The Mediterranean agriculture systems have known increasing pressures that include demographic growth, urbanization, increasing demand for high value products, and a high competition for land and water. Besides some vulnerable zones in inland knows a dramatic departure of their active labor forces through migration that induces important changes of the global social and natural functioning of these zones. This is particularly relevant in arid and desert lands of south Mediterranean countries where the traditional societies used to explore and valorize vast uncultivated arid lands thanks to original livestock systems based on camels and small ruminants, grazing systems and mobility, and kinships links to manage common resources in their spatial and temporal dimensions. In particular, the system based on camel system at the interaction between oasis and desert lands has known radical functional changes over the last decades, due both to the urbanization and modernization of living conditions in the oasis and also to the intensification (or, sometimes, extensification) of the crop systems in these fragile environments that raise many challenges and also risks that can impede their durability. So the proposed project aims to describe, understand and model the past and recent trajectories of these “camel societies”, identify the main drivers (factors) that impact the combined social dynamic and ecosystems processes on the use of resources, in order to propose socially driven solutions emerging from the societies to sustain human activities and their local resources. The project CAMED proposes (i) to describe the past and recent trajectories of the societies based on dromedary system in Saharan zones of Algeria and Morocco (WP1) using holistic and systemic approaches (system approach at the community/territorial level and livelihood approach at the family level), and (ii) to analyze the present impacts of social and cultural changes and ecosystem dynamics on the whole socioecological systems (WP2) based on longitudinal and diachronic approaches at the farm, herd and resource system level. Along this process the research will have to determine critical key-pathways where sociocultural changes (WP1) affect radically ecosystem changes (WP2) and vice versa. The impact analysis in (WP3) will be based on the participatory impact pathway approach that will associate all the stakeholders of the local communities and policy-makers. The objective is to draw socially driven solutions. Some pilot projects related to value chain and resource management at the territorial level have been pre-identified. One important component of the project will be to provide research and development trainings (WP4) and share a common knowledge on these zones that are characteristics of the South Mediterranean countries. So this project proposes to combine systemic and holistic approaches, often used separately in human or natural/biological sciences, within selected socio-ecosystems related to camel society that have been little studied before. The goal is to share common scientific and indigenous knowledge between research and society related to these systems and to propose relevant actions for decision makers related to these zones that cover more than one third of the selected countries (Algeria and Morocco).

In the context of the contemporary globalization process, one could hope that growth would lead to reducing spatial inequalities through the integration of peripheral regions to central places’ dynamics. However, a great number of spaces still differ from centers because of bad living conditions of the majority of their population, often aggravated by the violence of clashes between stakeholders, because of the amplitude of spoliations and of environmental damages. These spaces and the conflicts which take place within them sometimes become a threat to the stability of national governments. How to understand the multiplication of such spaces? We consider the study of their functioning as a necessary first step. For this purpose, the center-periphery model can be mobilized, as long as it is revisited. This center-periphery model, such as formalized by A. Reynaud in the 1980’s and based on an analysis of flows asymmetries, has, in the past decades, opened the way for the understanding of the creation and the reproduction of inequalities between spaces. Within this model, the center is being constituted through a historical process where political and economic dominations mutually reinforce each other. The dependent periphery either provides the center with resources, without benefiting in return from flows of goods or capitals, or losses its inhabitants, all processes occurring under an indifference which is even bigger when peripheral spaces are far from the sight of central locations. One of the strengths of this model was to give account of spatial and regional inequalities at various scales, from urban neighborhoods to regions, countries, or continents. In addition, it enabled Reynaud to differentiate types of peripheries according to the nature, to the intensity and to the combining of flows which connected them to the center. Over the last thirty years or so, globalization has made more complex this schematic vision, as it reached all points of the planet, taking them out of their invisibility and bringing to them new investments, new actors and new norms. Our hypothesis is that these new flows lead to a reconfiguration of spatial asymmetries between centers and peripheries and enable the emergence of new types of spaces. A graphical interpretative model which would integrate flows between central and peripheral spaces (such as A. Reynaud’s one), while taking into account their larger diversity, would allow a better comprehension of these spaces’ situations. Their originality, compared to the peripheries described during the 1980’s, leads us to provisionally characterize them as “globalised margins”. We will start our research with a provisional model elaborated from our knowledge about the flows linking margins to centers in a globalized context: the participants to the project will bring in their expertise on the types of flows which they know best. The robustness of the model will be tested by mobilizing and collecting flows related data in territories already studied by project members. Those data will be reassessed through the light of the common methodology and objectives. We will then integrate these data to sources, opening the path for the confrontation of the initial model to the reality of inbound and outbound margins’ flows, in order to adjust and make it better. These results will finally be valorized and disseminated. If the project can be described as fundamental research before all, its conclusions will enable us to provide advices to local and national societies in order to help them understand their regions ‘ new modes of insertion in the globalization. It will as well offer solutions for the conception of new development strategies, based on better theoretically built territorial diagnosis.

