“Social representations of the forest: paradoxes and challenges”

Christine Farcy— Research fellow and invited lecturer at the University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)

Social representations are organized sets of information, opinions, attitudes and beliefs about a given object, in this case the forest, constituting a common sense knowledge shared by members of a society. They are formed from experiences but also from knowledge and thought patterns received and transmitted by tradition, education and social communication. Barometers of perceptions by societies, they are a particularly useful tool in the situations of social changes such as that currently being and that sees forestry subject to powerful drivers of change (urbanization, tertiarization and globalization). After recalling the conditions and processes involved in the emergence of social representations, we will present the results of recent studies, analyze the paradoxes highlighted and discuss the challenges facing forester and more generally forestry.

Friday, 30 September at 13h30 in the main conference room at INRA Champenoux