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- Convenors:
-
Jurij Fikfak
(ZRC SAZU)
Tatiana Bajuk Sencar (ZRC SAZU)
- Location:
- Jakobi 2, 438
- Start time:
- 3 July, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/Tallinn
- Session slots:
- 3
Short Abstract:
The panel focuses on how new forms of expression and interaction shape daily life in natural parks, thematizing the effect these forms have on relationships among main social actors and groups and assessing how new processes of participatory decision-making inform the identity of local communities
Long Abstract:
This panel is focused on exploring how new forms of expression and interaction shape daily life in national parks, using as a point of departure developments in Triglav National Park in Slovenia. A rebellion of sorts is unfolding in Triglav National Park in reaction to the implementation of new legislation and new forms of park management. One of the communities within the park has decided by popular vote at the local level to exclude itself from the park, whose regulatory regime otherwise structures everyday life for its residents.
This particular story inspires reflections at the broader, European level concerning the structure and operation of relationships between local communities, park administrators and legislative actors at the local and national levels. What forms of expression and interaction structure the relationships among the social actors in groups involved in defining life within the park's borders; which forms facilitate these relationships and which hinder it? What does the democratization of the drafting of park management procedures bring to life in the park, and to what extent does it either expand or restrict the agency of existing park actors? How does the introduction of new forms of participatory decision making inform the identity of these actors? The papers of this panel will shed light on the way that these questions unfold in varied national parks across Europe.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This presentation concerns the impacts that the introduction of a more participatory method of park management has had so far on the way that nature and natural heritage is understood, constructed and negotiated in Triglav National Park.
Paper long abstract:
This presentation concerns the impacts that the introduction of a more participatory method of park management has had so far on the way that nature and natural heritage is understood, constructed and negotiated in the case of Triglav National Park in Slovenia. Triglav National Park, Slovenia's only national park, was first established in 1924 by the drafting of a legal relationship between a pioneering association of nature conservationists and the state. The state accorded the association the rights and responsibilities for caring for the park's landscape, which was naturalized as an endangered area regardless of the existence of small landowners in the park, who were literally written out of the heritagization of the park's natural landscape. This dynamic has repeated itself through history as the park expanded until 2010, when new park legislation required the drafting of a more participatory plan of park management. In this paper I will present an analysis of the social processes through which this management plan has come into being and how they inform existing and emerging negotiations concerning nature, nature conservation and natural heritage within Triglav National Park.
Paper short abstract:
In the territory of Fruška Gora National Park in Serbia 16 Orthodox monasteries exist. “Combined heriatgization” of nature and culture is discussed, while the value system behind heritagization gets confronted with the one behind the Orthodox religious practice.
Paper long abstract:
The paper is meant to discuss a theoretical framework for researching a "combined heritagization" of both nature and culture happening in one place, with a particular focus on heritagization of religious architecture and cult objects and practices. The framework has been outlined with the objective of researching Fruška Gora National Park in Autonomous Region of Vojvodina, Serbia, in which territory 16 Orthodox monasteries exist. Fruška Gora is visited within different excursion frameworks as natural park, natural cum cultural heritage complex, or as religious and cult place. Various schemes of these visits seem to point at different value sets behind them. The author, delving on her previous research on social construction of heritage, will try to reflect on different modes of heritagization within the areas of "nature" and "culture", as defined in the UNESCO documents, as well as outlined in conservation practices. The question is how far the two modes of heriatgization carried out in one place influence each other both on expert, as well as on non-expert, namely visitor, level, and what is their relationship to religious motivations and religion-based value structure.
Paper short abstract:
I focus to the mobilities and stabilities of the human relationships with the archipelago nature in the Archipelago National Park in Southwest Finland. I will present the characteristics Finnish National Parks and Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve gives to these relationships.
