The article Publication of the 2024 Annual Report first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Le projet de recherche DISEE interroge la dimension spatiale du découragement, la fabrication de « bénévoles long-terme » et la circulation des savoirs entre territoires d’engagement.

Depuis 2018, le Groupe d’études sur le travail et la santé au travail (Gestes) accompagne les coopérations interdisciplinaires et inter-établissements entre chercheur·es en vue de structurer des projets de recherche communs.

The article DISEE est lauréat de l’appel à projets « Amorçage » du GIS Gestes first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Francesca Artioli, Nicolas Maisetti, Ludovic Halbert, and Félix Adisson have just published their book La ville verte au pied du mur (The Green City with its Back to the Wall), released by Presses de Sciences Po on Friday, March 6, 2026. This book traces the tensions between the environmental aspirations of urban governments and their constraints due to austerity measures.

"What do the deployment of dozens of kilometers of bike paths in the city of Bordeaux, the renovation of old housing in the medieval center of Cahors using hemp, and the project to create a 220-hectare "green loop" in the inner suburbs of Paris have in common? Each in its own way, these actions illustrate the greening of urban policies. However, this dynamic is coming up against the deterioration of public finances, putting local officials in a tight spot.

The extensive survey described here reveals the tensions between the environmental aspirations of urban governments and the constraints imposed by austerity. Public action is governed by a territorial regime of budgetary consolidation, which explains the selection process applied to public policies and services, as well as the transformation of local administrations into fundraisers.

Book: "La ville verte au pied du mur" (The Green City with Its Back Against the Wall), published by Presses de Sciences Po

The article Publication of "La ville verte au pied du mur" (The Green City at the End of the Road) by Ludovic Halbert & Félix Adisson first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Gustave Eiffel University is opening a position for LATTS and the Paris School of Urban Planning for a university professor in Section 24 entitled "Urban Planning in the South."

Download the job description for research and teaching here.

Applications must be submitted via the Odyssée portal (https://odyssee.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr) by Friday, April 3, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. (Paris time).

For more information on the research profile, please contact the laboratory director, Jonathan Rutherford (jonathan.rutherford@enpc.fr) or Elsa Vivant (elsa.vivant@univ-eiffel.fr). For the teaching profile, you can contact the EUP management (Yoan Miot, yoan.miot@univ-eiffel.fr).

The article Opening of a position as University Professor – UGE/LATTS/EUP first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Maxime Polleri will present his book, followed by a discussion led by Christine Fassert, before opening the floor to questions from the audience.

This session will take place in room B021/B023 (Bienvenüe Building) and will be broadcast via videoconference. Zoom
link: https://univ-eiffel.zoom.us/j/81175761278

Meeting ID: 811 7576 1278
Password: LATTS2026

"The 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was the worst industrial accident ever experienced by Japan. This catastrophe contaminated large parts of the country, caused mass evacuations, led to economic turmoil, and fueled controversy over the health effects of radiation. Yet, unlike other nuclear tragedies, a discourse of victimization has failed to gain political traction in the conceptualization of this disaster, either in Japan or around the world. An official policy of revitalization has taken precedence over narratives of trauma, which is particularly striking in Japan, whose history is inextricably linked to the atomic bombings. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across Japan, this presentation examines how different groups have clashed and collaborated in managing such controversial issues as radiation risks and post-disaster reconstruction. Offering a rich theorization of how governments and citizens shape narratives about catastrophic events, the presentation examines how radioactive governance has shifted from the nuclear secrecy that characterized the Cold War era to joint management of the consequences of disasters by international organizations and citizens, transforming nuclear precariousness into rhetoric of revitalization.

Maxime Polleri is an anthropologist specializing in technoscience. He studies the governance of disasters, waste, and misinformation, focusing primarily on nuclear issues.

Book Radioactive Governance. The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan 

The article LATTS Seminar – Radioactive Governance – March 19, 2026 first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

The journal Réseaux is calling for submissions for its special issue on "Sovereignty (and) Digital Technology," coordinated by Benjamin Loveluck and Françoise Daucé.

The text of the call for papers is available below and can also be found on the journal's website: Call for papers on "Sovereignty (and) Digital Technology"

The article Réseaux Journal – Call for papers on "Sovereignty (and) Digital Technology" first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Call for papers for "The Intangible" Socio-anthropology:

Coordinators: Christine Fassert and Laurence Raineau

1/ Intangibility as a driver of technical development?

2/ Making the intangible tangible: what is the role and limitation of science and technology?

3/ Making tangible: a social process?

4/ The power of the intangible

A detailed proposal of approximately 5,000 characters (including spaces and notes, but excluding bibliography) is expected by March 26, 2026. Issue 55 of L'intangible is scheduled for publication in June 2027.

Find all the information about the current call for papers at: https://journals.openedition.org/socio-anthropologie/20647#tocto1n3

The article Call for papers – "The Intangible" Socio-anthropology first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

The PAR(C)IMAGE project has been selected for a two-year grant by MSH Paris Nord 2026.

It is led by Raphaële Bertho, University of Tours – INTRU, Sonia Keravel from the École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles-Marseille (ENSP) – LAREP, Frédéric Pousin, Emeritus Research Director at CNRS – UMR AAU, and Nathalie Roseau from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (ENPC) – UMR LATTS.

