Description du projet
La science vétérinaire et l’avenir de la chasse européenne: le cas du sanglier
La peste porcine africaine est un virus mortel qui infecte le très abondant sanglier d’Europe. Le conflit qui oppose l’homme et le sanglier s’est intensifié, de crainte que l’exposition à une population frappée par la maladie ne contamine les exploitations porcines. Les vétérinaires jouent un rôle important dans la gestion de la menace virale par les États européens. Le projet BOAR prend la forme d’une étude anthropologique financée par l’UE des connaissances et des pratiques vétérinaires qui transcendent la santé animale. Il va se pencher sur le rôle de plus en plus marqué de la science vétérinaire en qualité de médiateur dans les interactions entre l’homme et la faune, et la façon dont elle structure et gouverne la société par le biais de mesures de biosécurité. En tant que gardiens autoproclamés du sanglier, les communautés de chasseurs récréatifs constituent des acteurs clés de la recherche sur les interventions vétérinaires. Le projet BOAR va livrer des perspectives innovantes pour l’anthropologie de la chasse, pour l’avenir des relations homme-porc et concernant le sous-domaine émergent de «l’anthropologie vétérinaire».
Objectif
This project proposes a collaborative, ethnographic investigation of the relationship between three understudied subjects in anthropology: veterinary medicine, European hunting and wild boars. In recent decades, the wild boar has proliferated, (re)conquering the natural, rural and urban landscapes of Europe, and increasingly clashing with human practices and worlds. Classified as a game animal, the boar is primarily killed and managed by recreational hunters. Yet, hunters are proving incapable of stemming the tide of this intelligent, adaptable being, an interspecies relation that challenges hunting’s value and legitimacy in European society. This tension has amplified with the arrival of African Swine Fever (ASF) to the continent: a fatal virus that travels between wild boar and domestic pig, forest and farm, and threatens to infect and ruin the pig industry. In the name of biosecurity, and informed by veterinary knowledge, some States have intervened and conducted mass culls, erected dividing fences across Schengen space, or instituted no-go zones. During this crisis we witnessed how veterinary medicine’s role can extend beyond mediating human-animal relations, and work to structure and govern human lives in general. At the intersection of boars, hunting, ASF and veterinary medicine, this project has two main objectives: first, to examine how European hunting and porcine futures are intertwined, and the role of veterinarians in shaping these futures, and; second, through human-boar relations, study how society is becoming increasingly veterinarized and thus shape the conceptual and methodological development of the emerging field of veterinary anthropology. This project will further contribute to anthropology by opening a novel empirical and theoretical niche for the anthropology of hunting, and experiment with ethnography as a tool of engagement with near futures. The emerging and uncertain impact of ASF in Europe is an excellent moment to conduct such a project.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
11000 Praha 1
Tchéquie