Call for contributions. Pesticide contamination across boundaries (HSS-Pesticide Network, 5th Conference, Montpellier, March 2026)
The HSS-Pesticide Network was established in February 2020 to raise awareness about pesticides and to promote research on this topic within the humanities and social sciences. The 5th conference will take place on March 25–26, 2026, in Montpellier, under the theme “Pesticide contamination across boundaries“.
These conferences, organized by the network, aim to foster connections among researchers, enhance understanding of the various research communities working on this issue, identify and explore analytical approaches in depth, encourage interdisciplinary dialogue, and strengthen the relationship between scientific research and society.
Organising committee:
Carole Barthélémy, Sylvain Bertschy, Eve Bureau-Point, Nadège Degbelo, Fabienne Goutille, Nathalie Jas, Giovanni Prete, Bastien Soutjis et Jean Philippe Venot.
Research institutions supporting the event:
Centre Norbert Elias, LPED, IRIS, ACTé, MOIRA, UMR Innovation
CNRS, Avignon Université, Aix-Marseille Université, Université Clermont Auvergne, IRD, INRAE, CIRAD.
Scientific work carried out from the early 1970s at different scales has revealed the extent of pesticide contamination on habitats and organisms. Pesticides and their metabolites are found in the soil, water, air, flora, fauna, and the bodies of humans and animals (INSERM, 2021; Leenhardt et al., 2022). On a global scale, there are no longer any systems, even those furthest from the sites of production, usage, stockage or waste management, that are free of pesticide contamination (Lopez-Espinosa et al., 2007; Maggi et al., 2023; Brühl et al., 2024). The contamination results from the biological, chemical and physical properties of the pesticides which enable them to accumulate in certain territories, but also to circulate, sometimes up to great distances. It also follows the geography of the manufacturing and use of these products. Contamination is very unevenly distributed: some areas are much more affected than others, leading to social and environmental inequalities which are often developed over the long term (Williams, 2018; Ferdinand and Jas, 2022). Characterised by their ‘unruliness’ (Roberts, 2014), pesticides and the difficulties in controlling their circulation regularly raise questions around the framework for public and private provisions, even the most exacting ones, for preventing or limiting contamination. The scale and variety of the forms of contamination also demonstrate the limitations of public measures for protecting human and environmental health. Lastly, the study of contamination raises questions concerning the boundaries between different scientific disciplines, none of which can tackle the question alone. Characterising contamination and the ensuing remediation thus requires interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as the inclusion of information from regulatory, public and professional domains. As a consequence of these social, health and environmental issues, multiple actors (politicians, scientists, economists, citizens and professionals) are investigating the major challenges to understand, prevent and limit contamination, now and in the future, and thus contribute to the creation of a more sustainable world.
This general theme of contamination and boundaries constitutes the basis for the discussion at the 5th conference of the HSS-Pesticide Network to be held on March, 25-26 2026. The word contamination, from the Latin contaminare which signifies pollution, refers to contamination by industrially produced organic and inorganic compounds that are used in commercial products sold under different forms as pesticides. This term is widely used in toxicology and ecotoxicology. It is polysemous: its meaning varies in different fields and professions. It is used in the framework of this call for papers to explore how the human and social sciences have contributed to the definition and understanding of this phenomenon. The notion of a boundary itself can also be interpreted differently in the two fields (Bowker and Star, 2023; Lamont and Molnar, 2002). It designates areas that both separate (the most obvious example being territorial boundaries) but at the same time allow circulation to develop, with the setting up of links and connections. Boundaries can have material, political, administrative, social, economic and cultural elements. This perspective thus allows us to question and analyse the categories, classifications and different forms of organization and relationships with the world, whether of a material nature or not. It encourages more in-depth investigation into how systems have been established, maintained, contested, transgressed and redefined to delimit, define and avoid, as well as connect, hybridise and promote circulation. Exploring pesticide contamination through the lens of boundaries is thus a heuristic means for the humanities and social sciences to look at the interrelations, issues, and connections between power and knowledge at the source of contamination. It makes it possible to question their role in the societies that have produced them, and/or those that are affected by them, the different social spheres in which they are used, as well as the different spatial and symbolic scales over which they operate.
Contributors are invited to present work that investigates the relationship between contamination and boundaries, stating the definitions they use for these terms. We invite contributions on, but not exclusively limited to, the five themes outlined below. The organizing committee is open to other suggestions. Different boundaries and/or forms of contamination could be presented in a transversal way.
