Auclair Laurent auteur aut IRD Simenel Romain auteur aut IRD Alifriqui M. auteur aut IRD Michon Geneviève auteur aut IRD text journalArticle fre text/pdf reformatted digital access In a general context characterized by the increasing success of the concept of patrimonialization, the interest it has induced from national as well as in ternational institutions, and the ways it has inspired the conception of public policies - Pillar 2 of "Green Morocco" Program for instance - this article intends to question, from the perspective of local societies and their functioning, the patrimonial feature of "agdal", a common traditional practice known in numerous parts of southern Morocco... the study is based on an analysis of the practices, the knowledge, the representations and the discourses collected by the teams of two recent multidisciplinary programs that were mobilized for the purposes of the study at hand. The first stage will be devoted to the central position of agdal in the local collective memory and perception of history, and to the special task of protection linked to the agdal territory, seen as "a domain of the forbidden" and based upon a series of representations and beliefs. The article will also examine the key role that agdal holds in the spatial and temporal reproduction of social groups, given that it is a decentralized prac tice aiming at a long term preservation of natural resources . These three criteria illustrate the patrimonial feature of the agdal territory from the rural communities' standpoint. The last part of the article will deal with some challenges having emerged in connection with the development of new forms of the "exogenous patrimonialization" of the territory, backed by public action aiming at the protection of forests and biodiversity. The use of local patrimony represented by agdal as a starting point will help renew the perspectives through which the socio -territorial dynamics in progress and the management modalities of natural resources in southern Morocco. specialized MAROC 098 021 082 XLV 129-149 2010 0018-1005 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010055394 0018-1005 [F B010055394] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010055394 https://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/pleins_textes/2021-10/010055394.pdf IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2012-02-02 2021-10-21 fdi:010055394 fre