Short Vita
Justine holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental studies from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She took part in the Wageningen University ERC project Embodied Ecologies as a research assistant, investigating the economy of toxic soils within the Grand Paris. As a doctoral researcher, she is a member of the RTG Fixing Futures at Goethe University Frankfurt and a fellow of the Laboratory of Political Anthropology at EHESS, in Paris. Her research interests include rural studies, economic anthropology, and science and technology studies, with a focus on environmental accounting controversies, farmers’ anticipation strategies, and the financialization of public policies.
Project Description
Volatile Soils: (Green) Markets For Regenerating French Field Crops?
As part of Europe’s climate-neutrality strategy, the 2019 Green Deal promotes the valuation of certain soil management practices expected to store carbon, regenerate soil, and mitigate climate change. Inspired by green finance, new “calculative formulas” (Ballestero 2015) emerge, combining agronomic and economic principles and public/private accounting standards. Using ethnographic methods, I analyze how these emerging devices transform the organization of work and daily practices of French cereal farmers. How do farmers perceive, contest or sometimes endorse these instruments and their controversial promises? Faced with dual volatility — of both commodity prices and soil erosion — why do some farmers continue to rely on markets to plan for the future? Drawing on political anthropology, valuation studies, and STS, the dissertation examines the financialization of environmental public policies (Chiapello 2017), exploring how farmers navigate (green) markets during times of crisis.
Papers presented at international conferences
2025
Congress of the French Association of Sociology (AFS), Toulouse, Panel ‘Social Classes and Inequalities’ (RT5), Paper ‘Towards an “ecological conversion” of cereal farmers?’
Symposium ‘Le genre est dans le pré’ (Gender in the Fields), Lyon 2, Paper ‘When farming depends on women’s non-agricultural wages’
2024
EASA, Barcelona, Panel ‘The Nature of Labour’, Paper ‘The value of soil life: Measuring human and non-human “regeneration” labour’
EASST-4S, Amsterdam, Panel ‘The Green Anthropocene,’ Paper ‘What is the value of the earth? French farmers in the Anthropocene’on-human „regeneration“ labour‘