The jury rewarded "The Animal and Death: hunts, modernity and the crisis of the savage" (La Découverte editions).
"The members of the jury, chaired by [the writer] Xavier Patier, were won over by this investigation," said the François Sommer Foundation in a press release.
The book recounts an immersion of the ethnologist and anthropologist in his own region, between Yvelines and Eure-et-Loir.
Charles Stépanoff, specialist at the origin of shamanism and the natives of Siberia, "documents the accelerated erosion of rural biodiversity, the ethics of those who kill for food, islands of resistance to modernization policies, as well as the recent fights between animal activists and hunters", greeted the jury.
The François Sommer prize, created in 1980 and endowed with 15,000 euros, is dedicated to the memory of an industrialist from the Ardennes, resistant, who had worked for the protection of endangered species and the creation of a ministry in charge of Environment, obtained in 1971.
"The Animal and Death" won the first edition of the France Culture-Arte essay prize in November.
© 2022 AFP