Entre étude scientifique et engagement social. L'Institut de Géographie Alpine de Raoul Blanchard, laboratoire de la Région économique alpine

Abstract

Abstract: Between scientific study and social commitment: Raoul Blanchard's Institut de Géographie Alpine, laboratory for the alpine economic Region. It was in 1906 that the geographer Raoul Blanchard set up the IGA (Institut de Géographie Alpine - Institute of Alpine Geography). Through his work as a university academic and his close links with a local association of Grenoble employers, the APAF (Association des Producteurs des Alpes Françaises), at the end of the First World War, he became an involved geographer active in establishing, first in people's minds, then in the delimitation of territorial divisions, the creation of a French Alps region (from Lake Geneva to Nice). Thus, in 1919, as a result of a government decision, Grenoble became the "capital of the Alps", and in 1925 hosted the Exposition Internationale de la Houille Blanche (International Hydro-Electric Power Exhibition). While a presentation on the French School of Geography, established at the beginning of the 20th century by Paul Vidal de la Blache, insisted on a more passive role for geographers, removed from urban and regional development issues, R. Blanchard, with the IGA and its journal, the Revue de Géographie Alpine, sought to give a practical dimension to his academic knowledge so that it could be of service to local economic development policies in the alpine area. In this context, Blanchard played at decisive role in shaping the imaginary in both discursive and iconographical terms, still present today, to demonstrate and give life to the values that the city of Grenoble claims to embody within the alpine massif, and even beyond that. Keywords: history of geography, local policies, urban imaginary, regional identity, active geography, scientific knowledge-popular knowledge