Anthropologist and ethnologist at the CNRS, Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, and Collège de France / PSL University.
I am currently research director at the CNRS, within the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale at the Collège de France where I lead the "Anthropology of Life" team.
Previously, I have worked at the Center for Mesoamerican and Central American Studies, was a member of the Casa de Velázquez, and a researcher at the Musée du quai Branly and at University College London.
Research
The long-term ethnographic investigation that I am conducting among the Amerindian populations of Oaxaca (Mexico) on traditional practices (rituality, agriculture, crafts, medicine, system of politico-religious offices) aims to highlight the theories of life that prevail in this region of the world. The results of this work were presented in the monographs Le chemin et le champ. Ritual journey and sacrifice among the Mixe of Oaxaca (Mexico), published by the Ethnological Society, and The Many Live of a Mexican Village. Toward an anthropology of life (submitted) and in the collective works La noción de vida en Mesoamérica and Montrer/Occulter. Ritual visibility and context that I co-directed. A book titled Anthropology of Life II: Mesoamerican Investigations is in the works.
From 2013 to 2014, I led the research program "Living beings and artefacts", supported by the Fyssen Foundation, before becoming deputy director of the CNRS-PSL (Paris Sciences et Lettres) interdisciplinary incubator "Domestication and production of life”. Within PSL, I lead the Life at Work project. Explore the potential of bioart and biodesign (Labex TransferS) and I am a member of the IRIS steering committee “Origins and conditions for the appearance of life”. These interdisciplinary collaborations, which bring together researchers in the natural sciences and social sciences, constitute the empirical basis of a comparative project which links traditional biotechnologies and contemporary biotechnologies (biomedicine, bioart, biodesign, synthetic biology, robotics ), drawing attention to possible points of convergence, for example in the fields of biomimicry or do-it-yourself biology.
From 2013 to 2014, I led the research program "Living beings and artefacts", supported by the Fyssen Foundation, before becoming deputy director of the CNRS-PSL (Paris Sciences et Lettres) interdisciplinary incubator "Domestication and production of life”. Within PSL, I lead the Life at Work project. Explore the potential of bioart and biodesign (Labex TransferS) and I am a member of the IRIS steering committee “Origins and conditions for the appearance of life”. These interdisciplinary collaborations, which bring together researchers in the natural sciences and social sciences, constitute the empirical basis of a comparative project which links traditional biotechnologies and contemporary biotechnologies (biomedicine, bioart, biodesign, synthetic biology, robotics ), drawing attention to possible points of convergence, for example in the fields of biomimicry or do-it-yourself biology.
As part of the anthropology of life project, initiated in 2007, the challenge is to study the variations, in time and space, of conceptions of life. The results of these investigations have been presented in articles and special issues published in journals such as Current Anthropology, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Journal of Anthropological Research, L'Homme, Mana, NatureCulture, Oceania or the Revista de antropologia . The book Domestication et fabrication du vivant is in preparation.
Publications
Puissance du végétal et cinéma animiste
La vitalité révélée par la technique
Ed. Teresa Castro, Perig Pitrou & Marie Rebecchi
312 p.
Les presses du réel, 2020
Enigmes et portraits dans la Sierra Madre
Ivan Alechine & Perig Pitrou
128 p.
Collection: Côté photo / Les carnets #16
Éditions Yellow Now, 2018
Le chemin et le champ
Parcours rituel et sacrifice chez les Mixe de Oaxaca (Mexique)
Perig Pitrou
368 p.
Collection: Recherches américaines
Nanterre, Société d’Ethnologie, 2016
Montrer/occulter
Visibilité et contextes rituels
Perig Pitrou & Guilhem Olivier
152 p.
Cahiers d’anthropologie sociale, n°11
L’Herne, 2015
La noción de vida en Mesoamérica
Perig Pitrou, Johannes Neurath & María del Carmen Valverde
327 p.
Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2011