Anthropological Approach to Vulnerability and Major Hazards - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 267

(a knife has connotations of a phallic dimension, for example). These
movements of coming and going - exteriorization (technical systems)
and interiorization (symbolic systems) - characterize the human
relationship to its geographical and social milieu [WAT 11]. This
double movement of objectivation (of the milieu into an environment)
and subjectivation (from the milieu into symbolic systems) conveys
the manner in which a human milieu is structured and deployed. This
alternance of the process of objectivation and subjectivation is called
“trajection” or “mediance” [BER 90]. The first term emphasizes the
rythmic dimension (alternance of opposing and complementary
processes, for example subjectivation and objectivation); the second
term emphasizes the exhibition and organization of this relationship
that concerns neither the objective environment nor a subjective
representation, but a milieu.
From this perspective, the evaluation of the impact of a major
hazard can only happen in relation to the way in which a milieu is
inhabited and invested. It is therefore a question, as far as possible, of
taking account of the maximum of the technical, symbolic and
ecological dimensions specific to the human milieux touched by a
catastrophe. Given that these are extremely diverse, it is useful to
proceed by means of a conceptual aparatus which makes this diversity
accessible and possible to study.
It fell to Philippe Descola to propose a “grammar of cosmologies”
[DES 05], which enables us to grasp the profound logic of the
organization of human milieux. The anthropologist distinguishes four
schemes of transformation from environment to human milieu. There
would thus be societies that were in the main “naturalist”, others
mainly “animist”, “totemist” or “analogist”. At each of these
trajectories of “making a milieu” correspond specific vulnerabilities
and ways of “deconstructing a world” [MOR13]. From the
“naturalist” point of view, the hazards are mainly evaluated in terms
of material causes (which act on flesh and materials); for “animist”
communities, they are estimated in terms of the motives (i.e. what
motivates an action) of responsible agents; for “totemist” groups, they
are assessed according to a historic reason (which explains the
contingence of an event) stemming from a genealogical framework