Paper long abstract:
Nature is the element which ties people most strongly to their own home area in the Southwest Finland archipelago. This is seen as local practices and habits in the relationship between man and the nature. In some context the simultaneous beautiful and violent nature is expressed as a symbol of identification to the area, as also the shores of islands forming borders, the freedom to work and define one's own way of life inside these borders, and the skills and knowledge learned on the islands, which are able to conquer the administrational and literal knowledge defined outside of the archipelago. Relationship to the nature and identification to archipelago are in constant motion. Moreover, a very prevalent element in these identities is the will of the archipelago people to define changes themselves. Nature is an acceptable and strong definer of actions and identities. However, impacts are given and received in many ways both from the local and the global interaction networks.
Usually the actions of different organisations, like National Park or Biosphere Reserve, are clearly expressed. This kind of organizations positions themselves partly consciously in opposition to the everyday life in the archipelago with the goal of bringing some impacts to it, like safeguarding of the natural and cultural heritage.
In my presentation I focus to the mobilites and stabilities of the human relationships with the archipelago nature in the archipelago in Southwest Finland. I will present the characteristics Archipelago National Park and Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve gives to these relationships.
Paper short abstract:
Short Abstract This presentation concerns how cultural heritage is understood, constructed and negotiated in Triglav National Park, three Regional Parks and almost fifty protecetd areas in Slovenia.
Paper long abstract:
Long Abstract
Like elswhere in Slovenia there is also in the area of Triglav National Park, three Regional Parks and in the protected areas we have many larger or smaller collections of items, which are being preserved and (re)presented by their owners, collectors, donators, museums professionals, as part of the natural and cultural heritage of the regions, where they are (re)presented. The author will try to analyse and evaluate some moste interesting cases among them. His evaluation will be based on trend analysis in this kind of museums (especially in ecomuseums, economuseums, neighbourhood museums, museums and heritage centres, heritage parks etc.) and on the anlysis of current museums trends; namely the dynamics of new trends appearing in last decade has been immense.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents a comparative examination of the impacts caused by conservation policies on the local population inhabiting two Protected Areas in Andalusia, southern Spain.
Paper long abstract:
The analysis of social conflicts in Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) raises interesting questions about the redefinition of human-environment relations and the very idea of nature in today's ecological crisis. This paper comparatively examines two different case studies in Andalusia, Southern Spain: the Cabo de Gata-Nijar Natural Park and Los Alcornocales Natural Park. Our goal is to reflect the multiple transformations and outcomes derived from the introduction of conservation measures in both places, paying particular attention to changes in land-use rights, the reshaping of environmental meanings and the physical displacement and/or sentimental alienation of many local inhabitants from their homelands. This examination follows two different strands. On the one hand, we discuss the 'naturalisation' of the environment using western, modernist accounts of nature, that follows on from the introduction of conservation policies in NPAs. We analyse how this redefinition not only affects places, but also the people that inhabit them, in some cases negating the historical role they have played in the shaping of conservation-targeted places. On the other hand, we demonstrate how this 'naturalisation' becomes a source of social conflict, disempowering and in extreme cases evicting certain local groups from natural resources and their management. We analyse how this phenomenon triggers negotiations and resistance, where the idea of nature becomes a central theme of debate surrounding changing identities, questioned belongings and threatened land-use rights.
Paper short abstract:
The presentation analyses the process of negotiation among national park’s officials and interest groups regarding regulations of the use of the park’s lands for recreational purposes.
Paper long abstract:
Triglav National Park (TNP) is Slovenia's only national park and it covers 880 square kilometers or 3% of the state territory. It is regulated by the Triglav National Park Act enacted in 2010. Management of TNP is the responsibility of the Triglav National Park Public Institution, which operates under the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment. In addition to management, research and educational activities, the main aims of the park include nature protection and conservation of the cultural landscape, sustainable park development and promotion of opportunities for enjoyment of the park. Regarding recreation, the TNP supports activities that are in compliance with the primary objective of the national park, i. e. nature protection. The park is currently in the process of spatialisation, which means that, together with different actors in this territory, it is involved in preparing the TNP Management Plan with defined regimes for the use of its lands, including sports and recreation in the park. It envisages a set of regulations such as time limitations for specific sports, the delimitation of special areas for recreation as well as special zones where certain activities are forbidden. The presentation will focus on negotiations among park officials and different sport groups (e. g. mountaineering association and societies, canyoning associations, bikers, base-jumpers etc.) on the use of the park's lands for recreational purposes and will try to present ways in which sport groups try to render the park's regulations less restrictive.
