L'homme et la destruction des ressources naturelles : la Raubwirtschaft au tournant du siècle

Résumé En

The Problem of "Raubwirtschaft" (Destructive Economy) in Early-Twentieth-Century Geography. In its formative period, geography defined itself as the science that studied the interaction between man and his environment. This article looks at the question of how early-twentieth-century geographers dealt with the negative side of this interaction, i.e "Raubwirtschaft" (destructive economy). The few geographers to tackle the issue made virtually no attempt to theorize the destructive agency of man. Neither political economy, with its focus on man's development of nature, nor the emerging discipline of ecology, defined as the study of organisms' adaptation to their environment, was able to provide appropriate tools for geographers. Some scholars, such as Bernard Brunhes, tried to transcend the characteristic anthropocentrism of Western science and geography by drawing parallels between "Raubwirtschaft" and entropic processes in the biosphere. Destructive economy, it is argued here, was one of the most original issues for geographers to investigate. Instead of doing so, and developing and identity of their own, geographers have preferred to imitate other sciences. This has led to a continuous crisis in geographical thought.