marianna fenzi | EHESS-Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (original) (raw)

Papers by marianna fenzi

Vingtieme Siecle-revue D Histoire, 2012

How, between the end of the Second World War and the 1972 Stockholm conference on the human envir... more How, between the end of the Second World War and the 1972 Stockholm conference on the human environment, did the environment become a global problem and a category of international political action? This article analyzes the geopolitical context and the types of warning and scientific expertise that shaped the emergence and developments of the “global environmental” category. While the category of “nature” declined, the article, through the prism of the Cold War and decolonization, looks at questions of the international conservation of resources, the “biological bases of planetary productivity,” then of pollutions and “the biosphere,” and analyzes their inclusion in an ecosystemic conception of the planet and their involvement in an international political agenda.

Revue D'anthropologie Des Connaissances, 2011

The ‘genetic resource’ concept was at the center of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. ... more The ‘genetic resource’ concept was at the center of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. How was this concept historically constructed? Which types of knowledge, imaginaries and forms of government of life had been embedded in this concept? How was the erosion of ‘genetic resources’ constituted as a public problem and how did its place evolved within the wider population of other global environmental problems? Since 1992, the problem of ‘genetic resources’ has been reframed and relabelled as ‘crop genetic diversity’, with a focus on in situ diversity, valued for the ‘ecosystems services’ this diversity may provide. How can one account for such a new discursive framing which now dominates in the international arenas? Combining a cultural history of science, sensitive to the coproduction of knowledge and imaginaries, and a social problems sociology, sensitive to the dynamics of environmental problems within a mozaic of public arenas, this article analyses the trajectory of cro...

Agriculture and Human Values, 2021

Local seed systems remain the fundamental source of seeds for many crops in developing countries.... more Local seed systems remain the fundamental source of seeds for many crops in developing countries. Climate resilience for small holder farmers continues to depend largely on locally available seeds of traditional crop varieties. High rainfall events can have as significant an impact on crop production as increased temperatures and drought. This article analyzes the dynamics of maize diversity over 3 years in a farming community of Yucatán state, Mexico, where elevated levels of precipitation forced farmers in 2012 to reduce maize diversity in their plots. We study how farmers maintained their agroecosystem resilience through seed networks, examining the drivers influencing maize diversity and seed provisioning in the year preceding and following the 2012 climatic disturbance (2011–2013). We found that, under these challenging circumstances, farmers focused their efforts on their most reliable landraces, disregarding hybrids. We show that farmers were able to recover and restore the d...

Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 2016

Combining the cultural history of science and the sociology of social problems, this article anal... more Combining the cultural history of science and the sociology of social problems, this article analyzes the trajectory of policies and approaches for the conservation of crop diversity through a mosaic of international arenas from the early 20th century to the present time. We discuss how the concepts of “plant genetic resources” and “genetic erosion” became major policy issues in the 1960s. We show how these concepts emerged and evolved within a wider range of knowledges, imaginaries, and forms of life governance. We trace the evolution of the problem of disappearing local varieties from concerns about loss of genes as resources, to notions of “crop diversity” and “ecosystem services.” We analyze the effect of this new framing centered on the dynamic conservation of crop diversity within farming systems. Finally, we stress how, despite efforts to revise the concept of diversity as materials to exploit, this vision is still present today, shaping crop diversity conservation, and use.

Plant Genetic Resources, 2015

Transformations that farmers bring to their traditional farming systems and their impacts on the ... more Transformations that farmers bring to their traditional farming systems and their impacts on the conservation and evolution of maize varieties over a 12-year period are investigated using a longitudinal analysis. Despite the increased introduction and supply of improved maize variety seeds in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, over the last 12 years farmers continue to maintain a substantial amount of traditional maize variety diversity. Even with the increased availability of hybrid seeds, farmers in the community of Yaxcaba on average plant more than three quarters of their milpa fields to traditional maize varieties, with the latter one fourth predominately planted to a locally improved varietyNal Xoy, a farm cross of a traditional variety and an improved variety. We observed a significant reduction in yellow –x-Nuuk nal, a long-cycle traditional landrace, paralleled by an increase in short- and intermediate-cycle locally adapted improved maize varieties. We found great differences i...

Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, 2012

Comment, entre la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la conference de Stockholm sur l’environne... more Comment, entre la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la conference de Stockholm sur l’environnement humain en 1972, l’environnement a-t-il accede au rang de probleme global et de categorie d’action politique internationale ? Cet article analyse le contexte geopolitique et les formes d’alerte et d’expertise scientifique qui faconnerent l’emergence et les evolutions de la categorie d’« environnement global ». Tandis que la categorie de « nature » decline, il retrace, a travers la guerre froide et les decolonisations, l’affirmation des questions de conservation internationale des ressources, des « bases biologiques de la productivite » planetaire, puis des pollutions et de « la biosphere », et analyse leur integration dans une conception ecosystemique de la planete et leur inscription dans l’agenda politique international.

Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances, 2011

La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que d... more La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

Le probleme de l’acces aux ressources genetiques des plantes pour la selection varietale est au c... more Le probleme de l’acces aux ressources genetiques des plantes pour la selection varietale est au cœur de la Revolution Verte. A partir des annees 1960, les selectionneurs font de la disparition des varietes locales sous l’effet de la diffusion de nouvelles varietes genetiquement homogenes un probleme public a l’echelle mondiale. Dans une perspective qui croise la recherche d’archives et l’enquete de terrain, cette these revient sur la formation de ce probleme, sur sa trajectoire historique et ses enjeux actuels. Il s’agit d’analyser l’heterogeneite des savoirs scientifiques et des approches qui sont developpes sur le theme de la conservation des ressources genetiques dans les arenes internationales. L’etude des debats et des initiatives menes dans le cadre de la FAO permet de comprendre quels sont les savoirs legitimes, lesquels sont marginalises et comment la nature et les contours du probleme ont ete negocies. La place que les ressources genetiques occupent au cours d’episodes cles...

Vingtieme Siecle-revue D Histoire, 2012

How, between the end of the Second World War and the 1972 Stockholm conference on the human envir... more How, between the end of the Second World War and the 1972 Stockholm conference on the human environment, did the environment become a global problem and a category of international political action? This article analyzes the geopolitical context and the types of warning and scientific expertise that shaped the emergence and developments of the “global environmental” category. While the category of “nature” declined, the article, through the prism of the Cold War and decolonization, looks at questions of the international conservation of resources, the “biological bases of planetary productivity,” then of pollutions and “the biosphere,” and analyzes their inclusion in an ecosystemic conception of the planet and their involvement in an international political agenda.

Revue D'anthropologie Des Connaissances, 2011

The ‘genetic resource’ concept was at the center of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. ... more The ‘genetic resource’ concept was at the center of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity. How was this concept historically constructed? Which types of knowledge, imaginaries and forms of government of life had been embedded in this concept? How was the erosion of ‘genetic resources’ constituted as a public problem and how did its place evolved within the wider population of other global environmental problems? Since 1992, the problem of ‘genetic resources’ has been reframed and relabelled as ‘crop genetic diversity’, with a focus on in situ diversity, valued for the ‘ecosystems services’ this diversity may provide. How can one account for such a new discursive framing which now dominates in the international arenas? Combining a cultural history of science, sensitive to the coproduction of knowledge and imaginaries, and a social problems sociology, sensitive to the dynamics of environmental problems within a mozaic of public arenas, this article analyses the trajectory of cro...

