In Asia, national policies are increasingly using tourism as a tool to integrate remote spaces and marginal social groups, often inhabiting peripheral highlands. Reducing poverty, stopping ecological degradation, and limiting autonomist movements, are all adding up as a triple concern which compels governments to link marginal areas to national centres through tourist development. In countries dominated by urban tourism, rural-tourism sites are emerging, often based on the valorisation of ethnic minorities and cultural heritage, a valorisation of people that have long been discriminated against. Ironically, their cultural and geographical specificities now constitute assets and advantages in tourist development. The disparity is obvious: supporting local cultures and maintaining landscapes considered “typical” may, on the one hand, reinforce group identities as states appear to compensate for decades of exclusion and indifference; on the other hand, state policies potentially contribute to the museumification and commodification of folk practices, while simultaneously maintaining policies of political assimilation and cultural homogenisation. The central goal of this project is to focus on rural and agricultural landscapes as the primary sites for the study of these processes, setting aside objects that have been very much studied in terms of folklore and habitats. By focusing on ordinary landscapes, which also attract tourist interest, rather than the exceptional landscapes or cultural landscapes as defined by the UNESCO, we link these landscape mutations. Our project examines cultural representations, landscape discourses and practices of local societies, nation-states, and local actor such as tour-guide operators; in brief, we analyse power relations at play through what we term “landscape grabbing”, to assess how tourism is fostered and how heritage building is articulated. We seek to understand how these approaches indicate i) an increasing awareness of the multi-functionality of rural areas, and ii) a political reconfiguration of these spaces, from a utilitarian view of landscape to the recognition of its heritage value, a recognition which prioritizes living environment and their environmental functions. Five mountainous areas represent our case studies: Kumaon (India), Guizhou (China), Louang Namtha (Lao PDR), Lam Dong (Vietnam), north of Western region (Nepal). These areas will serve to demonstrate national and regional differences, establish a gradient of the varying importance of ethnic tourism, and indicate the impacts of domestic tourism, which is more or less developed according to the countries studied. Our analysis of these various trajectories using a hypothetical Western model of rural management and patrimonialisation, a model concerned about the loss of local identities and biodiversity, will serve to grasp the reasons behind these differentiations in diversified socioeconomic, cultural and landscape structures. To whom do the landscapes of Asia belong (T-LAB)? For each fieldwork location, the analysis will be multiscalar, interdisciplinary (geography, ethnology, agroeconomy), and multi-focused along three axes of inquiry: landscapes (material and dynamic structures vs practices and representations of actors); transformation processes (tourism and patrimonialisation, rural dynamics, territorial governances); structuring principles between socioeconomic dynamics and the reconfiguration of identities (integration/marginalisation, sense of belonging, ethnicity). The proposed comparative reach of this project depends not only on the research schematics common to the five case studies, but also on the research team’s intersecting fieldwork which will result in co-authored publications.

For a few years, the ecological transition processes called in the various socio-economic sectors of our society are generating institutional as well as spatial transformations and contributing to the creation of new landscapes’ materialities and representations. With a team of researcher colleagues from the geography, political sciences and ecology fields and with practioners partners, the ANR JC ANBioT project aims to question these ecological transitions in view of the hypothesis of a strong convergence between “natural” and “agricultural” projects in public action. Biodiversity’s concept is becoming a central issue in discourses on nature and agriculture, and the territorial interventions they legitimize. The occurrence of socio-ecological transitions, which has been conceptualized by the society and by the environmental sciences fields, would transform the operation of the regime that dominates the relations between a society and its environment. These transformations can be radical (deterioration or brutal resource shortage) or marginal, descending (laws, regulations, etc.) or ascending (local initiatives), they can be isolated, or they can combine. In order to analyze the birth of an ecological transition, as such or as the State aspires it, the ANBioT project is hence based on the analysis of the weak signals, which represent a potential threat on the hegemony of the regime that manages these relations. The project is thus based on the identification and categorization of these weak signals through the permeabilization of the “nature” and “agriculture” categories, on the clarification of crossed expertise (institutions’ and civil society’s) on these categories, and on the material translations of this expertise and the transformations they cause on the territories. Given the diversity of the territories involved in ecological transition involving nature and agriculture, we choose to develop these hypotheses through the prism of urban and rural contexts and with institutional, socio-economic and civil society stakeholders. We identify three intercommunalities that are a priori emblematic. We do not envisage comparing term-by-terms of the results obtained on each field but a cross-sectional analysis of these three territories. Strasbourg Eurométropole, the pioneering French city in terms of urban agriculture and ecology, has been the French capital of biodiversity in 2015 and is maintaining an ancient tradition of intra-urban food production, either recreational of with nourishing purposes. Furthermore, we are going to work with the Luberon Regional Natural Park. Having been experimenting fields for 50 years, in 2017, PNR committed to “a new humanism of Nature” (PNR Federation, 2017) in order to implement “unprecedented transitions to favor healthy and natural life”. Combining the diversity of rural territories and urban polarities, the Luberon PNR will be analyzed in view to start a reflection dedicated to these mixed spaces, and within which nature and agriculture categories have been intertwining, almost since their creation. Finally, the ANBioT project is interested in more ordinary territories such as « le Pays du Mans ». This intercommunality, a composite space from a geographical and institutional point of view, is also responsible for the SCOT that applies to it and carries a territorial project based on "complementarity City-Countryside". The goal of this additional field is to analyze the potential resonance of the results of the other studiedand the national policy on ecological transition on the scale of more ordinary inter-municipalities. The results of this research program will thus reveal strategic keys in the political accompaniment of integrated approaches to ecological transition, at a time when transition is emerging as a national issue.

