This paper draws on an empirical study to demonstrate how a ‘geographical’ work underpins the implementation of European Union (EU) directives on Birds, Habitats and Water. Indeed, this geographical work plays a key role in local institutionalizations of the EU. Our hypothesis is that social players, i.e., local actors, scientists and citizens, deploy both cognitive and material means to ‘get a grasp’ on nature in order to put environmental policies into practice. To test our hypothesis, we coupled two concepts, ‘affordance’ and ‘anchoring’, and analyzed interviews and documents relating to the implementation of EU policies in Arcachon Bay, southwest of France. Our research highlighted the importance of two affordances – ‘wetland birds’ and ‘eelgrass’ – used by social players to anchor environmental policies. Moreover, it revealed that the grasping and anchoring of nature is a social process of selection and exclusion, imposing boundaries and distributing power. For all these reasons, we conclude that ‘Europe in the making’ involves countless low and high-intensity conflicts which only locally embedded research can elucidate.

本文采用了一项实证研究，以证明“地理”工作如何支撑欧盟（EU）关于鸟类，栖息地和水的指令的实施。确实，这项地理工作在欧盟地方机构化中起着关键作用。我们的假设是，社会参与者，即地方行为者，科学家和公民，运用认知和物质手段来“掌握”自然，以便将环境政策付诸实践。为了检验我们的假设，我们将“负担”和“锚定”两个概念结合在一起，并分析了与法国西南部阿卡雄湾实施欧盟政策有关的访谈和文件。我们的研究强调了社会参与者用来制定环境政策的两种补贴（“湿地鸟类”和“鳗草”）的重要性。而且，它揭示了对自然的把握和锚定是选择和排斥，施加边界和分配力量的社会过程。由于所有这些原因，我们得出的结论是，“欧洲在制造中”涉及无数的低强度和高强度冲突，只有本地嵌入式研究才能阐明这些冲突。