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While political measures to encourage sobriety are multiplying, the attention paid to the lifestyles of people in precarious situations is a reminder that ordinary expertise in sobriety has not waited for the crisis to develop and be shared. This expertise is developed on a daily basis through a range of resourceful practices that are economically constrained, but which are also consistent with values firmly rooted in a specific culture. Contrary to the preconceived notion that members of lower classes are ecologically indifferent, can this ordinary expertise be a vector of relations with the environment? Using a survey of not-for-profit organizations and their members, this article explores the contours of a set of ecological practices, discourses and collective initiatives in lower classes environments.

Keywords: écologie ordinaire, précarité, culture populaire, débrouillardise, justice environnementale, ordinary ecology, precariousness, resourcefulness, environmental justice

This paper examines the experience of the burden of representation as lived by spokespersons involved in the fight against racism in Quebec. Semi-directed interviews with fifteen of these activists revealed mixed feelings about their role, which are expressed through the lexicon of burden and heaviness. According to the critical literature on affect and representation, this sense of burden is not an isolated, individual feeling; it is, in part, a result of the economy of racialized and minoritized representation that “rations” access to spaces of visibility and power by limiting the resources available to racialized people, and restricting the ways in which they may appear in public spaces. Therefore, to better make sense of the spokespersons' affective experience of racialized representation, this article adopts a theoretical framework that understands racialization as an affective process produced by relationships and encounters and apprehends affects as situated social and cultural practices embedded in power relations. Affects are also apprehended through a decolonial approach that takes into account the asymmetry of affective norms and—by ricochet—the affective performances that can be expected or demanded of antiracism spokespersons. The analysis of the semi-structured interviews through the lens of affects made it possible to identify four affective practices implemented by the spokespersons: awareness-raising, adaptation, protection, and contestation. These different affective practices are both complementary and in tension. They are complementary because they are used by spokespeople at different times, depending on the situation and the demands of their representational work. They also are in tension, because they reveal spokespeople's ambivalence about their role: between what they see as their role as mediators and translators, on the one hand, and their desire to shake up the status quo and the dominant “rules of feeling,” on the other. By examining these affective practices of racialization, this article sheds light on the processes by which racialization and denial of racism (re)shape the affective demands of spokesperson work, and consequently prompts a rethinking of the affective practices of antiracist political representation.

Keywords: fardeau, représentation, racialisation, affects, pratiques, porte-parole, antiracisme, burden, representation, racialization, affect, practices, spokesperson, antiracism

Since the 2000s, a series of initiatives have emerged in France and Europe to encourage the return of high-quality natural areas. These projects, which are mainly run by associations, aim to help tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. In France, projects encouraging ‘free evolution’ are mainly being developed around forest environments, although these practices are beginning to develop in other habitats. It is in this context that the Francis Hallé Association for Primary Forests (AFH) project emerged, with the ambition of restoring favourable conditions for the development of a 70,000 ha primary forest in a cross-border zone in Western Europe. This research, based on a research-action approach, examines how this sort of project promotes the emergence of new modes of action for protecting the environment, while at the same time politicising its subject. This paper explores the AFH project's position in the context of growing interest in free evolution strategies. It also explores both the strategy deployed by the organisation and the effects induced by the potential development of such an initiative in an area (use changes, economic activity reconfiguration, et cetera ). The article shows that the studied initiative is complex and faces several limitations due to the ambition of its project, its association status and the absence of a precedent. AFH proposes a hybrid approach, being the meeting point and/or point of friction between institutional nature conservation practises and associative action. AFH's project, although not territorialized, contributes to promoting and putting forward for debate the free evolution principles as an approach to environmental management, a way of cohabiting with non-human beings and a means of socio-ecological transition.

Keywords: libre évolution, forêt primaire, conservation de la nature, protection de la nature, acteurs, nature/société, restauration écologique, biodiversité, free evolution, primary forest, nature conservation, nature protection, stakeholders, nature/society, ecological restoration, biodiversity