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1-2 Dec 2022 Saint-Martin d'Hères / Grenoble (France)
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Call for paper
In December 2021, a United Nations General Assembly resolution proclaimed 2022 the “International Year of Sustainable Mountain Development”. Adopted by consensus, this resolution invites Member States, international and regional organisations, and stakeholders, including civil society, the private sector and the academic world, to raise awareness of the importance of sustainable development in mountain regions and their social and eco-systems facing climate changes. In this context, the research group on communication issues (GRESEC) and the historical research laboratory for Rhône-Alpes (LARHRA), in collaboration with MSH-Alpes and the innovations and transitions in mountain territories laboratory (Labex ITTEM), are organising an international congress. The congress aims to propose a critical debate on these mandatory social and environmental changes in mountain regions and on transition as a category for analysing these changes. This concept of transition follows on from and is even beginning to supersede the notion of sustainable development (Oudot and De l’Estoile, 2020). It is also found in political discourse as well as in academic and media publications on mountain regions (Chambru and Claeys, 2022). However, its use remains problematic for human and social science researchers because it is a notion that contributes to the construction of a story that “projects a past that does not exist onto a future that remains ghostly” (Fressoz, 2021). Here, the mountain regions are considered in the entirety of their spatial organisation, i.e. from the valley bottoms to the high altitude areas, from urban cities to rural regions, with particular attention to the diverse relationships between the “top” and the “bottom”, and how these change in the long term. Such changes, which are not only related to the physical space but are also political, reveal a new composition of territorial relationships in mountain areas while helping to build new territorialities, whose most recent form is the “mountain-metropolis” (Fourny, 2018). There are many forms of mountain territorialities, articulated with spatial dynamics and the implied communication challenges, and involving many changes in the long term. Mountain regions are currently facing two dictates: firstly, transition and, secondly, consensus. In other words, the transition is inevitable, and everyone should agree on how it should be implemented, in spite of the fact that the institutional and citizen approaches to the transition are often incompatible. These demands for change and consensus, being deployed in the long term (Hagimont, 2022) and in a public space that is increasingly governed by communication (Pailliart, 1995), are tending to obscure the contemporary social conflicts caused by transitions in the mountains and the related public challenges. However, these conflicts are not new and have already been factors of territorial adaptation and innovation for several centuries: conflict is an indicator that generates territory as much as the territory itself produces conflict (Gal, 2016). Mountain territorialities mobilise institutions, public policies, and stakeholders; speeches, representations, and fantasies; identities, resistances, and knowledge; etc. The territories are also involved with matters of communication, and have been for centuries: as a social phenomenon, communication serves as a territorial matrix (Raoul, 2020). In this sense, the transition questions the social and institutional construction of mountain territories around economic, social, cultural, political, and environmental changes that are still being reformulated. It is related to challenges, dynamics, and multiple participative practices. This “participation” approach appears simultaneously in organisational forms, institutional processes, democratic experiments, social innovations, the production of knowledge, etc. Above all, it results from social interactions in the spaces configured by the layout of elements such as discourse, procedures, and technical equipment (Roginsky et al., 2021). These forms of mountain participation in the transitions therefore refer to different situations: they are based on separate regimes of action, contribute to the strategies of antagonistic players, and belong to temporalities that might be diachronic or synchronic, even though they are deployed in systems and organisations. This call therefore invites communication proposals from different human and social science disciplines: history, information and communication sciences, sociology, geography, anthropology, etc. The goal is to help de-compartmentalise knowledge to open new possibilities for understanding common objects and transversal issues related to the mountains (Attali et al., 2014). It proposes a joint consideration of the mountains and new ways of “making acquaintance” (Arpin and Sgard, 2021). The mountain context invites closer examination of the territorial realities of transition, their current affairs, and the challenges they bring for mountain communities: tourism, energy, mobility, environment, health, food, water resources, territorial planning, sciences, digital technology, etc. Are these transitions as unusual, linear, and consensual as they are proclaimed to be? How can the examination of previous transition processes help us to understand the current invention of territories? How does discursive and communicational renewal contribute to these social and political dynamics? What is unique about mountain territorialities and how do they differ from other territories, which also claim to be in “transition”? The proposals submitted may correspond to one of the following three themes. Note that these themes are not an exhaustive list of the issues concerned.
