Paper short abstract:

The presentation argues that the opposition between conservation and extraction is at the same time real and false and thus perpetuates critical social conditions. Ecotourism in Luang Namtha Province, Lao PDR, is analysed by tracing this productive contrariness through the levels of social organisation, from the global to the individual.

Paper long abstract:

Rubber concessions on the site of Laos' official example for best-practice ecotourism - how can that be possible? From a perspective that assumes crisis-ridden social nature relations (Görg 2003), I examine the nature of the conservation/extraction divide. Supposing that current social relations are at least partly structured by the 'factual constraint' of an environmental crisis fundamental to the dominant economic system, it is argued that this contradiction is not a logical one (as conservation of 'resources' is, effectively, their exploitation) but nevertheless it is real. Re-/produced through social practice, the divide is (pro)creative: it facilitates the long-term viability of potentially self-destructive capitalist exploitation and social domination.

The (pro)creativity of this 'false alternative' (Adorno) is not unidirectional but diverse, encompassing a variety of actors, institutions and practices on many levels of social organisation. Although ubiquitous, the profit principle is being pursued and resisted in multiple, tangled ways on the ground. Similarly, the current logic of functionalising conservation for exploitation purposes is a result of and produces specific but manifold in- and exclusions, affiliations and identities. Social anthropology is useful to closely explore these relations and such practices that trouble the conservation/extraction divide. Exploitation, not as moral judgement but as an analytical concept, can be a tool in order to trace the power and productiveness of this contradiction through different dimensions of society. Laos paradigmatically displays the problem in question and the global-local nexus implied. The presentation aims to spur discussion over theoretical, methodological and practical research questions rather than provide definitive answers.