A Sensory Seascape: Eco-aesthesia and marine toponymy in Imrâgen Fishing Communities of Banc d’Arguin, Mauritania

International audience; A Sensory Seascape: Eco-aesthesia and Marine Toponymy in Imrâgen Fishing Communities of Banc d'Arguin, Mauritania T he Imrâgen people of Mauritania-whose territory is encompassed by the Banc d'Arguin National Park, created in 1976-have long constituted the only fishing community within the nation's chiefly pastoral Moorish society. Their fishing practices, conducted with little equipment and, up until the early twentieth century, without any type of boat, did not seem particularly disposed them to develop a specific form of control over the sea. However, this scarcity of materials seems to have broadened their modes of interaction with the milieu, prompting a wider variety of innovations and compensations in terms of the senses and body techniques. Key to this process of socialization of the sea has been the development of a toponymical vocabulary. Place names have emerged as a ways of gaining an effective hold over the sea, while helping to create a space of shared practices, perceptions and memories. To fully understand this process, and to perceive the ways in which toponymy cements the bonds between these communities and the sea, one must first decipher the logic of place naming. After a brief overview of the variety of ways of relating to the sea in the Banc d'Arguin area, I will proceed to such a toponymical analysis and explain in more detail how place naming enables effectual collective mastery over maritime space.