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- Convenors:
-
Lydia Gibson
(Columbia University)
Julia Sauma (Goldsmiths, University of London)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel seeks to bring together a set of reflections on how anthropological research within, around, and on conservation - and the advocacy, compromises, and narratives that accompany it - reproduces and accelerates particular forms of violence and inequalities across global and local scales
Long Abstract:
Adam Kuper's polemic The Return of The Native sent ripples of furore through the anthropological community, with many arguing for its erasure from our collective consciousness. Some, however, saw amongst its inflammatory, and inaccurate statements an opportunity for serious reflection over the growing role of the anthropologist, not just as witness, but advocate, ally, co-narrator in the natural spaces where big power, big money, big data and small communities collide over resource and representation alike. Over 15 years later, we have yet to see this reckoning materialise.
In this time, we have seen Critical Race Theories applied to the work of advocates and allies within racial justice movements, and the unfurling of the paradox that is the critical importance of visibility and inclusion, and the violence it brings - through its requirements of familiarity, relevance, and strategic performativity as "double consciousness" ruptures identities of marginalised participants. As local communities are stratified into haves and have-nots of specialist knowledge. As non-actors are plunged into an obscurity entrenched in poverty, violence, and trauma. As allies preen and primp their closest interlocutors to secure the best outcomes - the faith is good, the psychological impact not. This panel hopes to lay the foundation of such reckoning, by applying some of these modes of thoughts to environmental justice, reaching beyond the works of Tania Li, Elizabeth Povinelli and others, and the scope of the reflexive turn to uncover our precise role in these crimes - witness, perpetrator, co-conspirator - and how we move forward.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The research employs ethnographic methods to explore the motivations and consequences of the strategic allyship between farmers and conservationists, against hybrids and in favour of livestock guarding dogs, in the Maremma region of central Italy.
Paper long abstract:
Following decades of sporadic passing-though and occasional breeding events in the Maremma region of Italy, wolves have returned and settled down for good. Their daring presence has generated strong opposition from the local community of sheep farmers, which still today form the backbone of the area’s economy. White Maremma livestock guarding dogs (LGDs), used against predators throughout many parts of the world, are native to this area but their use was abandoned long ago. To assist wolf recolonization, two European projects were implemented with the aim of: preventing hybridization with feral dogs in the wild to protect the genetic identity of wolves; and providing LGD puppies and technical assistance to interested farmers. As a spin-off, local farmers founded a grassroots collective to continue promoting LGDs after the projects ended. Despite a reduction in depredations, the grassroots collective intensified social conflicts, as some farmers felt that it betrayed the sector’s interests and identity. This research employed ethnographic methods to explore the motivations and consequences of the strategic allyship between farmers and conservationists, against hybrids and in favour of LGDs. In spirit and discourse the farmers of the collective vehemently opposed both hybrids and wolves due to the menace they pose to livestock. Yet, in practice, it is their everyday labour that allows wolves and sheep to coexist in the same landscape. This research contributes to conventional theorizations of coexistence by highlighting the importance of strategic positioning and non-representational theory to document everyday coexistence practices.
Paper short abstract:
Contemporary online environmental movements in India have led to unequal representation of minorities in the recent environmental discourse. This leads to privileged activist voices representing, sometimes inaccurately, the minority - risking their further marginalisation.
Paper long abstract:
India’s historical grassroots environmental movements, like the Chipko, have been seen as leading examples of inclusive people's movements which have transcended class, caste and gender boundaries to unite actors against environmental destruction. However, with the rise of online environmental movements in India, there is a risk of further marginalising minority and indigenous people due to unequal access to internet and social media essentially making contemporary environmental movements more institutionalised and making marginal groups depend on activists with internet privileges to represent them. Some scholars believe that in cases where environmental crises are urgent, we need not prioritise environmental movements being optimally democratic if their end goal is being met. My paper uses the examples of recent environmental movements in India to illustrate the need for equitable representation in the online environmental discourse. Whilst the motivation of both indigenous community members and urban activists might be to save the environment in question, it is very easy for one opinion to overshadow the other when one group has limited access to the internet. The internet has made the mobilisation of people and the spread of information across large distances easier, however in developing countries the popular environmental discourse has been only urban centric. So even if the goal of the environmental movement is reached, it results in suppression of minority narratives which are often pro-resource-utilisation whereas the majority internet narratives may be pro-preservation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers my role as a diasporic researcher, whose awe and veneration of Jamaican Maroons both upends and reinforces the violence of allyship. The shadow puppets of my childhood has become the abstract figures of my contemporary work and the vacant bodies within my conservation narratives
Paper long abstract:
As a child, I would hear during my time in Jamaica about the Maroons. These shadowy, historic, slick, black figures that represented hope, freedom, revolt, and the pregnability of the British Empire. Our collective fighting figurines, the nation’s pulse beating defiantly in the high hinterlands. When I began to explore their forest use as part of my PhD, what was meant to be a reverent ode to the group I had exalted for so long, rapidly descended into the technopolitical world of conservation as I became embroiled in how stakeholders navigated the announced designation of Maroon ancestral land as a protected area. Quiet, indulgent contemplation of centuries-old practices became fodder for conservation efforts and narratives. Around their world – which lay not static, but in perpetual reconstruction as they themselves became manufactured by and manufacturers of capitalist economies – I began to construct fossilised narratives: replacing the organic compounds of their world with mineralised, hardened substitutes aimed at providing long, sustained agency to the Maroon community with whom I worked. Hard, brittle narratives made of glass words describing glass worlds.
This paper considers the role of the diasporic researcher, whose awe and veneration both upends and reinforces the violence of allyship as the shadow puppets of our childhoods become the abstract figures of our contemporary work and the vacant bodies within conservation narratives.