ABSTRACT Based on long-term doctoral fieldwork on bush fires in New Caledonia, this paper aims to explore the double assumption that bush fires were shaped as a public issue through specific categorisations of human and natural elements, and that this work resulted in negative outcomes as far as the environment is concerned. This paper will address the question of mediation between human agency (colonial history, population distribution and development choices) and the production of ‘bush fires’ as an event category and as a ‘public problem’ calling for a policy solution. More specifically it will address the validity of the definition of bush fires as a ‘disaster’. While this phenomenon is both a discursive creation rooted in colonial imagination and a consciously forgotten strategy used by administrators and settlers to control land and dominate indigenous people, its growing importance today is related to the emergence of environmental concerns. However, one must not forget other issues obscured by the smoke of bush fires, namely a declining cattle farming sector and its lasting environmental impacts on drought (also considered a ‘natural disaster’ in New Caledonia by inhabitants, local administrations and scientists) and biodiversity loss. Addressing this issue leads to more general questions about the manner in which policy-makers, naturalists and environmentalists conceptualise and morally address environmental (natural and man-made) phenomena through time in a colonial/postcolonial setting.

中文翻译：

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丛林大火和干旱是“自然灾害”吗？新喀里多尼亚的政治自然化和自然政治化

摘要 基于对新喀里多尼亚丛林火灾的长期博士田野调查，本文旨在探讨双重假设，即丛林火灾通过对人类和自然因素的特定分类而被塑造为一个公共问题，并且这项工作导致了负面结果，如就环境而言。本文将解决人类能动性（殖民历史、人口分布和发展选择）与作为事件类别和需要政策解决方案的“公共问题”的“丛林火灾”的产生之间的调解问题。更具体地说，它将讨论将丛林火灾定义为“灾难”的有效性。虽然这种现象既是植根于殖民想象的话语创造，也是管理者和定居者用来控制土地和支配土著人民有意识地遗忘的策略，但它在今天日益增长的重要性与环境问题的出现有关。然而，人们绝不能忘记被丛林大火烟雾掩盖的其他问题，即养牛业的衰退及其对干旱（在新喀里多尼亚也被居民、当地政府和科学家视为“自然灾害”）和生物多样性的持久环境影响失利。解决这个问题会导致更普遍的问题，即政策制定者、自然主义者和环保主义者如何在殖民/后殖民环境中对环境（自然和人为）现象进行概念化和道德处理。