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JOIRIS Véronique
Units
Center of Cultural Anthropology
Person in charge of the Unit : Oui
The Centre for Cultural Anthropology (CAC) of the ULB is specialised in the fields of religious anthropology, environmental anthropology, historical anthropology, cultural technology, and the study of material cultures. Its fieldworks are mainly situated in Africa, Asia and South America, both in rural and urban settings.
Projetcs
This doctoral research contributes to reflection on the feasibility and on monitoring new environmental policies related to sustainable management of tropical forests and the fight against climate change. REDD + (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) in the center of this reflection was the subject of many studies, but researchers are rarely interested in the observation of in situ practices in both national administrations and the rural areas concerned. The objective of this doctoral research is to increase knowledge about the mechanism through a multiscale analysis of REDD + in the DRC, specifically on set Batéké in the administrative region of Kwamouth territory. The study focused on both the strategic position of the DRC vis-à-vis REDD + in international negotiations, the institutionalization of politics at the national level and its operationalization at the local level. The question of the social construction of REDD + is thus considered from the point of view of the relationship between these three scales. The studied policy is understood as a process historically and socially constructed, through an original approach combining theoretical development anthropology, political ecology and ethnoecology. Feedback-monitoring tools for REDD + will be developed from the understanding of international mechanisms, national and local ownership of the policy. - Collaboration: ERAIFT: Regional Postgraduate School of Planning and Integrated Management of Tropical Forests and Territories, University of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (joint supervision). Disciplines: Political Ecology, Development Anthropology, Ethnoecology.
Thesis carried out under the supervision of Prof. DV Joiris , Faculty of Social and Political Sciences , Social Sciences Division, Cultural Anthropology Center , ULB, Brussels and Prof. Yves Mandjem , University of Yaounde II , Cameroon.
The main objective is to develop an integrated and broadly applicable methodology for landslide resilience analysis in data-poor environments in Equatorial Africa and apply this in four study areas seriously suffering from landslides in Uganda and Cameroon.
This research proposal focuses on Development Incomes (DI), namely on financial amounts drawn from the exploitation of natural resources and allocated to riverine communities with a view to invest in sustainable development. The major objective is to assess social and economic impacts generated by DI projects which are financed by private companies from the sectors of mining, forestry and ecotourism in West and Central Africa.
My doctoral thesis is based on an examination of the relation between waste and urban environment in Delhi. As Indian cities have been facing considerable population growth and concentrate wealth generation and rising consumption levels, solid waste generation increases rapidly in urban areas. In Delhi, the accelerated urbanisation pace and urban space densification processes of the last decades have remarkably transformed the urban landscape and brought about their own set of challenges. As a result, solid waste management is an ever more critical issue given the multiple shortcomings of which it is suffering. Primarily resting upon the municipal authorities and informal waste workers, it has opened up to large companies with public-private partnerships on the rise, along with other actors such as non-governmental organisations and other corporate actors. My research is inspired by urban political ecology and aims to describe how the urban environment is being produced and reproduced through the reconfiguration of solid waste management networks emerging from the arrival of new actors. This study's ambition is to analyse these changes through a multilevel approach and to provide a comprehensive picture of the sector's evolution as well as the sociopolitical, economic and cultural relations on which it rests. It puts into perspective firstly - the local arrangements governing waste flows in a context of privatisation of door-to-door garbage collection; secondly - the emerging changes in the recycling networks; and thirdly - the logic and practices of waste treatment infrastructure through public-private partnerships. This approach opens on reflections on the transformation of the Indian city, the complex relations between the powers guiding its management, and how this affects and transforms the urban environment.
The “Bantu Expansion”, a research theme within the precolonial history of Central Africa, unites scholars of different disciplines. Much research is focused on the initial expansions of Bantu subgroups, which are explained as farmers ever looking for new lands and therefore avoiding the rainforest, also in the recent research on the “Savannah Corridor”. We want to study a crossroads of different Bantu expansions in the very heart of the Central-African rainforest, namely the eastern part of the Congo Basin (the Congo River and its tributaries up- and downstream of Kisangani until Bumba and Kindu). The region hosts multiple language groups from Bantu and other origin, complex ethnic identities and people practicing complementary subsistence strategies. Considering that farming is complicated in a rainforest environment, we will investigate the role of rivers in the settlement of these speech communities into the area, both as ways into the forest and as abundant source of animal protein (fish). The project is multidisciplinary and will apply an integrated linguistic, anthropological and archaeological approach to study both present and past riverside communities in the Congo Basin. Historical comparative linguistics will offer insights into the historical relations between speech communities through language classification and the study of language contact, and will study specialized vocabulary to trace the history of river-related techniques, tools and knowledge. Anthropological research involves extensive fieldwork concerning ethnoecology, trade and/or exchange networks, sociocultural aspects of life at the riverside, and ethnohistory. Archaeologists will conduct surveys in the region of focus to provide a chrono-cultural framework.
This research project focuses on Development Incomes (DI), namely on financial amounts drawn from the exploitation of natural resources and allocated to riverine communities with a view to invest in sustainable development. The major objective is to assess social and economic impacts generated by DI projects which are financed by private companies from the sectors of mining, forestry and ecotourism in West and Central Africa. Firstly, the research aims at knowing better about local strategies vis-à-vis DI, either at the level of household budgets or at that of DI management committees. Then, relying on the inputs from Anthropology of Economics and Social Economy as well as on the collaboration of local actors, researchers will tackle the construction of locally sound criteria/indicators of development and well-being. Apprehending development policy making through such a dynamic interplay with the communities will contribute to adapt policy practice.
Multidisciplinary doctoral research on the environmental anthropology that studies the significance of adaptation in the context of multifactorial and multidimensional process pastoralism in mountainous areas. The field research , occupies a prominent place in all the research , will be developed through the case study of Gaddis ( agro-pastoral herders ) semi- nomadic Bharmour Himalayas (Himachal Pradesh , North India)
