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P002


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Working within and around the project matrix 
Convenors:
Viola Schreer (Brunel University London)
Paul Thung (Brunel University London)
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Discussant:
Cristina Eghenter (WWF International)
Format:
Panel
Sessions:
Friday 29 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London

Short Abstract:

While projects seek to transform people and places, this panel asks instead: How do people and places reshape the project matrix? By focusing on conservation actors' experiences, the panel seeks to reveal how the project matrix is challenged, transformed, and fragmented as it unfolds on the ground.

Long Abstract:

In nature conservation, as in many other sectors, activity is commonly organised into projects: distinct, target-oriented, and temporary units that can be funded, implemented, and evaluated separately. Despite the ubiquity and far-reaching implications of the project model, there has been surprisingly little discussion of its subjective, experiential, and cultural dimensions. What is it like to live and work with the project model? How does it shape human subjectivity, relations, and places? And how, in turn, do people and places reshape the project matrix?

To address these questions, this panel brings together analyses of how conservation actors experience, engage with, and challenge the project matrix. Rather than seeing projects as mere virtualising schemes and exercises in power, we consider projects as something mutable, dynamic, and reshaped in practice. Hence, by shifting attention to the "opinions, experiences, visions and dilemmas" (Kiik 2019, 396) of conservation practitioners and local people as they live with, work through and around the project model, the panel seeks to reveal the manifold ways in which the project matrix is challenged, transformed, and fragmented, as it unfolds in diverse settings on the ground.

We are particularly interested in reflections from conservation practitioners and invite contributions that deal with the following possible, but not limited topics: projections, temporalities, knowledge, (dis)trust, subjectivities, hierarchies, alternatives, finance, failure.

References

Kiik, Laur. 2019. "Conservationland: Toward the Anthropology of Professionals in Global Nature Conservation." Critique of Anthropology 39 (4): 391-419. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X18821177.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 29 October, 2021, -
Panel Video visible to paid-up delegates