Management of Extreme Situations

14Sense, Sensitivity and Competence

14.1. Introduction

The construction of sense by the actors in a situation is essential for the performance of a project in an extreme environment (Lièvre 2016). To address this question of sense rigorously, it is necessary to specify several points:

• – we will discuss sense as it is expressed in actions, not in the sense of a text for example, as envisaged by linguists;
• – the following analyses are the result of studies that required a long immersion to understand the human activity under study. The field of choice is volleyball, a highly normalized sport, which has been put in perspective with the field of polar expeditions, a freer practice in the open air;
• – the converging results of these studies, conducted since the 1990s (Récopé 1997; Récopé et al. 2006), have led to the gradual adoption of a phenomenology of activity according to an updated, composite and radical inactive position (Récopé et al. 2014). This is based on recent extensions of the work of Varela, Canguilhem, Merleau-Ponty and Vergnaud in particular, and on our own assumptions on “sensitivity to” (Récopé et al. 2011);
• – this position underlines the importance of the sensitive dimension of sense and the need to understand as much as possible the practical rationality of actors. Our approach is dispositional, i.e. it posits that the actors have incorporated tendencies or inclinations that play as a matrix leading them to feel, appreciate, perceive and act in a regular, relatively ...