Paper short abstract:

This contribution examines the complexity of the ‘natural’ hazard cultural conception in a sahelian mobile pastoral community to explain the limits and the political issues of the environmental policies particularly focused on the management of droughts.

Paper long abstract:

Although the growing contribution and influence of social sciences in the 'natural' disasters policies have been recognized (S. Revet, 2011), it is clear that we are actually confronted to a lack of consideration and integration of 'local knowledge', especially in terms of religious beliefs and nature designs that are involved in cultural conceptions of risks and by extension in the management of 'natural' disasters. To consider the development and political implications of this issue, we propose to explore the case of a Sahelian mobile pastoralist community based on a ethnographic research in Senegal. The focus on the cultural perception of the drought(s) phenomenon invite us to underline the complexity of the local risk and vulnerability conceptions that do not involved a clear and systematic distinction between natural and cultural hazards. This result brings up to analyze the major constraints and limits in 'natural' disaster and climate policies, which are based in this region on an historical naturalist ontology (P. Descola, 2005). Consequently we will paid attention to the progressive recognition in anthropology that traditional ecological knowledge imply complex world views (F. Berkes, 1999), or more recently, to the necessity to considerate the religious object as a central part of the 'natural' hazard and disaster studies (J-C. Gaillard & P. Texier, 2010; B. Wisner, 2010; J. Schlehe, 2010). This theoretical framework will enable us to interrogate the political issues and effects of the dominance of expert knowledge confronted to the 'relative' invisibility of local islamic practices and discourses.