Un cadre empiriste pour l’analyse des savoirs/pouvoirs – application à trois dynamiques clés des sciences et politiques de biodiversité

Abstract

Conservation biology is an action-oriented, value-based branch of ecology, aimed at identifying how knowledge can help preserve biodiversity. It is therefore based on the assumption that ecological knowledge is not undermined or manipulated by power. Because it is anchored in this assumption, conservation biology is a prominent target for analyses, inspired by Foucault, aimed at questioning the very distinction between knowledge and power. We point a series of conceptual clarifications needed to develop rigorous and unequivocal analyses of power/knowledge, which have to do with the fundamental projects these analyses pursue and their concept of power. We show that when these clarifications are ignored, contributions to this literature loose part of their force and tend to decrease the visibility of key empirical research frontiers. We introduce elements to strengthen these analyses through an empirical approach based on the analyses of constraints binding decision support interactions.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• decision support
• institutional settings
• power/knowledge
• Foucault