Paper short abstract:

Researchers including ethnobiologists participate in framing local communities as biodiversity custodians. This framing can be seen however as reductive of peoples’ experience. This paper draws on an ethnography of the French Peasant Seeds movement, to reflect on "strategic reductionism".

Paper long abstract:

This presentation (based on a paper published in Anthropologie et Sociétés in 2019) analyzes some aspects of the French movement for a farmers’ seed reappropriation (so-called "peasant seeds" movement), in particular its strategic choice to present itself as an actor in the conservation of cultivated genetic resources. I discuss the involvement of researchers (including myself) in the construction of such a framework. History shows that this framing has been politically productive on certain scenes and at given times. Its pitfall though is that it reduces peasant seeds to their genetic dimension and the farmers involved to biodiversity custodians. The evolution of the movement and the regulatory context show that repositioning is possible, and that it is even ongoing.

I draw on this case study to defend a good use of reductionism by researchers, in particular ethnobiologists and anthropologists working on conservation issues. Drawing on Olivier de Sardan, I distinguish two approaches to reductionism among researchers—methodological and ideological—and I defend the first. As a counterpoint, I propose to call strategic reductionism (in reference to Spivak) "the strategic choice of the actors to put forward only a limited aspect of their practices and their project". Researchers become the intellectual allies of social movements when their own methodological reductionism aligns with the strategic reductionism of the actors.