Abstract:
The question of Waza, life skills, and the arts of living with nature will be raised in my intervention by some general remarks showing the blockages of thought and action, blockages linked to the dual ontologies with which we organize and act on the world, or more dramatically, to those linked to an evolutionism based on some idealized material progress, or worse, on a liberal and consumerist vision of the common goods. Facing climate change and its impacts on the planetary system and on our societies requires us to address these blockages, this complexity. It means taking the measure of cohabitation and the different forms of life. It means creating mini-worlds, gardens, exploring sustainable artisanal cultures, sharing non-human intelligences, and creating new and exciting relationships and contracts for the benefit of all.
Bio:
Frédéric Joulian is an anthropologist. Assistant professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, he was deputy director of the Social Anthropology Laboratory at the Collège de France and head of the interdisciplinary program Evolution, Natures and Cultures at the EHESS until 2011. He directed the interdisciplinary journal Techniques&culture from 2006 to 2016. His research focuses on evolutionary processes and the meanings of technical and cultural phenomena over time and on human-animal interactions in Africa and Europe. His main publications include: La Nature est-elle culturelle? Éditions Errance (1998), Les Natures de l'Homme, with S. de Cheveigné (2007), Dire le Savoir-Faire with S. d'Onofrio (2008), Anthologie raisonnée de Techniques&culture with G. Bartholeyns and N. Govoroff (2010), Geste et Matière (2011). He coordinated with Y.-P. Tastevin and the MuCEM the edition of a collective work on the question of the remainder and waste, entitled "Fixing the World, Excess, Remainder and Innovation" (2016) and "The Instrumental Body" with G. Bartholeyns in 2017. He is now devoting himself to a personal work tracing all of his work in Africa: "From the origins of culture: Men and Chimpanzees in Perspective" and to an editorial project "Anthropographiks" associating Human sciences and Manga which gave rise in 2021 to an exhibition Washi, from Mulburry to Manga, the art of paper in Japan, in partnership with Seika University and to a book just published on the arts of learning and transmission Waza, the inefable art of learning, with A. Takada, X. Tian and M. Shimada (2021) Kyoto Univ, Seika Univ. and the RIHN.