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- Convenors:
-
Pauline von Hellermann
(Sussex)
Clate Korsant (University of Florida)
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- Discussant:
-
Sian Sullivan
(Bath Spa University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Monday 25 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We are beyond 'people versus parks'. Conservation, communities and anthropology have all changed considerably, making it less clear what 'position' anthropologists should or can take. This panel invites papers exploring new challenges, opportunities and ethical dilemmas in the field and in writing.
Long Abstract:
For anthropologists doing research in conservation areas, our 'position' used to be fairly straightforward: when the creation of new National Parks (etc) involved the exclusion of local groups, our role, if not explicit, was to advocate for the rights and livelihoods of local people. By now, however, many factors have complicated this well-known 'people versus parks' scenario. 'The people' can no longer be imagined as a cohesive interest group (if indeed they ever could). Local actors have multiple and often opposing allegiances and interests between them, including armed loggers and drug traffickers as well environmental activists. And although area protection has largely remained conservation's core principle, 'the park', too, can be many different things: commanding areas and resources of vastly different scale, ranging from large, heavily militarised 'fortress conservation' operations to small community conservation projects with varying degrees of local involvement and 'success'. Radically new conservation models such as Büscher and Fletcher's (post-capitalist, post nature/culture dichotomy) 'convivial conservation' are also making headway. Meanwhile, anthropology itself has embraced explicit applied and activist engagement as well beyond-human, multi-species approaches that further complicate 'people' allegiances, all-the-while grappling both with the imperial roots it shares with conservation and the climate and ecological emergency.
In this context this panel invites papers exploring positionality: reflections on difficult fieldwork experiences, decisions and ethics, and on new ways of researching and writing anthropologically (and ethically) about conservation. We also welcome contributions by anthropologists who may themselves have become conservationists or vice versa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 25 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how conflicts between conservation, recreation, and livelihood manifest themselves in the context of the Cairngorm National Park. It will argue that these conflicts are not inevitable. However, what needs to change is how decisions about land are made and who has the power.
Paper long abstract:
The Cairngorm National Park was established in 2003 after years of negotiation and discussion, often quite acrimonious, between a wide range or groups and individuals both inside and outside the designated area. My research took place during 1999-2000 (with regular return visits), which was towards the end of the debate about the funicular and at the beginning of the national park consultation. It was a difficult time because the area had already seen intense conflict over the building of the funicular railway and various 'sides' had been established in opposition to each other.
My aim was to explore how different senses of place- conservation, livelihood and recreation- develop into public conflicts, seemingly unresolvable and to consider whether such conflicts are inevitable because of these entrenched perspectives.
This paper examine how these conflicts manifested themselves and then go on to show that they are not inevitable. There is much common ground between the different interest groups and that land can be managed for conservation, livelihood and recreation objectives. However, what needs to change is how decisions about land are made and who has the power.
Book coming out Autumn 2021
Land for What? Land for Whom? Senses of Place and Conflict in the Scottish Highlands
Paper short abstract:
As Costa Rica’s southwest becomes an increasingly viable path for narcotrafficking, tensions have risen among research participants that carry dangerous implications. For many, narcotrafficking and environmentalism present vastly different but interconnected political economies.
Paper long abstract:
The anthropologist’s positionality carries not only the suggestion that scholars must consider ethics and politics when deciding upon certain field methods, but also that those same decisions are based upon structural constraints regarding the possibilities of physical harm or violence. Within an area with growing interests for ecological research, ecotourism, and narcotrafficking; anthropologists must tread lightly for the sake of their own safety and that of their research participants. Costa Rica’s southwest region, including Golfo Dulce and the Osa Peninsula, has increasingly become a confluence of profitable and viable drug trafficking routes alongside successful ecotourism; and researching in this setting has brought me to reconsider multiple methodological approaches while studying the politics of conservation and the area’s political ecology.
This paper will provide anecdotes and various vignettes from the field that illuminate the challenges faced by researching socio-environmental interactions within an area frequented by narcotrafficking. I discuss the dangers, contradictions, and dilemmas interpreting the political ecology of the burgeoning ecotourism, voluntourism, and rural community tourism economy in the shadow of drug pathways that cut through national park lands and intersect with the livelihoods of many residents. Ultimately the question is a methodological one: how should anthropologists or political ecologists position themselves in relation to the dangerous informal economy of narcotrafficking?
Paper short abstract:
Based on a conflict involving riverine communities from the Xingu River basin, Brazilian Amazonia, where legal instruments called “commitment agreements” have recently been discussed and implemented, this paper debates the relationship between environmental policies and territorial rights.
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to analyze contradictions in Brazilian environmental policies that are expressed by the superposition of restrictive conservation units on traditionally occupied territories, as well as the resistance by the communities affected by these policies. I focus on the drawing up of termos de compromisso (commitment agreements), which the law defines as a transitional means for guaranteeing biodiversity conservation and for safeguarding socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of social groups involved.
We here observe riverine communities who self-identify as beiradeiros: in 2005 the creation of a national park and an ecological station impacted their traditionally occupied territory, located in the Xingu River basin, in the Amazonian state of Pará. Several violations of these families’ rights have ensued because of this overlap, but they have devised multiple resistance strategies to remain in their territory. The State then summoned them between 2013-2016 in order to draw up agreement terms. I participated as a researcher and mediator in this process.
Mainly due to their temporary nature, I believe that agreement terms are limited instruments to ensure effective guarantees of traditional communities’ territorial rights. In the case at hand, however, they transpired as a source of backing – not only to prevent repetition of violations previously experienced – but also within an adverse political context, where we see the advance of predatory activities such as land grabbing, deforestation, timber theft, and mining, as well as and political attempts to annul conservation units.