Ostréiculteurs et biologistes : la nature des uns et des autres

Oyster farmers and biologists, the one's nature and the other's. This study analyses the link between scientific knowledges on the one hand, and other knowledges, bred from the practical growing of oysters. The way that the biologists and the oyster farmers built separately their own image of the object around which revolves their activity, the oyster, has been particularly studied. Oyster has flourished along the French coast since the end of the XIXth century in spite of numerous difficulties. During that time, the oyster farmers have always approached pragmatically the conception and the development of this shell breeding. However, since the early seventies repeated epizooties destroyed the stock and caused some damage to regional economics. Then the IFREMER (Institut francais de recherche pour l'exploitation de la mer : French Institute for sea research ) set up research projects in attempt to stop these diseases. The gathering of this body of knowledges brought to the definition of production standards, in the form of local trade rules. Facing these were, and still are, the knowledges of the oyster farmers. Through analysis of their links, two different types of knowledge, the scientific and the pra-tical one. were integrated into the same study. This confrontation allowed to distinguish the characteristics of the one's knowledges in the light of the other's. Therefore, in a first time, practical and scientific knowledges are exposed to the size of practitioner's oyster farm through the study of one particular group making by the Cancales oyster farmers (Bretagne j, and for the second, by each oyster's scientific approach. After describing both approaches. the object of this article is to build relations between the one's oyster and the other's around the two notions of space and time before studying knowledges' transfers. This last analysis could reveal the strategic goals for acquiring some scientific knowledges inside the two groups by comparing the appropriation mechanisms, in the oyster farmer's case at least. to the purchase of any other good. All these processes were then linked to a more global question about the sociological meaning of a knowledge.Cet article traite de l'articulation entre des savoirs scientifiques et d'autres issus de la pratique. Suite au développement de plusieurs épizooties détruisant chaque fois des cheptels d'huîtres, quelques biologistes de l'IFREMER investirent ce milieu munis de différents outils. Cet investissement déboucha sur l'élaboration de normes d'exploitation de la nature une fois que l'administration de tutelle et les différents syndicats ostréicoles des bassins de production acceptèrent de traduire les résultats des recherches en réglementations professionnelles. Les ostréiculteurs furent donc directement confrontés aux travaux des biologistes. Une fois exposées les connaissances des uns et des autres, l'objectif de cet article est de les mettre en relation à partir de la distinction, d'une part, de leurs points de divergence (les notions de temps et d'espace) et, d'autre part, des enjeux stratégiques qui se nouent autour de l'acquisition de certaines d'entre elles.Van Tilbeurgh Véronique. Ostréiculteurs et biologistes : la nature des uns et des autres. In: Cahiers d'Economie et sociologie rurales, N°33, 4e trimestre 1994. pp. 5-31