Elie Danziger, doctoral student in social anthropology

What is anthropology ?

Anthropology is the study of human beings in the biological, physical, linguistic, social or even cultural sense.

More specifically, social anthropology looks at the social relations and cultural systems in which populations interact on a daily basis, and not necessarily in biological comparison with other species. In the biological side of anthropology, the analysis method employed is called quantitative : the focus is more on measuring cognitive or physiological parameters such as hormones, for example. Social anthropology, on the other hand, uses a different, qualitative method.

Since the ^19th century, when the discipline crystallized in Western Europe, the qualitative method has involved visiting a particular human group and living alongside them for as long as possible. The aim is to understand, with the benefit of hindsight, the way in which these groups organize their social and cultural life, so that this can be extended to humans in general.

What do you mean by " society " and " culture " ?

There are several specific themes. When we think of human social and cultural life, we think of kinship relations, institutions of exchange and gift-giving, conceptions of person and gender, relationships with nature and the body, forms of political organization, or ritual and religion. Recently, globalization issues have also become part of these general themes.

What was your point of entry into this field of research ?

What initially piqued my interest in anthropology was the evolutionary biological aspect : how have human beings evolved as a species in an ecosystem ? But also the social and cultural aspects, which can be cross-referenced with biology, i.e. how have our social and cultural capacities developed and contributed to our survival, while other species have developed totally different capacities ?

Finding studies that make the link between biology and the social sciences, and that are institutionally valued, has been very difficult.

Anthropology is not a well-known discipline in high school and, from the bachelor's level upwards, is only taught in a limited number of universities : this doesn't necessarily make it a discipline of choice for young people. In addition, the prestigious distinction between faculty and classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles creates a huge bias in our orientation decisions. I find this regrettable, given all the advantages of anthropology, which I think is the most interdisciplinary and stimulating field imaginable.

You may have found what you were looking for in the UK..

I looked at establishments abroad that could meet my specifications, and where there was less of a separation, as there has historically been in France, between the social sciences and the natural sciences.

In my final year of high school, I had a good level of academic English. I found courses in England that mixed biological and social anthropology. I was delighted, because it was a combination that was pedagogically thought through from the very first year. I applied to five universities and ended up at Oxford University in a program called " Human sciences ", which could be translated into French as " sciences de l'Homme " rather than sciences humaines. There were lectures on genetics, physiology, sociology, demography, geography, evolution... I even had the opportunity to do a fascinating internship in primatology in Japan.

You might think that anthropology is too specialized, that it can't be taught right out of high school, but the proof is that it's not. A lot of people who didn't know that this Oxford course existed told me afterwards : " I would have loved to have done that, you learn so many different things about humans, it gives you the keys to thinking about tomorrow's world. "

Why did you come back to France ?

Even though I studied elsewhere, I wanted to play a role in my own country, because that's where I have my ties and my culture.

I didn't know what to do after the Masters, but I wanted to keep a link with anthropology in my practice. Anthropology can lead to many different fields, depending on what you like.

During this period of reflection, one of the teachers in my Masters department at University College London (UCL) put me in touch with Perig Pitrou, my current PhD supervisor, who had put out a call for applications for a PhD contract as part of an interdisciplinary project. I hesitated to apply because of the need to commit myself to a laboratory for three years. In the end, I saw it as a great opportunity to integrate into the French framework. What's more, the project was in cooperation with biologists, including my thesis co-supervisor Régis Ferrière, at the École normale supérieure (ENS), which convinced me.

What's your working environment like at ?

At LAS, I'm part of the "Anthropology of Life" team headed by Perig Pitrou. We study, in various socio-cultural contexts, people's conceptions of living beings, of life as a process : reproduction, ageing, growth, etc. We are following in the footsteps of Philippe Descola, Honorary Professor at the Collège de France, who has dealt extensively with conceptions of nature in different societies. It's really an anthropology in the broadest sense that has been developed in the tradition of our laboratory. This gives us room for manoeuvre when it comes to thinking about interdisciplinarity.

I'm also a member of the " La vie à l'œuvre " collective, launched by my thesis supervisor and made up of researchers and artists exploring the relationship between living things and technology. In concrete terms, we've worked with a real estate company and an architectural firm on the renovation of a former railway station into a civic space.

I think it's great to be involved in a variety of societal projects outside the academic field, while contributing scientific expertise.

What's your day-to-day work like at ?

I'm interested in modeling life in enclosed spaces, with no outside influence. In my context, this involves analyzing experiments in which scientists try to reproduce entire ecosystems in scale models, controlling them as best they can.

In France, this takes place in research facilities known as Ecotrons . Here, plants and micro-organisms are cultivated in a wide variety of biomes, from savannahs to oceans. These ecosystems are enclosed and self-regulating in isolated bubbles, the smallest of which are the size of a microwave oven. There are also aquatic basins and climatic chambers measuring several square meters. Imposed parameters such as temperature, humidity, light, etc. can be modulated.

One of the Ecotrons I visit is in the Seine-et-Marne region of Paris. My job is to follow the researchers in all their routine activities : experiments, equipment repairs, meetings to discuss experimental protocols, etc. And as soon as I can, I follow them to the Ecotrons. And whenever I can, I assist them, a bit like an intern. This is called participant observation.

It's not the same to be told about an action as to experience it and be confronted with the same difficulties as the operator.

View of Biosphere 2, an experimental site built to reproduce a closed artificial ecological system located at Oracle, in the Arizona desert ©DrStarbuck.

What's your objective with this exercise ?

By visiting these laboratories that attempt to model life in closed spaces, I'd like to explain how human conceptions of life contribute to biological diversity. Just as the researcher manipulates and determines the parameters of his or her own miniature universe in an enclosed space, on the global scale of humanity our conceptions of life contribute to the way we envision and influence our planet.

Understanding how the latter works is one thing ; but what counts for anthropologists is understanding how humans live with it and create their own conceptions. This is just as true for a shaman in the Amazon rainforest as it is for a technician in an Ecotron in Europe !

We are in constant co-evolution with our environment, and we have the power to act upon it. The issue of climate change is a good example: we have decisions to make about the place of our species in our ecosystem and therefore about our practices... scientific practices included.

What's the next step ?

To Arizona, in the USA, to discover Biosphère 2 , the world's largest enclosed ecological system. It's a place in and around which several remarkable life-modeling projects are being carried out, some with a view to a trip to Mars. There, we won't be able to exploit the local atmosphere; we'll need to be able to generate a viable, self-sufficient habitat. Having an anthropologist's eye on these issues can be very beneficial.

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Elie Danziger is a PhD student at LAS under the supervision of Perig Pitrou (CNRS, Collège de France) and Régis Ferrière (ENS). His thesis is entitled " Modélisation de la vie et construction de systèmes vivants artificiels clos. Interdisciplinary approaches 

Interview by Océane Alouda