(Re)thinking the boundaries of contamination
Humanities and social science researchers have long been faced with the question of the relationships between boundaries and contamination by toxic chemical products, such as pesticides, for example through studying the international circulation of these products (Pallemaerts, 2003; Clapp, 2010; Rankin Bohme, 2015). This work has not necessarily led to specific conceptual developments. The notion of ‘boundaries’ appeared in works in the 1980s in the sense of epistemic or material boundaries, relating mainly to regulatory scientific expertise and application of regulatory knowledge in the production and implementation of management systems for pesticides (Jasanoff, 1987) or the circulation of certain types of products from one professional sector to another (Blanchard, 2016). The transformation of living material on different scales by chemical products led, especially in the more analytical works, to the development of new ways to describe and investigate these altered types of environment, organisms and life. These new concepts include ‘technically polluted bodies’ (Julie Sze, 2006), ‘extreme environment’ (Saxton, 2014), ‘residual materialism’ (Boudia et al.,2021), and ‘alterlife’ (Murphy, 2017). Others were developed or appropriated to acknowledge the processes which underly major, unmanageable, more or less (im)perceptible contamination, such as the ‘art of unnoticing’ (Lou, 2022), of ‘routine exposure’ (Balayannis, 2019), of ‘slow observation’ (Davies, 2018), of ‘slow violence’ (Nixon, 2013), and ‘structural violence’ (Amarasiri da Silva and Albert, 2017). How do these concepts contribute to the understanding and analysis of the boundaries of contamination? What conceptual work still needs to be done to account for and improve our grasp of the multiple facets of the boundaries of pesticide contamination?
Spatial boundaries of contamination
Whether it concerns locals protesting about the spreading of pesticides, different regulations between states, or inequalities between territories more or less marked by contamination, numerous examples have shown in the past that pesticides largely breach their defined spatial boundaries. This second theme thus invites contributions that investigate geographical and geopolitical limits that are challenged by pesticides, from the scale of an individual plot of land to globally. The ‘Global Pesticide Complex’ having undergone a significant transformation since the early 2000s due to the development of generic pesticides, and China’s, and to a lesser extend India’s, capacity for production (Galt, 2008; Shattuck, 2021), what new forms of contamination have been created by the global agricultural market? What are the issues around double standards (pesticides that are banned in the country of production or transit, and exported to countries with low or medium incomes)? Who is drawing attention to these problems today, and how are they dealt with by international organisations, or bilaterally between partner states? On a more local level, what are the territorial issues involved in contamination, for example between regions that are differently impacted within one country, or on an even smaller scale, on land bordering plots or factories, in homes and in towns? What are the main controversies involved in these spatial issues? What government tools can be tested and used?
Professional and sectorial boundaries: contamination beyond crop fields
Pesticide use is not confined to the treatment of agricultural crops. They are also used in the supply chain to preserve certain harvests, in livestock farming as external antiparasitics, or biocides in buildings or lorries used for transporting animals, for ornamental or non-comestible crops and in forestry. Further, their use is not restricted to the agricultural sector, but extends to that of public health (for example for controlling rodents, insects and parasites that can carry diseases, as well as in the form of biocides in medical establishments); in the textile and furniture industry (to combat damp and mites); in the timber industry (to treat xylophenes and fungi that attack wood); in the upkeep of public areas (sports grounds, verges, golf courses, cemeteries, parks, etc.); in the maintenance of railroad tracks, as well as in the domestic sphere (for pets, such as flea treatment; insecticides and rodent poison for domestic use; pesticides for use in private gardens). This pesticide contamination outside the agricultural sector is even less documented by the social sciences (Swartz et al., 2018). It would be a means of raising the profile of the work on populations at risk who are exposed to pesticides and other forms of less known contamination. Although most of the political and media attention is focused on pesticide use in agricultural production, what are the other sectors that are affected by contamination, albeit less visibly? Which actors are the experts in these subjects in the sociopolitical environments in which the problems are less mediatized and politicized? What regulatory frameworks and tools can be used to reduce the risk in these sectors? What effect do they have on work activity? How do the different forms of invisibility or ways of rendering the different types of contamination in professional settings visible affect the professionals or surrounding community (for example those concerning arable or livestock farming)? How are the boundaries between potential professional occurences of contamination (in the case of varied simultaneous or diachronic activities), as well as between professional and domestic contamination, (re)defined in a context in which professional and domestic areas are often closely integrated? How does this work in the global south, where home and work environments are intimately associated, engendering major cross-contamination, in a context where numerous sources of contamination are not even recognized, or viewed objectively (Fuhrimann et al., 2021), leading to exacerbated social injustice?