Paper short abstract:
How is the archipelago area and the national park in Southwestern Finland portrayed in media of different kind? Who decides and why what kind of images and pictures are displayed of the archipelago and how does this coincide with the "real" archipelago.
Paper long abstract:
Based upon an ethnological fieldwork conducted in the archipelago of Southwestern Finland in September 2012, I aim to shed light on the images created and distributed of the archipelago area in different kinds of media. What is archipelago like in terms of images and pictures? Is it nature that mostly emerges in these images and how is everyday life visible in these images? Who creates the images and why? In other words, are these images portraying the "reality" of the archipelago or are they refined or photoshopped to suit a certain archipelago profile? My own fieldwork experiences as well as pictures taken, form my material and base for the presentation.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes, from a diachronic perspective, the logics behind the processes of occupation and abandonment of the Island of Ons, which is part of the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park. It combines historical analysis with an ethnography of the daily life of the island.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, a multidisciplinary research project about the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park is presented. We will focus on the analysis of daily life of the island of Ons, to understand the logics behind the processes of occupation and abandonment that took place in this territory. The study includes an archeological and historical part that documents the constant changes in the island diachronically; as well as an ethnographic study. After the decades of 1970s and 1980s, the population in the island decreased until it reached the number of four families, who are currently living all around the year. Two main circumstances will be explored: the rural insular landscape and its disarticulation since the 1960s; and the implications of the creation of the National Park for the socio-economic structure of the island. From a rural economy, the island changed into a touristic landscape. In addition, the paper includes a methodological discussion about the importance of combining ethnographic fieldwork in historical and archaeological grounded studies.
Paper short abstract:
The presentation describes the process of assembling the Tara Hategului Dinosaurs Geopark (Romania) and problematizes conventional understandings of actors, levels of inquiry, knowledge and nature in the anthropological literature on protected areas.
Paper long abstract:
In a movement between ethnographic material and actor network theory, the essay describes the Geopark as an assemblage of human and non-human actors, or, in other words, as a territorialization of a global form, conservation. The transformative work undertaken within the Ţara Haţegului Dinosaurs Geopark is geared towards unearthing and exhibiting the 70-million years old Haţeg Island. Former sites of geological field research are undergoing a process of conservation that turns them into treasures of the Earth under juridical protection substituting a particular understanding of landscape for one that is geared towards conservation: the deep time of the Island becomes an asset that co-interests other agents, be they international funding bodies, the University of Bucharest, local administrations, various profit and non-profit organization. Yet materiality entrenches the compromises of translation. While from a conservational perspective mattering refers to managing and protecting geological sites, the concerns and claims over the fossils, the zoning or the park and the custodianship over the natural patrimony are rather ambiguous and conflict-ridden in the case of the surfaces beneath the soil.
Paper short abstract:
Grounded on the thesis that national parks are complex phenomena of heritage production and protection, and at the same time a place of often conflicting interpretations, this presentation explores forms of interaction between two most important types of players in the Croatian National Park Mljet.
Paper long abstract:
Grounded on the thesis that national parks are complex phenomena of heritage production and protection, and at the same time a place of often conflicting interpretations of the manner of their establishment, regulation, and the use of their natural and cultural resources, this presentation explores forms of interaction between two most important types of players in the Croatian National Park Mljet. These are - and their interests are diverse - inhabitants of the park on the one hand, and representatives of state-level bodies and employees of the National Park on the other. Author will try not only to identify various sources of contestation and conflict between these social actors, but also to discuss some possible ways of facilitating of the interaction between them. Challenges for more reciprocal interaction will especially be analyzed within its political, economic, and cultural context.
E-paper: this Paper will not be presented, but read in advance and discussed