Contesting Conservation

This book explores today’s changing intellectual climate, wherein understanding politics at different levels from global to local is considered mandatory in order to appraise the outcome of nature conservation interventions. By carefully examining two such processes – the ban on shahtoosh trade and the ‘National Afforestation Programme’ in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the book reveals how these processes are influenced by politics at different levels – from their introduction at the macro-level to their implementation at the micro-level – and in turn become coloured by the agendas and interests of the various stakeholders involved. Throughout the book, one priority is to give a voice to the poor resource-users who have been traditionally dependent on wildlife and forest resources for mere subsistence. Yet, these same people are who bear the brunt of nature conservation costs, rather than those actors who are responsible for the most serious violations in pursuit of greater profits. Contemporary Environmental Sociology is chiefly characterised by its focus on power relations in resource conservation and management. In ‘political ecology’ literature, too – especially after recognising the paradoxes and limitations of approaches such as ‘sustainable development’, ‘sustainable livelihoods’ and ‘community based natural resource management’ – there is a growing concern for critical analyses of multi-level politics in connection with nature conservation. The purpose of the book is not to challenge the gravity of environmental concerns, but to question the dominance of conservation interests over the subsistence needs of local communities, and to strike a balance between environmental and social justice. It argues that, unless and until more just accountability for the affected populations is ensured, conservation policies are unlikely to meet the goals of sustainable resource management. Given its critical engagement with human-nature conflicts in Jammu and Kashmir, the book offers a unique resource for students and scholars of Environmental Sociology, Political Ecology, Natural Resources Management, Conflict Studies and Human Rights Studies.

At a time when the development promise is increasingly in question, with dwindling social gains, the vision of modernity is losing its legitimacy and coherence. This moment is observable through the lens of critical struggles of those who experience disempowerment, displacement and development contradictions. In this book, case studies serve as an effective means of teaching key concepts and theories in the sociology of development. This collection of cases, all original, never previously published and with framing essays by Phillip McMichael, has been written with this purpose in mind. An important additional feature is that the book as a whole reveals the limiting assumptions of development and suggests alternate conditions of possibility for social existence in the world today. In that sense, the book pushes the boundaries of "thinking about development" and makes an important theoretical contribution to the literature.

How can the international conservation movement protect biological diversity, while at the same time safeguarding the rights and fulfilling the needs of people, particularly the poor? Contested Nature argues that to be successful in the long-term, social justice and biological conservation must go hand in hand. The protection of nature is a complex social enterprise, and much more a process of politics, and of human organization, than ecology. Although this political complexity is recognized by practitioners, it rarely enters into the problem analyses that inform conservation policy. Structured around conceptual chapters and supporting case studies that examine the politics of conservation in specific contexts, the book shows that pursuing social justice enhances biodiversity conservation rather than diminishing it, and that the fate of local peoples and that of conservation are completely intertwined.

The book contributes to a recontextualization of authenticity by investigating how this value is created, reenacted, and assigned. Over the course of the last century, authenticity figured as the major parameter for the evaluation of cultural heritage. It was adopted in local and international charters and guidelines on architectural conservation in Europe, South and East Asia. Throughout this period, the concept of authenticity was constantly redefined and transformed to suit new cultural contexts and local concerns. This volume presents colonial and postcolonial discourses, opinions, and experiences in the field of architectural heritage conservation and the use of site-specific practices based on representative case studies presented by art historians, architects, anthropologists, and conservationists from Germany, Nepal, India, China, and Japan. With more than 180 illustrations and a collection of terminologies in German, English, Sanskrit, Hindi, Nevari and Nepali, classical Chinese and standard Mandarin, and Japanese, these cross-cultural investigations document the processual re-configuration of the notion of authenticity. They also show that approaches to authenticity can be specified with key analytical categories from transcultural studies: appropriation, transformation, and, in some cases, refusal.

This book examines the nexus between conservation, land conflicts, and sustainable tourism approaches in Southern Africa, with a focus on equity, access, restitution, and redistribution. While Southern Africa is home to important biodiversity, pristine woodlands, and grasslands, and is a habitat for important wildlife species, it is also a land of contestations over its natural resources with a complex historical legacy and a wide variety of competing and conflicting issues surrounding race, cultural and traditional practices, and neoliberalism. Drawing on insights from conservation, environmental, and tourism experts, this volume presents the nexus between land conflicts and conservation in the region. The chapters reveal the hegemony of humans on land and associated resources including wildlife and minerals. By using social science approaches, the book unites environmental, scientific, social, and political issues, as it is imperative we understand the holistic nature of land conflicts in nature-based tourism. Discussing the management theories and approaches to community-based tourism in communities where there are or were land conflicts is critical to understanding the current state and future of tourism in African rural spaces. This volume determines the extent to which land reform impacts community-based tourism in Africa to develop resilient destination strategies and shares solutions to existing land conflicts to promote conservation and nature-based tourism. The book will be of great interest to students, academics, development experts, and policymakers in the field of conservation, tourism geography, sociology, development studies, land use, and environmental management and African studies.

Natural resource governance is central to the outcomes of biodiversity conservation efforts and to patterns of economic development, particularly in resource-dependent rural communities. The institutional arrangements that define natural resource governance are outcomes of political processes, whereby numerous groups with often-divergent interests negotiate for access to and control over resources. These political processes determine the outcomes of resource governance reform efforts, such as widespread attempts to decentralize or devolve greater tenure over land and resources to local communities. This volume examines the political dynamics of natural resource governance processes through a range of comparative case studies across east and southern Africa. These cases include both local and national settings, and examine issues such as land rights, tourism development, wildlife conservation, participatory forest management, and the impacts of climate change, and are drawn from both academics and field practitioners working across the region. Published with IUCN, The Bradley Fund for the Environment, SASUSG and Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

How the 1970s energy crisis facilitated a neoliberal shift in US political culture. In Energizing Neoliberalism, Caleb Wellum offers a provocative account of how the 1970s energy crisis helped to recreate postwar America. Rather than think of the crisis as the obvious outcome of the decade's "oil shocks," Wellum unpacks the cultural construction of a crisis of energy across different sectors of society, from presidents, policy experts, and environmentalists to filmmakers, economists, and oil futures traders. He shows how the dominant meanings ascribed to the 1970s energy crisis helped to energize neoliberal visions of renewed abundance and power through free market values and approaches to energy. Deeply researched in federal archives, expert discourse, and popular culture, Energizing Neoliberalism demonstrates the central role that energy crisis narratives played in America's neoliberal turn. Wellum traces the roots of the crisis to the consumption practices and cultural narratives spawned by the petrocultural politics of Cold War capitalism. In a series of illuminating case studies—including 1970s energy conservation debates, popular car films, and the creation of oil futures trading—Wellum chronicles the consolidation of a neoliberal capitalist order in the United States through an energy politics marked by anxious futurity, petro-populist sentiment, and financialized energy markets. He shows how experiences of energy shortages and fears of future energy crises unsettled American national identity and power yet also informed Reagan-era confidence in free markets and US global leadership. In taking a cultural approach to the 1970s energy crisis, Wellum offers a challenging meditation on the status of "crisis" in modern history, contemporary life, and critical thought and how we rely on crises to make sense of the world.