The institutionalization of programs that signal corporate virtue, usually placed under the heading of “Corporate social responsibility”, is a central feature of the contemporary mutations of capitalism. While most studies focus on CSR discourse and devices, this project offers an innovative take on « responsible capitalism », by placing the lens on its managers, their work activities and their professional milieus. Through its focus on CSR professionals, the ProVirCap project pursues a triple theoretical ambition: 1/ to shed light on the reconfiguration of the borders between the market, the state, and civil society; 2/ to understand the transformations of professionalism in global companies; 3/ and to examine the ways in which gender shapes the virtuous face of capitalism. Carried out by a team of nine researchers renowned for their expertise on various management fields associated with CSR, the project will benefit from the cross-fertilization of several analytical perspectives: sociology of work, professions and organizations, economic sociology, political science, management studies, as well as gender studies. The research design combines qualitative (in-depth interviews, observations) and quantitative methods (CV scraping, questionnaire survey), and relies on a double comparison: between management fields associated with CSR (sustainable development, responsible investment, diversity and work quality, human rights, corporate giving, ethics) and between national cases (France, USA, Spain). The close dialogue with an international, interdisciplinary expert committee will anchor the project in a transnational field of research on responsible capitalism. The dissemination of the results among professionals of the sector, beyond academic circles, will help promote social sciences in a field that is particularly receptive to exchanges with academia, and contribute to the reflection around the transformation of capitalism – an issue that, against the background of the Covid-19 crisis, appears ever more vital for contemporary societies.

Aiming to balance greenhouse gas emissions and the sequestering capacities of non-atmospheric sinks, the Paris Agreement reached at the COP 21 in 2015 signals the new centrality of carbon sinks, including soils, as a key means of enabling climate stability. POSCA focuses on the rising promotion of soil as carbon sink in climate policies and how this is reconfiguring the way in which we come to know and manage soil. Long viewed mostly in terms of agricultural fertility, soil is now increasingly viewed as a global stock of underground carbon that we need to measure, map, model, control and optimize. As soil is recast in terms of its place in the global carbon cycle, soils sciences are shifting from an obscure, naturalistic and taxonomy-oriented field, toward new advisory and regulatory roles related to the development of Soil Carbon Sequestration (SCS) methods, metrics and schemes; they are also faced with new uncertainties and tensions regarding the measurement and stability of carbon in soils. POSCA aims to account for the shifting agendas, practices and organisations of soil sciences, defined as a broad network encompassing soil researchers, technicians, and non-academic experts in agricultural, forestry and land planning organizations, as soil is recast as a carbon sink. Relying on a multidisciplinary team of 4 sociologists and 2 soil scientists, POSCA will unpack the reconfiguration of the politics of soil knowledge, defined as the various visions of the type of soil knowledge that matters and their embedment in socio-material infrastructures and organizations. The project will develop a sociological investigation, in France and in the international context, into: soil carbon science (i.e. modelisation and monitoring infrastructures) (WP1); soil carbon regulations (i.e. public and private organisations and initiatives to produce standardized methods and metrics) (WP2); and soil carbon management (i.e. local SCS schemes) (WP3). WP4 is devoted to the project’s coordination. Our key hypothesis is that the politics of soil knowledge are being reconfigured at (i) the epistemological level: from a descriptive, field-based research into the history of soils, to a computer-based and data-intensive predictive research that becomes part of Earth system modelling efforts. (ii) the political level: from a classification-oriented academic field, to a regulatory science providing decision-makers with methods and standards to measure soil carbon. (iii) the economic level: from supporting agricultural and forestry development, to organizing soil carbon accounting metrics and carbon credits markets. Social sciences have paid precious little attention to soil and soil/society relations so far. POSCA has strong innovative potential and will contribute to: (i) Science and Technology Studies (STS) i.e. by scrutinizing the reconfiguration of soil sciences, a broadly neglected discipline in STS; (ii) the Sociology of Climatic Policies i.e. by investigating the development of new SCS organizations and methods at the interface between science, policy and the market; (iii) The Sociology of Carbon Accounting, i.e. by accounting for the expansion of carbon accounting instruments toward soils and their significance for the various agricultural and forestry sectors involved; (iv) Soil Sciences, understood as multidisciplinary field, i.e. by unpacking the ongoing reconfiguration of soil’s meaning and purpose in society. Despite its key ecological and social importance, soil remains widely understood as a stable surface and inert background at the top of which we live and act. In a context of pressing issues of soil degradation at the planetary scale and accelerated climate change, POSCA will contribute to a better social and political recognition of soil not as an inert surface, or a techno-fix for climate change mitigation, but as a three-dimensional ecosystem with key biogeochemical agency.

