Humans in the Deserts

- Humans in the Deserts
Original title: Des humains dans les déserts
Vincent Battesti (ed.) in coll. Deserts, Living in Extreme Environments, p. 98-165
Éditions du Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, Oct. 2024
ISBN: 978-2-38279-031-1

This edited book accompanies the major exhibition Deserts which will open to the public at the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution in the Jardin des Plantes of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris in spring 2025.

– This part Des humains dans les déserts includes the contributions from: Laure Assaf, Vincent Battesti, Charlène Bouchaud & Margareta Tengberg, Bernadette Robbe, Barbara Glowczewski, André Bourgeot, Catherine Baroin, Linda Gardelle, and Marie Roué.

– Introduction to part III — Humans in the Deserts, p. 98-165:

Humans in the deserts today? Technologies based on the exploitation of oil-derived energy have enabled the development of urban forms exemplified by Las Vegas, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi—human habitats that illustrate an “air-conditioned disconnection” from their desert environment. The case study of Abu Dhabi allows us to observe contemporary forms of “reconnection” with the desert.

The long history of human presence in deserts, both hot and cold, reveals three modes of living and thriving in these environments, far beyond mere survival. Human groups draw from these modes of production, sometimes combining them. One such mode involves the radical transformation of the environment to create a viable agro-ecosystem, capable of hosting coexistence between humans, cultivated plants, domesticated animals, and the rest of the living world in a hostile environment: the oases.

Two other alternative, more extensive modes stand out from this intensification. The first is a highly adapted approach to these environments through and for hunting or gathering—this is the least transformative mode. It often requires significant mobility of human groups across their territory to avoid exhausting it. This is also the case with another agricultural mode: pastoralism, which involves the herding of herbivores that provides sustenance to the humans who raise them.

These modes of production, shaped by humans to live in these challenging environments, generate both sets of constraints and technical, social, and cognitive choices. However, the following examples will illustrate how the inhabitants of these environments often do not share our understandings of terms like “desert” or “oasis.” These exogenous concepts, far from reflecting the lived and socially transmitted experiences of the inhabitants, impose a way of thinking, approaching, and using these spaces that is foreign to them.

– See the page dedicated to the edited book Deserts. Living in an extreme environment.

– Contents of Part III: Des humains dans les déserts
[Humans in the Deserts]

• DES HUMAINS DANS LES DÉSERTS
• Ed. + intro Vincent Battesti

• Le désert d’Abou Dhabi : appropriations multiples d’une marge urbaine
• [The Abu Dhabi Desert: Multiple Appropriations of an Urban Margin]
• Laure Assaf

• Le fonctionnement oasien
• [The Functioning of the Oasis System]
• Vincent Battesti

• L’histoire longue des oasis
• [The Long History of Oases]
• Charlène Bouchaud and Margareta Tengberg

• À l’est du Groenland, les Inuit Tunumiit
• [In the East of Greenland, the Tunumiit Inuit]
• Bernadette Robbe

• Les Aborigènes, gardiens des terres australiennes
• [The Aboriginal People, Guardians of the Australian Lands]
• Barbara Glowczewski

• Le pastoralisme nomade au Sahara
• [Nomadic Pastoralism in the Sahara]
• André Bourgeot

• Les Toubou, ou le mariage hors de la parenté
• [The Toubou, or Marriage Outside Kinship]
• Catherine Baroin

• Vivre dans le Gobi
• [Living in the Gobi]
• Linda Gardelle

• Pour les Samis, la toundra n’est pas un désert
• [For the Sami, the Tundra Is Not a Desert]
• Marie Roué