Pacific societies are engaged in processes of intense social change that afforded novel theoretical approaches. One theme became central: the politics of identity and tradition within the context of nation building. This type of complex situation is not limited to the Pacific, but research has often been inspired by the practices and cultural structures of this region, and in particular by the Melanesian situation, in order to rethink the relationship between 'traditional' societies and globalisation. Research on 'Kastom' and 'Neo-ritualizations' has been particularly interesting in this respect. Many reformulations of the interaction between local and national identities attempting to concord with the imposed construction of the democratic nation have been analyzed. Often, these reformulations take the form of actualizations, reinterpretations or inventions of ritualized practices. -- However, these studies have not allowed to fully understand the difficulties Pacific countries encounter in their processes of nation building. They remain inefficient in front of structures that are disintegrated as quickly as they appeared. We propose to reopen this theme of research - which is central for the social sciences as well as for the Pacific countries themselves - but we are proposing a new hypothesis. The mechanisms of nation building under the pressure of western nations cannot be fully understood if research is not oriented towards the dialectic at work between local power structures and the fabrication of their national representation. -- A version of this project was submitted during the last call for proposals ANR 'Blancs'. Despite the numerous positive points underlined in the reports, our project has not been selected because of the following main reasons: the problematic and the comparative methodology were not sufficiently explained. The project is now explicit with respect to the context and our hypotheses, as well as with what concerns the necessary comparative methodology embraced in our project. The study we are going to undertake is concerned with the local (and not the national) strategies that express themselves within local (and not national) power structures in order to study particular cases in which we analyze the 'nationalization' of elements of local (and not national) identities. We are approaching this question from three angles: the local political hierarchies and strategies that frame local expressions; the local processes of attempts to nationalize these expressions; and the exogenous constraints limiting these expressions. Henceforth, the nation is included in our project only as the ultimate ambition of these local strategies. It is the means through which these ambitions are expressed and constructed locally that will retain our attention. Our project has thus to be considered complementary to research undertaken in the domain of nation building itself, decolonization or migration within the Pacific. --We will concentrate on particular cases within three pacific states or territories (Vanuatu, Fiji and New Caledonia). Despite de distinctiveness of their historical contexts and the distant geographical situations, we advance the hypothesis that the strategies that work towards the crystallization of local particularities and that have the ambition to be 'nationalized' are in these three countries or territories comparable. It may even be possible to speak of a 'Melanesian way' of national integration of local particularities. Far from attempting to establish a compromise between various forms of cultural expressions, or from inventing a common theme in which each particular expression would be able to find its identity, this 'Melanesian way' rather attempts to superimpose, similar to a patchwork, particular local expressions which remain intact but de-contextualized within the national level. If this hypothesis is verified, nation building cannot proceed through the outgrowth from local conditions, but has to be conceived as an agglomerate of local reductions in which the sentiment of national belonging must be expressed though the sentiment of a local belonging. The nation cannot be 'One' for and through itself, it is not a hybrid construction as well, but it would arrange for distinguishable anchor points of recognizable local identities. -- The call for project 'ANR Blanc' has the aim to 'provide a significant impulse to ambitious scientific projects which position themselves favorably within the international competition'. The international positioning of our project is undeniable. It integrates researchers and exchanges that strongly trespass the French national limits. It also provides for a federation of researchers exceeding even the partners of this project. Our project is also ambitious and 'risky' in a positive sense, as it engages in situational comparative studies guided by a shared and strong hypothesis and a complex but clear problematic.

There are only a few places in the world that offer the opportunity to study the dynamics of divergent plate boundaries on land. The Afar Depression is one of them. We propose two complementary volcano-tectonic rift studies: the Wal'is Dabbahu Rift (WD, Ethiopia) and the Asal-Ghoubbet Rift (AG, Djibouti) corresponding to the inland propagation of the Red Sea and of the Aden Ridge, respectively. In Northern Afar, the WD Rift is currently undergoing a major rifting episode. This event started in September 2005 with a seismic swarm that lasted 20 days. InSAR data revealed the injection of a 65 km-long mega-dyke that opened by up to 8 m, the slip of numerous normal faults and opening of fissures, and a rhyolitic eruption. Similarly, the AG Rift underwent a smaller episode of rifting in 1978 associated with the intrusion of a 2 m wide dyke into the crust. Since then, a large catalog of geodetic data that includes recent InSAR time series reveals the importance of non-steady deformation controlling the rift dynamics, deformation that is also shown in other volcanic areas in Iceland and Hawaii. Whereas deep, slow and aseismic fault slips are gaining the attention of a large number of scientists working mainly on subduction zones, we propose the study of similar transients in great detail in these active rifts, where the crustal layer is thin. Our goal is to gain an understanding of such volcano-tectonic segments on several time scales, including the dyking period itself and the post-event period. Essentially, the study of the behavior of the AG Rift during its whole post-rifting period offers an image at t+30 years of the WD segment, while keeping in mind important structural and scale differences. To gain this understanding, this proposal is based on 4 tasks. First, we propose the building of a complete and accurate set of geodetic data, including InSAR and field measurements (continuous GPS, GPS) covering the period under study. With a narrow temporal sample window, we plan to precisely describe the aseismic slip affecting the normal faults of these rifts and the periods of sudden slip and/or slip acceleration, but also to measure the deformation associated with probable future dyke intrusion in the WD Rift. Second, we aim to constrain the origin of these displacements and their relation to mass transfers within the crust. Series of gravity measurements will be initiated or pursued in both rifts. The combination of both gravity and geodetic data will help to discriminate density variations and vertical displacements. Third, the recording of seismic activity is essential to constrain the relative importance of seismic and aseismic deformation. This will also help to evaluate the thickness of the seismogenic layer. Together with structural data collected during a seismic survey in the AG Rift (complementary project), the results of these three initial tasks will offer crucial constraints on modeling to shed light on the rifting dynamics, which will correspond to a fourth subsequent task. We will then conduct three kinds of mechanical analysis of the observed displacements, taking into account the knowledge of the structure to test the relative influences of the rheology, the fault/dyke geometry and fluids on the rupture mechanics. With a thermo-mechanical approach, we investigate the respective role of the processes controlling the current 3D deformation field of these rifts, including viscous relaxation, dyke intrusion/inflation and aseismic slip. These models will be completed by Stress Coulomb analysis in order to examine the interactions between dyke intrusions within the elastic crust and the creation and development of surface faulting. Finally, we plan to compare the dynamics and morphology of the slip distribution profile along normal faults with rupture of small-scale transparent disordered materials and with numerical models of faults to investigate the role asperities on the fault dynamics. Our multidisciplinary approach should provide important new insights into the dynamics of rifting along divergent plate boundaries, and ultimately, into other geodynamical contexts affected by aseismic fault slip transients.

