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Taking Sartre's philosophy as a starting point, our paper is deliberately both theoretical and action oriented. It aims to promote a way to develop the adequate scientific practices which the sustainable development utopia requires. To this end, it is written as a manifesto designed to stimulate debates and controversies. Following a critical review of all that is being said and done in the name of sustainable development in the political sphere as well as in the relationships social sciences entertain with the political sphere, this paper is a call to consider rigorously the difficulties and even the impossibilities of moving "from the utopia to the concepts". Introducing and articulating the almost contradictory dimensions of sustainability in real urban territories demands that a relevant method be developed to investigate this complex object. We propose the concept of "socially sustainable milieu" to try and reach this objective which requires the interdisciplinary linking of physical and social sciences. GIS and modelling need to be associated with anthropological methods. Most of all, the paper underscores the need to set "inhabitants" at the heart of the scientific project, thus reversing the usual focus and starting with an investigation of the way each individual reconciles the "three pillars" of sustainable development and builds his/her relationship with sustainable urban milieus. This may help rise above the still top-down views of governance, thus enabling scientists to contribute to developing the political sustainable utopia in real sites and situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using professional knowledge in building scientific knowledge; a comparative analysis of several case studies. This paper results from cross-disciplinary reflection by social and biotechnical researchers engaged in surveys with experts from the agriculture and nature spheres: farmers: technical advisors, managers of nature conservation programmes and biologists. The purpose was to analyse the way professional knowledge is used by researchers to enrich their body of scientific knowledge. How professional knowledge is used depends in part on each scientific discipline, but far more on the final research aims. We first identified three ideotypes based on whether professional knowledge is used (1) in a comprehensive way to understand its origins, (2) to build new biological knowledge complementary to the one produced on an experimental basis, or (3) to build operational knowledge to help professionals manage their problems. A cross-analysis of the survey methods used then led to discussing the nature of the scientific knowledge developed from professional knowledge and the innovative potential of such surveys. Finally the heuristic potential of surveys is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]