Taking the Grand Chemin Metropolitan Park project as its field of investigation, the research studies the evolution of representations of eastern Greater Paris through the prism of weak infrastructure, understood as the foundation for the functioning of communities and territories whose ecological footprint would allow coexistence with living organisms. The historical and visual perspective offers a reverse history of the park's territory, focusing on representations of past projects, the unthought, the erased, but also the surviving and the lingering. The visual is privileged in order to analyze the production and circulation of representations. The aim is to build up a documentary and historical depth of the territory that can be mobilized in the operational project. The three components of the research project are the identification of archival collections, the organization of student workshops, and the planning of study days from a local and international perspective.

The article PAR(C)IMAGE, Developing the idea of a metropolitan park, MSH Paris-Nord project 2026-2027 first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

We are pleased to announce the release of issue 142 (2025/04) of Flux magazine, Technical Utopias (1/2), coordinated by Fanny Lopez, Anaël Marrec, and Olivier Coutard.

The second volume of this issue is scheduled for publication in March 2026.

Summary of Technical Utopias

Technical utopias, between political imaginaries and social mobilizations, by Anaël Marrec and Fanny Lopez

Henri de Graffigny, Electroculture and the Genealogy of Electric Utopias, by François Jarrige

The circulus in the ^20th century: resurgence and metamorphosis of the ideal of agricultural recycling of excreta in the era of the Great Acceleration (France, 1930s–1980s), by Étienne Dufour

"Peace through sewers," or Mediterranean unity as an urban, geopolitical, and environmental utopia (1950s–1990s), by Samuel Ripoll

Believing in fast breeder reactors. The transformations of a nuclear utopia, by Martin Denoun, Claire Le Renard, and Ange Pottin

Bibliographical references

Martine Bartolomei, Francis Beaucire, and Arnaud Passalacqua (eds.), The Sea, Wind Turbines, and Citizens: New Territories of Energy, Paris, Hermann, 2022, 281 p., by Didier Kahn

Emmanuel Foëx (with an essay by Nicola Braghieri), Power Plants – Hydroelectric Architecture and Landscapes of the Alps, Geneva, MétisPresses, 2024, 440 p., by Elke Mittmann

Pascal Auzannet, The mobility puzzle in Île-de-France, Paris, Hermann, 2025, 212 p., by Félicien Boiron

Jean-Baptiste Butlen, Pauline Sirot, Mathurin Basile (eds.), Living Soils: Taking Soils into Account in Land Use Planning, Marseille, Parenthèses, 2024, 224 p., by Arturo Romero Carnicero

The article Technical Utopias (1/2) – Flux Magazine first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

David Guéranger explores the behind-the-scenes world of local politics through a long-term sociological study focusing on small towns and based on in-depth interviews with local officials. Far from viewing the departure of mayors as a phenomenon of exhaustion or protest, the author reveals the moral dilemmas, daily tensions, and silent compromises that structure the ordinary experience of local power. He shows that commitment is not so much a heroic impulse as a learning process of resignation, made up of sacrifices, compromises, but also loyalty to the municipal institution.
By meticulously retracing the life stories and political trajectories of these elected officials grappling with mental strain, decision-making solitude, and contradictory injunctions from the state, the author offers an intimate look at local government, at the invisible forces that drive its reproduction, and proposes an embodied reading of contemporary democratic wear and tear.

Book "Maires, à quoi bon ?" (Mayors, what's the point?) by David Guéranger, published by Editions Textuel

The article Publication of "Maires, à quoi bon ?" (Mayors, what's the point?) by David Guéranger first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

It will take place on Monday, February 2, 2026, at 7 p.m., at the Maison de l'architecture Ile-de-France (148 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin, 75010 Paris).

"Taking Care" – Series of conferences on maintenance in architecture

The article Conference "Taking Care" – Rocío Calzado López first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

Nelo Magalhães will present his book, followed by a discussion led by Nathalie Montel, before opening the floor to questions from the audience.

This session will take place in room B015 (Bienvenüe Building) and will be broadcast via videoconference. Zoom
link: https://univ-eiffel.zoom.us/j/87987869978

Meeting ID: 879 8786 9978
Password: LATTS2026

"In the post-war decades, thousands of kilometers of roads and highways were built to support the increase in traffic and connect, across the consolidated agricultural landscapes, metropolitan areas to industrial zones, ports, airports, power plants, and tourist complexes. This marked the beginning of a "Great Acceleration" that revolutionized the production of space. On construction sites, concrete flowed freely while the noise of machines (which did not go on strike) replaced the clamor of diggers. Chemistry and the industrialization of techniques freed construction from the constraints of terrain, climate, and geology: "abstracting the ground" to build roads—and support the weight of trucks—became a leitmotif of "land use planning," which required the continuous extraction and displacement of billions of cubic meters of earth, sand, and aggregate.

Although the damage is quickly felt in river beds, around quarries and in the atmosphere – not to mention road deaths – the frenzy for asphalt has never abated: this infrastructure, which devours hectares and public money, must be constantly repaired, thickened and extended. This book offers a remarkable cross-section of this technical, economic, and political machinery. As struggles against the road model and the cement industry multiply, it identifies some of the obstacles that make the built environment so burdensome. A prerequisite for thinking about lighter alternatives.

Nelo Magalhães holds a doctorate in mathematics and economics. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Environmental Transition. His research focuses on the materiality of capitalism, from a perspective that combines political economy and environmental history.

Book Accumulating concrete, building roads: An environmental history of major infrastructure projects

The article LATTS Seminar – Accumulating concrete, tracing roads – February 23, 2026 first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.