Governing distance - Pesticides and residents’ health, from scientific measurement to political measures

Funded in 2020 by the SAB - Scientific Advisory Board (made up of world-class academics, all from outside Sciences Po), this project is under the direction of Sylvain Brunier and Jean-Noël Jouzel.

Summary:

Whether it is to quarantine a given territory in the event of an epidemic, or to establish a safety perimeter around a chemical plant to protect the populations living nearby, the very idea that health risks can - and must - be confined implies the definition of zones to which risk levels are assigned. The history of the environment has clearly shown how the definition of safety distances is at the heart of government technologies which, over the last two centuries, have sought to manage both industrial nuisances and the social protests they induce, without hindering the development of capitalism. The work of separating contaminating activities from residential areas relies on an epistemic and technical infrastructure of maps, measuring devices and epidemiological data, which makes these protective distances measurable and governable.

Our research project aims to shed light on these new forms of spatialization of health and environmental risks induced by agricultural activities, based on the case of local residents exposed to pesticide drift. It is based on three axes allowing to unfold the controversies around the "right" distance between agricultural activities and local populations: collective mobilization, scientific production and public regulation. Throughout the project, the Californian and English cases will provide particularly interesting counterpoints for understanding how modes of protest and calculations devoted to pesticide drift have circulated - or not - from the United States to Europe and France.