Lhe farmers’ protest movement that we are witnessing will undoubtedly be a landmark, not only because of its scale, the way in which it was structured and the ambiguous role played by the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions (FNSEA), but also by the transformation processes that were at work to define what is “normal” and “pathological”.
This expression of “normal” and “pathological” was coined by Georges Canguilhem (1904-1995), philosopher and doctor. For him, even in medicine, being able to qualify what is normal or pathological arises from a normative judgment, and therefore from a specific framework of thought which guides the judgment of the moment. The qualification and treatment of homosexuality are a good example, the latter being defined in the United States as a psychiatric pathology until 1973 and, in France, until 1992. The delimitation between what is normal and the pathological is therefore never strictly defined and always floating.
Sociologists, through the theoretical frameworks of their discipline, have a very keen eye on this question of construction and definition of standards. Indeed, the latter do not simply say what are good or bad relationships or social structures, but also what material reality is and what it is not, for social collectives in a time and place. located space. The social being plural, these norms are therefore the subject of discussions and confrontations between social groups, and sometimes quite simply the expression of accomplished domination, when the point of view of a few takes the form of evidence for all.
Invisibilized danger
With the farmers’ protest movement and the measures taken by the public authorities to respond to their demands – the legitimacy of which is not discussed here -, a shift in the delimitation between the normal and the pathological concerning the use pesticides was operated. The danger of these products for the environment and human health, and therefore their capacity to cause pathological functioning of living organisms – yet constantly underlined by a number of scientists, reports from research organizations or health agencies – is thus made invisible in the discourses which currently saturate the communication space.
All this for the benefit of highlighting what would be the incapacity, for farmers in general, to “produce normally” without using pesticides, that is to say by leaving the conditions which have been structured since agricultural modernization and the advent of the use of phytosanitary products.
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