Light is essential for plants through photosynthetic carbon assimilation. However, when solar energy is absorbed in excess to what can be utilized by the photosynthetic processes (e.g. under abiotic stress conditions), reactive oxygen species (ROS), including singlet oxygen (1O2), are produced in the chloroplasts, causing oxidative damage to macromolecules. Singlet oxygen is generated in chloroplasts by interaction of molecular oxygen with triplet state chlorophyll molecules in the reaction center and the chlorophyll antennae of the photosystems. This project is centered on 1O2 signalling in plants (Arabidopsis thaliana) during high light stress and involves two partners with complementary expertises. One of the two partners has developed new biochemical and biophysical methods to analyze and visualize lipid peroxidation and also to quantify the relative contribution of 1O2 and the other ROS produced during light stress. Combining these new analytical tools with the use of appropriate Arabidopsis mutants and well-chosen growth conditions, we will identify a physiological model that selectively produces high amounts of 1O2. The mutants that we will screen are affected in their capacity to detoxify 1O2 (deficiency in 1O2 quenchers and/or nonphotochemical energy quenching (NPQ)). By modulating the stress response, this physiologically relevant plant model should allow us to investigate different levels of 1O2 production leading to (i) cell death or (ii) photoacclimation. A transcriptomic analysis of our 1O2-generating model plants will be performed after different stress conditions [(i) and (ii) described above] and a number of genes identified as strongly upregulated will be studied in detail. In the context of our studies on signalling, a special attention will be given to enzymes involved in the oxidation of lipids and carotenoids. Because of its high reactivity and short lifetime, it is unlikely that the message transmitted to the nucleus to regulate gene expression is conveyed by 1O2 itself. More probably, the initial molecular messengers are natural target molecules of 1O2 in the chloroplast membranes: polyunsaturated fatty acids, lipid-soluble antioxidants or chlorophyll. This is the working hypothesis of this project. Lipid oxidation products (oxylipins) and carotenoid oxidation products are regarded as bioactive molecules with signalling functions, particularly in animals and during plant-pathogen interactions. The proposed research concerns the possible involvement of this type of molecules in 1O2 signalling in Arabidopsis plants exposed to high light stress. Different approaches, ranging from (bio)chemistry and biophysics to molecular biology and physiology will be used to tackle this problem. We will characterize the products generated in vitro by the oxidation of lipids, carotenoids and possibly tocopherols by 1O2. Subsequently, we will search for those molecules in vivo in Arabidopsis plant leaves exposed to light stress. We will also analyze conjugation of the lipid/carotenoid oxidation products to glutathione. Glutathione conjugates are known to be transported across membranes by transporters and therefore they are potential signal messengers from the chloroplast to the nucleus. Since lipid and carotenoids can be also oxidized by enzymatic systems (e.g. lipoxygenases (LOX), carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases (CCD)), we will study the regulation of those enzymes during high light stress and we will try to detect their products in high light-stressed plants. The possible signalling function of oxylipins and carotenoid/tocopherol oxidation products, generated either enzymatically or directly by 1O2 attack, will be investigated in Arabidopsis cell cultures. These in vitro analyses will be completed by studies on whole plants exposed to volatile oxidized carotenoids or lipids. Singlet oxygen signalling will also be analyzed in a number of Arabidopsis mutants (or in crossings between those mutants and our 1O2-overproducing plant model), such as those affected in the 13-LOX pathway (e.g. OPDA and jasmonate mutants: opr3/dd1, jar1, coi1), in carotenoid cleavage enzymes (CCDs) and in carotenoid, vitamin E or lipid composition (e.g. lut2, npq2, fad mutants). The proposed study is expected to provide new data on light stress in plants, on the way plants respond and acclimate to this stress by gene expression regulation and on the pathway that transmits signals from 1O2 to the nucleus to regulate gene expression.