Céline MORANÇAY

This PhD project proposes to study the relationships that emerge through the management of commons by 
focusing in particular on plant sampling practices in Challwaccocha, an Andean peasant community in the 
Cusco region (Peru). These plants, with their varied dispersal and methods of exploitation, are the subject of renewed attention and are at the heart of a heritage construction of nature and knowledge. While they are 
generally understood as objects of traditional knowledge, this research aims to opt for a relational approach of the commons extended to heterogeneous collectives of humans and other-than-humans. In addition to 
traditional ethnographic methods, it proposes to use creative methods to achieve a sensitive ethnography of 
the commons: GPS tracing and sound recording of the paths while sampling plants, itinerant interviews, 
register of local plants, co-creation of photographs and artistic intervention on photographies (collage, 
embroidery). The results of these creative methods will provide a collaborative photo-documentary as a 
complementary result of the PhD. In addition, the combined practice of anthropology and history will make a 
significant contribution to the field of ethno-history and establish a critique on the apprehension of 
environmental issues by historical epistemology in post-colonial context. A round trip between both written and oral historical sources will highlight the historical trajectory of the Andean commons and the disjunctions between legal and indigenous apprehension of the environment. Therefore, by the documentation of the dispositif of regulation of the distribution and the use of the commons this research intends to explore the different regimes of values and materialities of plants in order to reverse the anthropocentrism that reigns in the apprehension of the regimes of property even within the theory of commons.