This first theme aims to analyse the scientific research conducted on the topic of transitions in mountain territories. Are there or have there been specific ways of “creating knowledge” in the mountains? What are the particularities of the dictates to change in the 21st century, compared with those of previous centuries? How is participation organised and involved in the production of knowledge about transitions? What is the place of mountain societies in these dynamics and what relationships do they build with the scientific research community? Who are the experts and what knowledge do they produce in and about the mountains? In relation to which challenges are the sciences disseminated in the mountains and based on which communication paradigms? 2. Mountain territory organisations: scales, governance, participative operations This second theme aims to analyse the organisations of mountain territories concerning transitions. What are the forms, time scales, and operating methods? Do the organisations (government, local public authorities, associations, companies, etc.) try to support, impose or prevent social and environmental changes? What strategies, scales, and communication processes are involved? Have practices been reconfigured at a local scale, specifically in mountain regions? What participative operations have been organised, by which stakeholders, and using what schemes? How have such approaches changed since the 19th century? What do these changes tell us about the (re)negotiation processes involved in the decision-making processes concerning transitions? 3. Territorial conflict in mountain regions: controversy, mobilisation, mediatisation This third theme analyses the conflicts arising in mountain territories around transitions. What are the forms, time scales, and mediatisation of these conflicts? Do the conflicts have specific territorial roots or a unique territoriality? How do they help to structure or de-structure the territories? Which public problems are these social conflicts related to? What “territorial effort” is made by the social players (journalists, elected officials, social movements, etc.) in these conflictual dynamics? Do specific collective mountain mobilisations exist and what forms of participation do they try out? What are the challenges raised by these territorial conflicts and do they bring anything new to the debate?
Anonimous proposals must present the study subject, theoretical framework, question, empirical elements, and bibliography (approx. 4,000 signs). Proposals from outside the Alpine context are welcome. Submissions should be made in French or English, via http://transalpes.sciencesconf.org, before 1 July 2022. Presentations will last for 20 minutes, followed by discussion time.
The congress will take place on 1-2 December 2022 at MSH-Alpes, 1221 avenue Centrale, on the Université de Grenoble Campus in Grenoble St-Martin d’Hères (France). It will also be accessible via videoconference and via social media. A scientific publication is planned after the congress. Schedule:
Organisation committee:
Contact : transalpes@sciencesconf.org Scientific committee:
Bibliography Attali Michaël, Dalmasso Anne, Granet-Abisset Anne-Marie (dir.), Innovation en territoire de montagne : Le défi de l'approche interdisciplinaire, Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 2014. Arpin Isabelle et Sgard Annec (dir.), « La montagne et les nouvelles manières de faire connaissance », Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, 109-2, 2021. Chambru Mikaël et Claeys Cécilia, « Le tourisme scientifique dans les aires protégées multi-labellisées : transition écologique et controverse en montagne », Réserves de biosphère et objectifs du développement durable. Enjeux, articulations et tensions en Méditerranée (dir. Angela Barthes et al.), ISTE Editions. Fourny Marie-Christine (dir.), « Métropoles alpines. Vers une nouvelle alliance entre villes et montagnes ? », Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, 106-2, 2018. Fressoz Jean-Baptiste, « Pour une histoire des symbioses énergétiques et matérielles », Annales des Mines - Responsabilité et environnement, 101, 2021, p. 7-11 Gal Stéphane (dir.), « Montagnes et conflictualité : le conflit, facteur d’adaptations et d’innovations territoriales », Journal of Alpine Research | Revue de géographie alpine, 104-1, 2016. Hagimont Steve, Pyrénées. Une histoire environnementale du tourisme (France-Espagne, XVIIIe-XXIe siècle), Champ Vallon, Ceyzérieu, 2022. Oudot Julie et de l’Estoile Étienne, « La transition écologique, de Rob Hopkins au ministère », Regards croisés sur l'économie, 26, 2020, p. 14-19. Pailliart Isabelle (dir.), L’espace public et l’emprise de la communication, Ellug, Grenoble, 1995. Raoul Bruno, Le Territoire à l’épreuve de la communication. Mutations, imaginaires, discours, Presses universitaires du Septentrion, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, 2020. Roginsky Sandrine, Renard Damien et Dufrasne Marie (dir.), « La participation dans un monde de communication », Recherches en communication, 52, 2021.
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