Send message to Authors

Short abstract

Based on participatory action research conducted along the River Auzon (France), this paper explores how ecological restoration, despite ambitious citizen participation, can generate unexpected friction — and how controversies become resources for putting an ethics of care into practice in research.

Long abstract

Based on a river restoration project in south-eastern France, the Auzon River — whose hydrological and sedimentary dynamics have been altered by hydraulic infrastructure and recurrent droughts — this contribution examines how friction can contribute to the social and ecological reclaiming of rivers.

Since 2022, a participatory experiment has brought together residents, managers and researchers through technical and sensory workshops to co-construct scenarios for the river’s desired future state. The most ambitious scenario selected involves lowering a weir that feeds irrigation canals. This has given rise to a new group of opponents to the project, who are defending their right to use the canals and their heritage value.

Despite ambitious citizen participation, restoration can cause offence, spark controversy and generate unexpected friction. The action research involved in this restoration project seeks to address controversies as situations of collective exploration with generative potential. Drawing on the work of Stengers, it sees these controversies as events that ‘slow down thinking’, force us to reconsider the usual scientific frameworks and reveal what is problematic. These frictions can thus create conditions conducive to the emergence of new attachments, new collectives and new forms of situated knowledge.

To build desirable and resilient futures with rivers, we advocate a science of cosmopolitics—a science by and from care—that assumes the consequences of its own work and its participation in the making of worlds. Our presentation will report on a gradual reorientation of our work in an attempt to remake the world with heritage as with the river.