Scientific boundaries and raising awareness of sources of contamination
While certain effects of pesticide contamination are directly observable (by odour, skin reaction, coughing, existence of a cloud or deposits associated with a product, presence of alteration products in stockpiled pesticides), generally speaking they are imperceptible. The residues are often odourless and invisible to the naked eye, meaning that significant forms of contamination can remain undocumented over long periods of time if there are no systems to detect them in place (administrative, technical, scientific, citizen). As has been shown a number of times, regulatory processes for the evaluation of risks often fail to pick up these cases of contamination (Daniel 2005; Harrison, 2011; Jouzel, 2019; Dedieu, 2022). These overflows were, and still are, a strategic axis for social movements demanding changes in pesticide use in certain contexts (Zierler, 2011; Arancibia 2013). These movements, as for the regulatory processes, are often associated with forms of concealment of certain types of contamination, and of groups that are more particularly exposed such as casual workers or women (Barbour and Guthman, 2018; Navas, 2023; Goutille, 2025). Bringing this type of contamination out into the open is a key issue which nowadays concerns a broad spectrum of fields of study and methodologies, state bodies, as well as members of civil society involved in developing alternative systems for the objectification of contamination (Arancibia and Motta, 2019). How does the organization of the academic world into different fields of study, competition between them (material, institutional, epistemic), and the conditions for producing scientific work contribute to defining the output on contamination in general, and of different origin? Which actors are involved in bringing our knowledge on contamination up to date? Which fields of study do they come from, what methods do they use, and is there interdisciplinary collaboration? What effects do technical and scientific resources, limited in certain countries of the global south, have on the objectification of contamination and on their capacity to react to it (militant, political, scientific, technical)? How are these (in)visible forms used, interpreted, opposed or ignored? In which public, professional, militant, administrative or political forums? How can shedding light on certain types of contamination lead to the concealment of others? What other means of revealing pesticide contamination are used beyond the established fields of study, in particular using means of perception and lay rationalities or situated knowledge? How are these types of knowledge incorporated, or not, into research and militant and public action?
Temporal boundaries: decontamination and management of toxic heritage
Chemical compounds accumulate, aggregate, and undergo transformation. They are slippery and easily transported and often raise unanticipated issues over time. Their journey does not stop once they have reached their target. They become durably integrated into places, via the soil, water, and in living organisms that can all be affected up to decades after the event. As shown, for example, by the chlordecone contamination in The French West Indies (Berthod, 2024), the pollution resulting from the explosion of the factory at Bophal (Fortun, 2001), that of the Great Lakes in Canada (Langston, 2016), or the chemical contamination in the wake of the Vietnam war in Cambodia (Bureau-Point, in writing), the question arises as to ‘reparation’ and ‘decontamination’, as well as ‘living with’. These different ways of managing the heritage left by contamination encompass technical, social, economic, legal, political and ethical issues. What effect do they have over the long term on the actors involved, or affected in one way or another, by contamination by pesticides and their metabolites? To what extent do they create obstacles in the material and political treatment of contamination, for living organisms and the environment, and for actions taken to right injustice? Which actors are involved in this ‘reparatory’ work (associations, NGOs, international institutions, the companies themselves) and what interests do they have? Depollution work, agro-ecological reconversion, and the collection and disposal of obsolete pesticides, empty containers and soiled personal protection equipment often goes hand-in-hand with a dialogue promoting ‘virtuous’ or ‘innovative’ solutions. How feasible are these solutions in practice, and what are the new boundaries of contamination and issues that are raised as a result? How are these questions framed in contexts that lack funds, infrastructure and technical means, especially in the global south, whose populations are disproportionately affected by contamination that was not necessarily caused by them.
Schedule
Submissions should be sent in the form of an abstract of around 400 words, in French or English, together with details of the author(s) (status, institutional affiliation, research interests, email address) to the following people:
nathalie.jas@inrae.fr and eve.bureau-point@cnrs.fr
- Opening date for submissions: 05 June 2025
- Deadline for submissions: 10 October 2025
- Notification of decision: 20 November 2025
- Submission of a 4-5 page text for accepted submissions: 8 January 2026
- Conference: 25 – 26 March 2026
References
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Admin (21 juin 2025). Call for contributions. Pesticide contamination across boundaries (HSS-Pesticide Network, 5th Conference, Montpellier, March 2026). SHS Pesticides. Consulté le 19 juillet 2025 à l’adresse https://shspesticide.hypotheses.org/1996