As new communication space, YouTube brings together millions of users around the world and has generated considerable economic activity. How much do creators earn on YouTube? How is the value shared? Is this platform more a commercial space or a sharing economy? APY project''s main objective is to answer these questions by analyzing YouTube through a socio-economics of content. The platform is tought of as a market with various socio-economic models: if entry costs are null, popularity is hard to build. Channels adopt financing strategies according to their own characteristics, their specialty themes, the shape of their fan, brand and collaborator networks and the support of the recommendation system. These strategies developed in the construction of their interest which in return influences the possible modes of financing. APY proposes here to articulate the techniques of computational sciences and the interpretative frameworks of sociology and economics. From a material of great wealth, APY relies on an original partnership between a part of researchers in social and computer sciences and on the other hand, a company, Wizdeo, specialized in YouTube Metrics, a multi-channel-network (MCN). The project presents a unique opportunity: that of analyzing a corpus of channels operating on different segments of the French market, as well as the characteristics of the different networks which underlie them, the origins of the video views and the earnings reported by the channels. The analysis of this corpus of 40,000 channels will allow us to deepen our knowledge of YouTube, the place of digital convergence of the cultural and media industries. Our premise is that the YouTube economy is based on maintaining a tension between mercantile contract and social contract. Thus, we analyze the functioning of the YouTube market from many source of revenue ( advertising, sponsoring crowdfunding (objective 1); we are exploring the impacts of the various networks which link channels and content, in particular the role of the recommendation system on visibility, and therefore the income of creators (objective 2); we will rethink the socio-economic models of the content industries active on YouTube and their effects on product diversification (objective 3); we will produce metadata of actors, actions and genres from the content of the videos (objective 4); Finally, we will co-build models for Wizdeo, fully meeting the objective of researcher / company collaboration, at the heart of this call for projects (objective 5). To do this, this project must be able to take advantage of technological barriers, at the level of the collection and processing of massive data, so far little or not exploited, then at a theoretical level of implementation of new socio-economic models. The scientific results presented within the framework of the project are twofold: one part, it is impossible to distribute the methodology of computing sciences through new methods of computing networks and the development of an adaptive learning system for video categories ; on the other hand, on a theoretical level, it will make it possible to test new comprehensive socio-economic models of the media and culture industry markets on YouTube. The expected industrial benefit of the project is directly linked to the use of this new knowledge to integrate the metrics in the Wizdeo Analytics tool, in particular income prediction metrics. APY also appears as a research of general interest by accompanying the public actors, in particular the Superior council of Audiovisual (CSA), in the analysis of the operation and the effects of the platform on the distribution of the contents.

The OPENIT project aims to analyze various aspects of the scientific publishing market and to understand the complex intricacies that characterize it. It seeks to grasp the interactions among its different stakeholders, such as dissemination platforms, research institutions, government agencies, publishers, and the scientific community. Structured into 5 work packages – WP (see the figure below), the project charts the evolution towards more open and equitable models. The first WP provides a comprehensive overview of policies promoting open access, such as Plan S, Horizon Europe, H2020, and CoARA (which focuses on open science in research evaluation), as well as their articulation with numerous initiatives from the scientific community like OPERAS and DIAMAS. The objective is to provide an overview of existing initiatives and analyze their interactions and potential overlaps. This initial WP is followed by a study characterizing existing open access publishing models, distinguishing those community-driven, institution-driven (PCI, Plan U, Diamond), and those based on agreements between institutions and publishers (S2O, Deal agreements, TA, etc.). The aim is to expose the characteristics of these models and conduct SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal) analyses. Subsequently, the project (WP3) analyzes the case of journals that have adopted the open access policies from the first WP and migrated to one of the models described in the second WP. The goal is to learn from these experiences to potentially propose adjustments to the models to address the challenges these journals may face, especially those that chose to revert to closed access after being open. WP4 proposes a holistic approach, viewing the scientific publishing market as a set of actors with divergent interests but who have an interest, at the same time, in converging for various reasons. It addresses this issue from the perspective of game theory to determine a long-term equilibrium considering these factors. Finally, WP5 is dedicated to project management and results dissemination, including organizing an international seminar on the scientific publishing market, its future, and its challenges.

Several scientific studies suggest the possibility of reducing the use of plant protection products by 10 to 30% without economic loss for farmers. The MoCoRiBA project promotes this strategic and tactical evolution for insecticides and fungicides in arable crops. To this end, it offers to extend the information available to farmers and advisers in real time and starting prior to sowing. Current disease and pest pressure, practices adopted by thrifty farmers under similar conditions, and their combined impacts on yields will thus be integrated to support decision-making. This ambition is based on the development of statistical models and on the co-design of an innovative tool by a consortium involving research teams, farmers' groups and advisory bodies (technical institutes, industry, chamber of agriculture). By mobilizing statistical models on national data sets (epidemiological surveillance data, meteorological data, farm DEPHY network, IGN, PAC data, etc.) we will produce pest pressure information accounting for the landscape and past abundances around the plots. These models will be available for about 30 pests and diseases in five crops (wheat, oilseed rape, maize, potatoes and beet). These same data sets will allow us to evaluate through machine learning (deep neural networks) what it would be like to treat more or less pesticide-reliant farmers under similar conditions of pest pressure and past practices. Finally, we will assess the combined impact of pest pressure and control practices on yields. The combination of these three models of pressure, practice and yield will make it possible to estimate the trajectory of the cropping system until harvest and its potential yield according to the type of technical route chosen. In parallel with the development of these models, a diagnosis of the uses related to plant protection products will be carried out with several groups of farmers and their advisers to better understand the form the tool should take. The models will then be integrated into a prototype for farmers and advisers. This prototype will evolve according to the feedback from consulting and parcel management service providers (Inovia Lands, WIUZ, ITB) and farmers testing the prototype alone or in groups.This will result in a tool that is integrated with the Inovia Lands and WIUZ digital platforms and can be integrated with other existing digital parcel management platforms. This tool will thus be able to use the information already entered by farmers in these tools (location and past practices) for prediction. It will also be able to improve its prediction capabilities based on farmers' data sharing agreements with parcel management service providers. Finally, it could serve as a basis for an extension to the management of insecticides and fungicides in orchards and vineyards.