Abstract
Between 2011 and 2014, the French government and the Reunion Region funded severalresearch programs in different fields as political decision support for managing shark attacksrisk in Reunion Island. Our study proposes to explore the circulation of an expert discourse insocial and humanities, between its institutional and fictional form, by combining contentanalysis of an expert’s report with political destination to a literary analysis of a fiction novelinspired by the research process experienced by the expert. Those analysis have beenassociated to the perception of the engagement of the author-expert at the origin of theseproductions. Our case study focused on the expert’s report "Better Know to Act. Socialapproach to the shark crisis» and the fiction novel «La tête sous l'eau», both written byArnold Jaccoud, psychosociologist and author of novels. The analyses indicate negotiationsbetween the expert and officials relating to the institutional expression of socialinterpretations of risk. However, the use of fiction to describe these negotiation processesquestions the sociological credibility of the related facts described in the novel, according tothe pragmatic constraints of discourse literary that the author circumvents. This questions thescope of the expert's social engagement.