This project focuses on the exploitation of bitumen deposits in southern Albania and proposes a transhistorical and transdisciplinary approach. It is based on a double hypothesis and has a twofold objective: on the one hand, we consider that this natural resource has shaped the region from which it is extracted in the longue durée and we will seek to explain to what extent its mode of exploitation, its uses and circulation have affected the surrounding society (land property structures, intercommunity relations, religious beliefs and practices, landscape and health status of the population). On the other hand, we consider that the bitumen as an “object” invites to an interdisciplinary approach and we propose to use it as an observatory of the implementation of the collaboration between disciplines (archeology, history, geology, anthropology, geography), thus reflecting on how each discipline involved contributes to building that object and, in turn, is affected by it. The project is scientifically organized around four themes: - Material and technological dimension. As the bitumen material is at the centre of the project, it is a question of studying, through chemical and physical analyses and studies, present or past, the different types of extracted products, their qualities, the possibilities and techniques of extraction; the location, extent and type of deposits; the types of transformations (on site or off site - for example, Marseille, Bari, etc.) and the uses of these products, as well as their packaging. Other materials and objects needed for the production and transport chain will also be considered. - Material and technological dimension. As bitumen material is at the centre of the project, it is a question of studying, through chemical and physical analyses and studies, present or past, the different types of products extracted, their qualities, the possibilities and techniques of extraction; the location, extent and type of deposits; the types of transformation and uses of these products, as well as their packaging. Other materials and objects necessary for the production and transport chain will also be studied. - Knowledge and beliefs. In Antiquity, the bitumen deposit was associated with a sanctuary located in the south of the Greek colony of Apollonia of Illyria founded by Corinth in the last quarter of the 7th century BC. This sanctuary of the Nymphs, which was also a bitumen deposit exploited from antiquity and where a flame permanently burned, visible from afar in the landscape, was the source of a singular oracle, but its exact location remains to be discovered. It is also a question of looking at the evolution of technical and commercial knowledge, from antiquity to scientific studies, from the end of the 18th century onwards. - Territories, spaces, landscapes. This dimension concerns the territory used and mobilized according to the times for the extraction of bitumen. Attention will be paid to the link with land issues, as the mine was located in the Ottoman period in an imperial domain, which later became a state farm in the 20th century. The concession system introduced in the second half of the 19th century also raises the question of sovereignty. At a regional level, therefore, it will also be necessary to analyse the articulation with the agro-sylvo-pastoral space, as well as the impact on the landscape and the environment. - Men and women. This concerns the social dimension, be it the question of the organisation of work (ethno-confessional, men and women, managers/workers, local/foreign) and the interactions between different groups (Muslims, Vlachs, foreigners) or its institutional frameworks. Specific forms of labour (such as forced labour mentioned for the Ottoman and communist periods) and their articulation with other activities, including agro-sylvo-pastoral activities, will also be studied.

Agroecology, or, more accurately, several of its currents, has gain in recent years an important recognition, transforming from an “anti-establishment” model against the Green Revolution to an appropriate (or befitted) model to meet the challenges of global change. The success of agroecology is undeniable: of all currents critiquing the green revolution, this is the only one that has succeeded in being recognized as a viable agricultural model. This transformative process is accompanied by strong debates about what is or should be defined by the term agroecology, revealing thus the importance of speaking about agroecology in the plural form. The growing recognition of agroecologies is indeed marked by an increasing variety of forms of agriculture claiming themselves as forms of agroecology. If agroecology was an already very diverse field, its public recognition exacerbates this variability. In the last few years agroecology grew from a set of discreet alternative forms of agriculture that challenged the conventional agricultural model to a wide variety of forms having in common to be presented as more sustainable forms of agriculture. The IDAE project aims at understanding the processes at stake, which we will approach as various and differentiated institutionalization processes. We will carefully investigate how the different agroecologies have stabilized through various institutional supports, how they interact among themselves and transform each other, and which effects these institutionalization processes have on agroecological practices on the ground. We will identify and characterize the forms of institutionalization of agro-ecologies at the local, national and transnational scale. We will study the institutionalization of agroecologies at the inter/transnational scale in order to understand the overall context in which this process unfolds and to better contextualize the national case studies. Three large agricultural countries, where the debates on agroecology are both important and different, will be particularly studied: France, Brazil and Argentina. In each country, particular case studies will be analyzed at a fairly local level. Scientific dynamics of the project we will base on two approaches: an approach through the study of the various domains where the institutionalization takes place: i.e. economic, political and scientific; an approach through case studies, allowing to observe and report on the institutionalization processes at stake. The work will be structured around six work packages (WP). In the first (WP 1) the analysis of the institutionalization of agro-ecologies in France, Brazil and Argentina will be contextualized in view of global scale processes, by looking at how different agro-ecologies circulate. We will analyze in each country the policy (WP 2) and market dimensions (WP 3) of the institutionalization processes of agroecologies. Then we will be looking at how those processes result in a rearrangement of knowledge (WP 4). Finally, based on research conducted in the previous work packages, the last one (WP 5) will be devoted to the analysis of hybridization, coexistence and confrontations between conventional agriculture and agroecologies (WP 5). A coordination work package (WP 0) will be responsible for connecting the different work packages and partners to produce integrative studies.