GOW research area | LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques

GOT research group seminar with Nicolas Belorgey

Lucie Leprince — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 13:04:26 +0000

Seminar overview

The LATTS’s ‘Governing, Organising, Working’ (GOT) strand is organising a seminar on Thursday 19 November from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm in room B235.

Nicolas Belorgey will present the book *Should We Put Everyone on File? The Battle Over Digital Identification in India*, published by CNRS in 2026. Antoine Courmont will lead the discussion.

Summary of the book

Identifying individuals is, more than ever, an economic and political issue. Whilst this used to be done using paper records, it is now increasingly carried out via the internet and through computerised databases containing our personal data. These databases seem to make the dreams of scientists, politicians, administrators and entrepreneurs a reality, but they can also turn into a nightmare of invasion of privacy and a surveillance society – which is particularly dangerous in an authoritarian political context.
Based on field research, this book explores one such digital and biometric system, which covers almost the entire vast and diverse population of India: some 1.4 billion people. It shows how this tool, called Aadhaar (‘foundation’ in Hindi), designed primarily by and for the business world, was adopted by the state and then imposed on the population through a combination of propaganda, censorship and coercion, whilst bypassing social movements, Parliament and the Supreme Court. It also shows that only a handful of companies stand to profit from it, whilst the most vulnerable members of society bear the heavy costs in terms of access to social rights and freedom.
Any resemblance to events elsewhere may not be coincidental.

The author

Nicolas Belorgey is a CNRS research fellow at IRISSO – Paris-Dauphine University, where he teaches, and at the CSH in Delhi

The article GOT research group seminar with Nicolas Belorgey first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

GOT/RUE research areas seminar with Léo Magnin

Lucie Leprince — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 12:39:32 +0000

Seminar overview

The LATTS ‘Governing, Organising, Working’ (GOT) group is organising a seminar on Thursday 15 October from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm in Room B235.

Léo Magnin will present his book The Social Life of Hedges: An Inquiry into the Ecologisation of Social Customs, published by La Découverte in 2024. This session is co-organised by the Urban and Environmental Risks (RUE) research group at LATTS, and Sofia Guevara will lead the discussion.

Summary of the book

As the world becomes less and less liveable, can we detect signs of a shift in the ways we interact with the environment? Following in the footsteps of Norbert Elias, who studied the civilisation of manners through the example of the handkerchief, Léo Magnin examines the ‘ecologisation’ of manners through an everyday object: the hedge. For whilst trees and shrubs have a well-known biological life, their eventful social life remains to be discovered.
Massively destroyed during the modernisation of agriculture after 1945, hedgerows are now widely celebrated as reservoirs of biodiversity, carbon sinks, sources of renewable energy, erosion barriers and landscape structures. How can such a turnaround be explained? By investigating the traces of hedgerows’ reclassification: the concerns expressed by a livestock farmer regarding their protection, a grower’s hesitations on his plot, the cost of maintenance, the art of pruning, scientific studies of the bocage, its digital mapping, its surprising politicisation at both government and village levels, and so on.
From farmyards to ministerial pomp, *La Vie sociale des haies* thus explores the various dimensions of the process of ‘greening’, mapping out the social dynamics that are running out of steam, continuing or reinventing themselves in the face of environmental challenges. Tracing the labyrinth of hedgerows sheds light on the twists and turns of history that shape the contradictions of our present, but also its promising trials and errors…

The author

Léo Magnin is a sociologist, a research fellow at the CNRS and a member of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Science, Innovation and Society (LISIS). Together with Rémi Rouméas and Robin Basier, he is the author of *Environmental Policies under Constraints* (Rue d’Ulm, 2024).

The article GOT/RUE research areas seminar with Léo Magnin first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.

GOT Research Group Seminar with Martial Vildard

Lucie Leprince — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:33:25 +0000

Seminar announcement

The LATTS research group ‘Governing, Organising, Working’ (GOT) is organising a seminar on Thursday 21 May from 2pm to 4pm in room B235.

We are delighted to welcome Martial Vildard, who will present his recently published book L’accompagnement. Les habits neufs de l’autorité, published by Éditions du Croquant, 2026. The book explores work on the individual, professional support, power relations, and many other topics of interest to the laboratory’s members.

Book summary

Given the staggering number of books published each year on ‘coaching’ in business, schools, and sectors such as social work, integration, health, wellbeing, personal development and spirituality, it seems crucial to gain a better understanding of this widespread social phenomenon and the enthusiasm it generates. Sociology offers the opportunity to take a critical look at these ‘support practices’. This book presents an original sociological study based on three support activities – marriage counselling, professional coaching and spiritual counselling – to understand how they exercise a discreet form of authority. Through these mechanisms, a mode of governing behaviour emerges, based on the promotion of autonomy and the concealment of coercion. By shedding light on the mechanisms of this ‘veiled authority’, the book invites us to rethink contemporary forms of power.

The author

Martial Vildard holds a PhD in sociology, having graduated from the University of Paris Sciences et Lettres in 2022. He taught sociology at university during his PhD and now teaches economics and social sciences at secondary school level. His research focuses on authority and domination. He is an associate researcher at the GSRL laboratory (EPHE-CNRS).

The article GOT Research Group Seminar with Martial Vildard first appeared on LATTS - Laboratory for Territorial and Societal Techniques.