We plan to study the mathematical aspects of percolation and first-passage percolation. We do not plan to focus on the critical two-dimensional percolation, which involves specific tools, such as the SLE process introduced by Schramm in 1999, and was for example the topic of ANR MAC2 (ANR-10-BLAN-0123). Suppose we immerse a large porous stone in a bucket of water. Consider the following closely related problems: - What is the probability that the center of the stone is wetted ? - What is the time needed for the center of the stone to be wetted ? Percolation is a model for the first problem. This is the study of connectedness properties of random graphs. Edges model pairs of close points of the stone between which the water can flow. It was introduced by Broadbent and Hammersley in 1957. First-passage percolation is a model for the second problem. This can be seen as the study of random metrics. The random distance between two points models the time needed for the water to flow from one point to the other. It can also be seen as a model of random growth or as a model of competition. It was introduced by Hammersley and Welsh in 1965. The models are closely related by their mere definition (first passage percolation is a refinement of percolation) but also because their study share many ideas and tools (coarse graining, coupling, FKG and BK inequalities, ...). The theory of these models is well developed, at least in the standard case (i.i.d. case on Z^d). However, there remains several intriguing and important questions and long-standing conjectures. Recent significant developments on these issues, some of which involving members of the team, give some real hope to make further significant progress on these problems. We see the conjectures as stimulations for our research. We aim to make some progress on these problems but, more generally, our aim is to investigate first-passage percolation, percolation and their links both in the standard case and in some less standard ones.

The Piecewise Deterministic Markov Processes (PDMP) are non-diffusive stochastic processes which naturally appear in many areas of applications as communication networks, neuron activities, biological populations or reliability of complex systems. Their mathematical study has been intensively carried out in the past two decades but many challenging problems remain completely open. This project aims at federating a group of experts with different backgrounds (probability, statistics, analysis, partial derivative equations, modelling) in order to pool everyone's knowledge and create new tools to study PDMPs. The main lines of the project relate to estimation, simulation and asymptotic behaviors (long time, large populations, multi-scale problems) in the various contexts of application.

Citizen alternatives have emerged in the Middle East over the last decade in situations of overt or latent conflict, of crisis characterized by various forms of violence. In such circumstance states are either absent or contested because they are viewed as failing, corrupt or too authoritarian. IMAGIN-E hypothesizes that these contexts generate engagements that are more radical political, economic, and ecological grassroot social innovations – partially recalling solidarity economy, degrowth and social ecology perspectives. These initiatives show how political, economic and environmental necessities are closely linked. Hence, these situations are particularly heuristic for our understanding of alternative engagements and prefigurative practices, that have been mainly analyzed in Europe and in North and South America. Citizens are not addressing their demands primarily to the institutional political arena, in contrast to mobilizations and social movements that have been studied so far in the Middle East. They mobilize in a pragmatic way, through productive and entrepreneurial practices, often seeking autonomy. They focus on the restoration of localized forms of sovereignty and on the development of horizontal, peer-to-peer solidarity and citizen networks, here and now. Following a multi-sited ethnography methodology, IMAGIN-E offers an original approach to develop common perspectives on alternative mobilizations that are quietly, though radically, transforming the paradigm of protest in the region. They are inventing other citizenships. Strongly rooted in the history of places, these citizen initiatives combine inventions and reinventions of traditions, historical models and modes of production, innovative glocal inspirations and translocal practices, between memory, social creativity and utopias. Firstly, IMAGIN-E will trace their mixed genealogies and analyze the life cycles of such alternative projects. It will focus on the circulation of people (refugees, activists, citizens), ideas, models and know-how, products and seeds within the Middle Eastern and the Mediterranean area. It aims to delineate the contours of a hybrid, yet emic, babel of alter-citizenships and alter-resistances in the Middle East. Secondly, the team will study their interactions with state policies and institutional actors. We will deal with the effects of these initiatives on the organization of power, the transformations or reproductions of dominant spaces and relations, of social and gender inequalities and racialization processes. Lastly, IMAGIN-E will focus on the trajectories of the actors: it will highlight biographical bifurcations, moments of individual and collective ruptures and the sensitive experiences that are shaping these new political subjectivities. These alternative engagements do have a sensitive, memorial and existential dimension, and deep ecological concern. Elaborating on the notions of belonging and sensitive citizenship, we will reflect on their reclaims, and on their counter-hegemonic values and practices. Hence, IMAGIN-E considers these emerging alter-citizenships in their holistic dimension, as much in their materiality as in their affects and imaginaries. In line with its approach, IMAGIN-E offers an original methodology combining several social science disciplines with sensitive and participatory means of production and dissemination of knowledge.