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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.nu8cmm

>

Where these data come from
The concept of total institution applied to anthropozoological relations : ethnographies and sociological analysis of primatology research centers

Abstract

by our doctoral thesis in sociology — the object of which is to experiment with monkeys — we wish to take part in research on anthropozoological relationships in human sciences. The work we propose focuses precisely on interactions between professionals and apes involved in animal experiments or scientific studies (biomedical, psychological, ethological, etc.). To try to understand these humanimal encounters, we have carried out a long ethnographic work — with a collection of qualitative data — carried out in various study centres in France and Central Africa. To discuss our study, we must first accept the following two proposals: — consider non-human primates as actors; and to understand the places of animal experimentation as institutions — in the sociological sense of the term — that is to say, including structures which provide a degree of behavioural and interpersonal predictability between the actors, accompanied by sets of justifications and rationalisation.Once these issues are discussed, we can put forward the concept of a full institution to understand the institutional life of primatology centres. This ideal — applied to a US psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s by Erving Goffman — presents the following organisational structures: a closed place; subject to a bureaucratic and administrative system that regulates the lives of all its members; where two groups meet: supervisors, working in this place, and taking care of another group: — reclus, alive and not out of this space.Our sociological view allows us to assess the strength of the institution’s influence over the reclished apes, and to question their ability to resist the role of guinea pig incumbent upon them. We also propose answers on the standardisation of professional behaviour and emotions. This reflection invites us to consider the institutional influence we have even experienced on our ground, sometimes leading us to take on a role that we did not want to play.

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