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Contribution: Recognizing the risk: how to navigate between [ATT] and [HAB]

16 June 2015
filed under: contributions

Here is a new contribution written by a new co-inquirer, Charlotte Cabasse: "Recognizing the risk: how to navigate between [ATT] and [HAB]"

In a risk prone environment, the intersection between [att] and [hab] reveals an hybridization between implicit knowledge - the one of the sailor, peasant or local resident - with the scientifically constructed one. In the Bay Area of San Francisco, a community of scientists, experts and politicians are working to mitigate the consequences of the next large earthquake, the Big One; while sharing the horizon of this disaster to come with their fellow residents. Here, the intersection between [att] and [hab] is the manifestation of the slow process of instauration (in Souriau’s definition) of scientific and expert practices which recognize the hybridization of experts' identity and knowledge. While learning to “do with” the earthquake risk [hab], scientists and experts have also acknowledged their attachment [att] to the space they inhabit, to the people they share it with, as the drive, the motive and the reason of their everyday actions. [...]

Please click the following link to access the complete contribution on the English version of the site.

Find below the answer (email) by Bruno Latour (in French, translation coming soon) during the moderation process with useful additional informations :

Dear Contributor,

It is great to have this text from James; are you familiar with the section at the end of Michael Serres’ The Natural Contract where he speaks about his experience of an earthquake in California? I am not exactly sure about understanding “overpowering” at the end of the first slide, since it is something precisely different from the overpowering that we attribute to nature. The relation between what one says about earthquakes and the epoch is also the subject of a fascinating book by Gregory Quenet, Les tremblement de terre en France. In short, you are on to something interesting, but it is evident that the connection and, thus, the crossing [HAB·ATT] is not quite clear for the users and must be expanded upon.

Thank you. We will publish the contribution after a reference is added.

Warm regards,

Bruno Latour

And the co-inquirer (in French, thanks to anyone who can translate it in English > write to contactATmodesofexistence.org!):

Merci de votre réponse. Je suis ravie de rejoindre - in extremis - les rangs des contributeurs du projet.

Je dois dire que étais bien contente de trouver le texte de James! Vous avez raison, le livre de Gregory Quenet est passionnant. J’avais oublie ce passage de Serres lu il y a a bien longtemps, merci de me le rappeler. En revanche, je suis comme vous, un peu perplexe devant ce “overpowering.” Je l’avais je crois compris comme l’expression de la puissance du “living agent”. (Si c’est bien du même passage que nous parlons).

Cette contribution est un petit morceau de ma thèse que j’ai soutenue en janvier dernier, qui s’intéresse à la compréhension du risque dans l’attente du Big One ainsi qu'a la figure de l’expert-habitant auto-défini comme un "earthquake junkie”, qui pourrait être - et c’était mon argument - une forme d’incarnation du croisement entre ces deux modes d'existence.

Je ne sais pas si cela peut être un écho intéressant à notre discussion, mais, ce matin, la radio locale KQED a diffuse un court témoignage sur l’expérience du tremblement de terre qui me semble assez représentatif de ce que j’ai pu observer: http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/R201506090643

Christophe, merci encore de votre disponibilité sans faille durant le processus de soumission.

Bien sur, n’hésitez a pas a publier cette discussion!

Charlotte

The bibliographical references mentioned above, are the following:

Michel Serres, Le contrat naturel, Paris, France : Bourin, 1990, 191 p.

Grégory Quenet, Les tremblements de terre aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: la naissance d’un risque, Seyssel, France : Champ Vallon, 2005, 586 p.

Charlotte Cabasse. En attendant le prochain Big One, Instauration du risque de tremblement de terre dans la baie de San Francisco.

Ray Pestrong. "Earth's pulse". KOED radio. June 9, 2015. URL: http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/R201506090643

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