Du pouvoir des génies au savoir scientifique. Les métamorphoses de la lagune Ebrie (Côte d'Ivoire)

Résumé En

F. Verdeaux — From Genii's Power to Scientific Knowledge: Metamorphoses of the Ebrie Lagoon. In precolonial times as well as today, the riverine people's perception of the lagoon h as been shaped by their representation of the milieu. Be it mythical or, more recently, scientific in form, this représentation pertains in both cases to a pattern resting upon an unvarying procédure. Always entrusted to 'specialists'-—be they priests or scientists—the cognizance of the milieu allows them to reduce its com-plexity to a few basic traits. Henceforth they can extract from the 'truth' a code regulating access to the lagoon and its resources. Specialized knowledge endows groups, catégories and institutions not so much with ownership than with capacity and authority to define collective rules for the management of a naturally corporate estate. Récent hydrobiological researches in the lagoon inaugurate a new era. Insofar as, on the one hand, they are transferring to the State the former fisher-men's capacity, while, on the other hand, defining the lagoon in terms of potential production, they are part of a refashioning of the relationships between men and the milieu. This is taking place nowadays despite the riverine people's opposition to this threefold rôle repartition—viz. knowledge, power and exécution—whose synthesis they had successfully ensured in bygone days.