Abstract
The "tops of the Reunion Island" has always been at the heart of social, economic and political issues emerging from plural considerations relegating these territories to an image of non-rights zones, to a model of attractive regions to develop. In 1978, an extensive plan for the development of the Hauts region, accompanied by a structural land reform, was implemented in order to limit the exodus from the countryside and improve the living conditions of the inhabitants. Since the 1960s, the history of the Plains (Plaine des Cafres and Plaine des Palmistes) has been jointly marked by the structuring of dairy and lactating cattle farms around cooperative societies. The increase in these animal production sectors was a source of much interest until the 1990s. The profession (especially dairy farming) saw its first stoppages of activities and problems of taking over farms. In the 2000s, heritage, tourism and environmental protection requalify the stakes of the Plaine des Cafres originally developed by the agricultural sector. If livestock is to be reared within various management policies, activity can be considered within a fragile island context dependent on supra-national directives. By crossing various studies, we postulate that the evaluation of the socio-economic capacities of the professional sector must be accompanied by the consideration of leisure and tourist activities, regulations regardingwith regard to the protection of nature, the phenomena of rurbanization in the planning of territories and the study of heritage processes. These challenges are an integral part of the discussions on the consolidation of Reunion cattle farming in the Plaine des Cafres consider the current and future links of the activity with the changes in society in the evolution of the environment. Starting from the principle that the current changes in the territory, with their system of constraints and levers of development, are the fruit of political and institutional strategies, we ask ourselves how they are lived and appropriate by the inhabitants and what are the forms of mediations? The study of a locality in the Plains region, the Grande ferme, using an anthropological approach and an in-depth study of social networks was chosen. The originality of the approach presented is based on an articulation between a very localized approach and a regional geographical approach.