Presentation short abstract

Based on ethnography in northwest Yunnan, this paper shows how China’s ecological civilization is enacted through monkey conservation. Feeding, patrols, and landscape work link national goals with local livelihoods and tourism, while monkeys’ behavior shapes outcomes, revealing multispecies agency.

Presentation long abstract

China’s ecological transformation, framed through the project of “ecological civilization,” has reconfigured environments through a governance model that is state-led yet intertwined with market mechanisms and development goals. While its ideological and institutional dimensions are increasingly recognized, its material enactments and multispecies dynamics remain underexamined within political ecology. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in northwest Yunnan on Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus bieti) conservation, this paper analyzes how socio-natures are produced through the convergence of state power, local labor, tourism infrastructures, and nonhuman agency.

The study traces how conservation practices, from habituation and food provisioning to daily patrol routines and viewing sites construction, translate the broad mandate of ecological civilization into situated forms of environmental management. These interventions reorganize village labor and seasonal rhythms, embed national ecological priorities into everyday practices, and align conservation with an expanding tourism economy. In doing so, they generate distinct configurations of authority, value, and spatial control.

In parallel, the monkeys shape conservation outcomes: their shifting home ranges, differential responses to feeding, and variable visibility to tourists continually require adjustments in management strategies and local labor. Interactions between local communities and monkey groups reveal ongoing negotiations over habitat, mobility, and resource access. Rather than passive recipients of protection, the monkeys influence the temporalities, logistical decisions, and infrastructures through which interventions operate.

By situating these dynamics within broader debates on China’s socioecological transformation, the paper shows how multispecies co-production shapes conservation on the ground and offers a clear analytical entry point for political ecology beyond neoliberal contexts.