation. 3. Spatial analyse and diffusion. We will compare the characterization of geological samples with the analyses of the archaeological data in order to understand the diffusion processes. Concerning the archaeological data, we will use the new p-XRF data obtained in the framework of the GeObs program concerning Anatolian excavations as well as already published data on artefacts made in the whole Near-East. Using the methods of spatial analyse we will try to understand the diffusion of the obsidian during Prehistoric times, from geological sources to archaeological sites. All the data produced during this 4 years project will be integrated in a database and a G.I.S. They will be diffused to the scientific community through a dedicated website, after the publication of the results in international journals. In 2012, a first version of the GeObs project has been proposed to ANR JCJC program and positively evaluated since it was included in the “complementary list”. We now propose a renewed version of the project. Our French and Turkish team is based on already existing collaborations. It is formed to conduct an interdisciplinary research combining geomorphology, geology, archaeology and archaeosciences. Our team is composed of highly experienced scholars who have already published in international papers in the fields interested by this project (e.g.: volcanic geomorphology, obsidian sourcing, obsidian characterization, diffusion processes or Neolithic of Anatolia).

This project aims at investigating how environmental conditions are intrinsically incorporated in the interplay among land uses in urban regions as a two-ways relationship. We argue that the literature is inconclusive on the adequate shape of environmentally friendly cities because the urban internal structure of city is overlooked. We first shed light on environmental attributes across the urban system to identify similar and divergent trends linked to the urban structure. Then, we provide analysis of environmental trade-offs on a sample of urban regions. This proposal is innovative in three respects (i) the knowledge it will provide by linking the internal structure of cities to the heterogeneity in behaviors and to the feedback effect between land uses and urban structure; (ii) the confrontation of cutting edge econometrics and scaling laws viewpoints on cities coming respectively from economics and geography/statistical physics and (iii) the policy recommendations.

Sociological and economic research and political debates in India continue to focus on the role of social groups in shaping disparities across the country. However, existing research often fails to capture the true complexity of India's social structure, which includes hundreds of distinct communities. Communities and Territories in India is a big-data, multidisciplinary project to revisit India's social disparity debate with new disaggregated data that include self-declared community membership. We will construct a unique individual and community dataset linked to a wealth of social, demographic, and economic indicators. The project is complemented by field-based research on contextual knowledge production to understand the mechanisms of social identity designation. This new dataset on community identity should constitute a turning point for studying India's social fabric as it provides disaggregated data on social groups across India. Our research will first project a unique disaggregated picture of India's social structure. The project will also reassess the crucial role of community affiliation in determining current socioeconomic, gender, demographic, and health disparities. Finally, web-based tools, a final conference, and scientific production will widely disseminate data and research outputs. The work program rests on successive phases of data acquisition, field surveys, spatial and socioeconomic analysis, and data sharing, following the project's core objectives: Objective 1: to produce a detailed database of social groups using mixed methods and participative research. Objective 2: to understand the process of social identity formation Objective 3: to map disaggregated social groups that are the cornerstone of India's social fabric. Objective 4: to reassess the contribution of social groups to sociodemographic and economic disparities beyond the usual official categories. Objective 5: to engage academic and civil society stakeholders and disseminate results.