Browsing by Subject "Political ecology"

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    Fleshing out conservation: performative ecologies and embodied practice in Chilean temperate rainforest management
    (2012-08) Pratt, Kathryn C.
    This dissertation brings recent theories of embodiment, practice, and performance to bear on community-based conservation in the temperate rainforest region of Southern Chile. The goal of the project is to respond to a problem that conservation scientists often call the “implementation crisis.” Essentially, we have abundant knowledge of conservation models, strategies, and best practices, but yet we still struggle to implement effective community-based projects on the ground. Political ecologists have tried to address this issue by unpacking the cultural politics of conservation, explaining the fate of projects in relation to, for example, competing understandings of community, conflicts around gender and social difference, or clashes between different knowledge systems. Problems occur, it is argued, when conditions on the ground do not conform to pre-given categories, such as when the lines between “local” and “expert” become blurred, or when complex and unbounded social relations contradict our notions of bounded, homogeneous communities. This dissertation works to challenge and extend these critical perspectives by “fleshing out” environmental practices in Chile. I argue that in emphasizing contentious cultural categories, practitioners and scholars alike have tended to neglect the everyday lived experiences of making conservation happen. The dissertation draws on fieldwork conducted with two projects based near the town of Valdivia, Chile: a newly formed private reserve that was partnering with local communities on conservation and development projects and a firewood certification program working with small landholders on sustainable forest management. The focus of my research is on the actual performance of conservation. I start not with cultural categories but with the material interactions that make projects tick. For example, I trace the movements of actors as they negotiate project work, study skills as they are learned and practiced in the field, examine collaborations as they take form, and explore how everyday misadventures can turn into creative solutions. To support my claims, I draw on a growing interdisciplinary body of research that addresses the creative, corporeal, and emergent nature of practice, including non-representational theories in geography, practice theories from sociology and anthropology, theories of embodied cognition from the cognitive sciences, and materialist feminisms. These literatures all contend that social processes are not just the outcome of competing ideas and representations, but also emerge from the actions of people physically engaged in their environment. Each chapter explores a different way in which practice plays a significant role in conservation projects. Chapter 2 presents a re-examination of the environmental politics of vision and representation by showing that vision is much more tied to bodily movement than has previously been assumed. Chapter 3 considers another central area of political ecology critique: the politics of environmental knowledge, especially clashes between “expert” scientific and “local” indigenous knowledge. Political ecologists claim that one of the problems of community-based conservation is that too often it involves imposing scientific modes of understanding on local groups whose indigenous forms of knowledge are not equally valued. I argue that what often gets ignored in these discussions is the role of embodied skill in constituting environmental know-how. Chapter 4 examines how collaboration works in conservation projects. Although there has been considerable discussion of the problematic use of the term community within grassroots conservation initiatives, I argue that these conversations too have tended to neglect the embodied, relational aspects of practice. As an alternative to the logic and counter-logic of community, I suggest developing a performative understanding of togetherness which I call “associating.” While chapters 2-4 all emphasize the novel and serendipitous qualities of conservation practice, Chapter 5 addresses repetition. I show that mundane, routine, and habitual aspects of conservation work are important for instilling the sensitivity and awareness to unspoken aspects of environmental projects. Moreover, I show how such tedium actually contributes to the creative process, rather than, as we might assume, introducing complacency in conservation. I conclude by reflecting on what is gained by developing a more “fleshy” understanding of conservation and environmental management.
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    Regulating a mystery: science, colonialism, and the politics of knowing in the pacific halibut commons.
    (2011-02) Richmond, Laurie Shannon
    Recognizing that environmental management is as much about managing people as managing biological resources, researchers in environmental studies have begun to pay increased attention to the human dimensions of natural resources and the environment. However, few of these scholars and managers have focused on the historical context of environmental management and the ways that history shapes people's interactions with natural resource issues. In this dissertation, I utilize a historical approach to examine the experiences of community members from the Alaska Native fishing village of Old Harbor as they interact with the regulatory and knowledge processes of the international Pacific halibut (Hippoglossus stenolepis) fishery. I argue that the colonial history of the United States is perpetuated into the present in the processes that guide the management of fish resources in Alaska. Specifically, I argue that this colonial legacy is exhibited in the politics surrounding Pacific halibut management where Western ways of knowing halibut come to dominate decisions made about the resource while Alaska Native ideas and interests in the fishery are pushed to the periphery. This has required Alaska Native halibut fishermen from communities such as Old Harbor to engage with new forms of natural resource science and management in order to participate in processes governing the use of their local resources. I show that in Old Harbor, the marginalization of local ideas about halibut resources has contributed to significant emotional and material impacts for community members including alienation from regulatory processes that impact their fishing activities and loss of access to fish resources that are essential to their livelihoods. To explore these issues, I employed an interdisciplinary methodology that included ethnographic experience in the community of Old Harbor and the regulatory agencies that manage the fishery, examination of historical and current halibut policy documents, participation in a fisheries science investigation into the growth dynamics of halibut in the waters surrounding Old Harbor, and over 40 interviews and oral histories with Old Harbor community members, halibut managers, and halibut biologists. I examine the interaction between Old Harbor and regulatory agency approaches to three aspects of the halibut resource: (1) Biology - ideas about the biological status of fish stocks and surrounding climate. Fisheries science research conducted with the International Pacific Halibut Commission to examine the changing growth patterns in the annual ring structure of halibut otoliths provides important details about halibut growth patterns and life history characteristics. Discussions with and observations of Old Harbor fishermen show that over the course of a long history of seeking these elusive organisms, community members have developed a number of important ideas about the biology, movements, and change of Kodiak area Pacific halibut. When these two as well as a number of other approaches to halibut biology were brought together in negotiations to develop catch limits for the fishery, Western science approaches to halibut biology tended to dominate the discussions. This domination presented challenges for both indigenous and non-indigenous fishermen who understand the resource in different terms. (2) Place - conceptions and meanings tied to fish in space. Old Harbor fishermen and halibut managers exhibit different approaches to the halibut fishing geography. Top-down spatial decisions made by managers and biologists - about issues ranging from where to place regulatory areas, at what scales to assess halibut, and where to hold policy meetings - have significant impact on the lives and geographies of Old Harbor fishermen. (3) Property rights - understandings of fish ownership. Old Harbor ideas about fish property rights differed in many ways from those inherent in the 1995 Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program that privatized the halibut fishery. The import of a private-property system under the IFQ program worked to erode Old Harbor ideas and systems of property rights within their local fisheries. As a result, the IFQ program contributed to a dispossession of Old Harbor's fish resources and to devastating impacts on the livelihoods of community members. Ultimately, this dissertation advocates that historical and geographical perspectives are essential for understanding natural resource issues. A historical orientation reveals a significant colonial legacy and social justice implications inherent in Pacific halibut management. While Western-oriented management of the halibut fishery has often marginalized Old Harbor approaches to fish, Old Harbor fishermen have responded to subvert, resist, and change halibut management processes in efforts to legitimize and institutionalize their own visions for the resource. They have continually brought their history and places to the management forum and never accepted domination by Western agency ideas about fish. Their efforts combined with the perspectives of managers and biologists who are concerned with protecting the resource provide a path towards imagining a form of fishery management that is both ecologically sustainable and socially just.