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Céline Pessis

Dr. Céline Pessis

Landhaus Fellow

Contact

Rachel Carson Center
Leopoldstr. 11a
80802 Munich


Céline Pessis's research proposes a reassessment of the modernization of post-World War II French society that places environmental knowledge, reflexivity, and conflict at the center of the narrative. Her first book dealt with the emergence of political ecology as it related to the challenge of "big science" in France in 1968. Celine's post-doctoral work (IFRIS, Paris, 2019–2021) calls for resituating the genesis of French organic farming in complex though marginalized soil-life maintenance practices, as well as in post-war agricultural debates around motorization. Her current project explores the connections of these alternative agricultural worlds with the networks of natural food and medicine and their transnational circulations. Celine coordinates the research project "Politics of the Agricultural Machine: Lock-Ins, Incentives and Socio-Ecological Consequences of Agricultural Mechanization in France (1945–2021)." She teaches environmental history and sociology at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Master's in Ecological Transition), the University Paris Dauphine, and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS).

RCC Research Project: From Soil to Health: Environmental Knowledge, "Living Soils" and the Rise of European Organic Farming Networks


Selected Publications:

  • "Les leçons de l’agriculture américaine? Motorisation et souci du sol durant la IVe République." Le Mouvement Social, forthcoming.
  • "De la 'croisade pour l’humus' à l’agriculture biologique. Alertes savantes et mouvements paysans face à la dégradation des sols (1948–1958)." In Les modernisations agricoles, edited by M. Lyautey, L. Humbert, and C. Bonneuil. Rennes: PUR, 2021.
  • "Histoire des 'sols vivants': genèses, projets et oublis d’une catégorie actuelle." Revue D’anthropologie Des Connaissances 14, no. 4 (2020): n. pag. 
  • Survivre et Vivre. Critique de la science, naissance de l’écologie. Montreuil: L’Echappée, 2014.
  • "The Tractor as a Tool of Development? The Mythologies and Legacies of Mechanized Tropical Agriculture in French Africa (1944–56)." In Developing Africa: Concepts and Practices in Twentieth-Century Colonialism, edited by Gerald Hödl, Joseph Hodge, and Martina Kopf, 179–204. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014.
  • with Mahrane Yannick, Fenzi Marianna, and Christophe Bonneuil. "From Nature to Biosphere. The Political Invention of the Global Environment, 1945–1972." Vingtième Siècle: Revue d'Histoire 113. no. 1 (2012): 127–141.