A great number of objects have entered political life and shed doubt on the hegemony of the social sciences on the pressing question of their governance. The politics of the environment, technologies, infrastructures or health bring into ever closer dialogue the natural and the social sciences. This research priority aims at developing the basic and applied tools that are necessary to rethink the place of nature in politics and see how the political sciences can be revamped in order to handle a trajectory change in public policy and civilization unprecedented in its scale and its attention to details. Moreover, the intimate ties between objects and human beings are reflected in the changing modes of governance: risk management, in particular, has become a central feature of our societies. It is a recurrent theme in many protest movements and controversies regarding new technologies; it is a central component in public and private management schemes; it is a key dimension in the regulation of international trade movements. Projects submitted under this research priority can concentrate on any domains marked by the interdependence of humans and objects such as the politics of the environment, new technologies or health policy or they can analyze the transforming modes of public intervention linked to these particular challenges.

This prioriry has one project :

• Catastrophes, risques et sciences sociales