Agriculture and Human Values, 2021

Local seed systems remain the fundamental source of seeds for many crops in developing countries.... more Local seed systems remain the fundamental source of seeds for many crops in developing countries. Climate resilience for small holder farmers continues to depend largely on locally available seeds of traditional crop varieties. High rainfall events can have as significant an impact on crop production as increased temperatures and drought. This article analyzes the dynamics of maize diversity over 3 years in a farming community of Yucatán state, Mexico, where elevated levels of precipitation forced farmers in 2012 to reduce maize diversity in their plots. We study how farmers maintained their agroecosystem resilience through seed networks, examining the drivers influencing maize diversity and seed provisioning in the year preceding and following the 2012 climatic disturbance (2011–2013). We found that, under these challenging circumstances, farmers focused their efforts on their most reliable landraces, disregarding hybrids. We show that farmers were able to recover and restore the d...

Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment, 2016

Combining the cultural history of science and the sociology of social problems, this article anal... more Combining the cultural history of science and the sociology of social problems, this article analyzes the trajectory of policies and approaches for the conservation of crop diversity through a mosaic of international arenas from the early 20th century to the present time. We discuss how the concepts of “plant genetic resources” and “genetic erosion” became major policy issues in the 1960s. We show how these concepts emerged and evolved within a wider range of knowledges, imaginaries, and forms of life governance. We trace the evolution of the problem of disappearing local varieties from concerns about loss of genes as resources, to notions of “crop diversity” and “ecosystem services.” We analyze the effect of this new framing centered on the dynamic conservation of crop diversity within farming systems. Finally, we stress how, despite efforts to revise the concept of diversity as materials to exploit, this vision is still present today, shaping crop diversity conservation, and use.

Plant Genetic Resources, 2015

Transformations that farmers bring to their traditional farming systems and their impacts on the ... more Transformations that farmers bring to their traditional farming systems and their impacts on the conservation and evolution of maize varieties over a 12-year period are investigated using a longitudinal analysis. Despite the increased introduction and supply of improved maize variety seeds in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, over the last 12 years farmers continue to maintain a substantial amount of traditional maize variety diversity. Even with the increased availability of hybrid seeds, farmers in the community of Yaxcaba on average plant more than three quarters of their milpa fields to traditional maize varieties, with the latter one fourth predominately planted to a locally improved varietyNal Xoy, a farm cross of a traditional variety and an improved variety. We observed a significant reduction in yellow –x-Nuuk nal, a long-cycle traditional landrace, paralleled by an increase in short- and intermediate-cycle locally adapted improved maize varieties. We found great differences i...

Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire, 2012

Comment, entre la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la conference de Stockholm sur l’environne... more Comment, entre la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la conference de Stockholm sur l’environnement humain en 1972, l’environnement a-t-il accede au rang de probleme global et de categorie d’action politique internationale ? Cet article analyse le contexte geopolitique et les formes d’alerte et d’expertise scientifique qui faconnerent l’emergence et les evolutions de la categorie d’« environnement global ». Tandis que la categorie de « nature » decline, il retrace, a travers la guerre froide et les decolonisations, l’affirmation des questions de conservation internationale des ressources, des « bases biologiques de la productivite » planetaire, puis des pollutions et de « la biosphere », et analyse leur integration dans une conception ecosystemique de la planete et leur inscription dans l’agenda politique international.

Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances, 2011

La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que d... more La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

Le probleme de l’acces aux ressources genetiques des plantes pour la selection varietale est au c... more Le probleme de l’acces aux ressources genetiques des plantes pour la selection varietale est au cœur de la Revolution Verte. A partir des annees 1960, les selectionneurs font de la disparition des varietes locales sous l’effet de la diffusion de nouvelles varietes genetiquement homogenes un probleme public a l’echelle mondiale. Dans une perspective qui croise la recherche d’archives et l’enquete de terrain, cette these revient sur la formation de ce probleme, sur sa trajectoire historique et ses enjeux actuels. Il s’agit d’analyser l’heterogeneite des savoirs scientifiques et des approches qui sont developpes sur le theme de la conservation des ressources genetiques dans les arenes internationales. L’etude des debats et des initiatives menes dans le cadre de la FAO permet de comprendre quels sont les savoirs legitimes, lesquels sont marginalises et comment la nature et les contours du probleme ont ete negocies. La place que les ressources genetiques occupent au cours d’episodes cles...