Introduction: Hybrid Landscapes: Science, Conservation, and the Production of Nature

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The articles included in this special collection examine implementation of varied conservation agendas, seeking to integrate strengths of a political ecology framework with insights derived from Science and Technology Studies (STS). By taking an ethnographic approach to study of conservation projects, they challenge nature/culture divide so central to Western philosophical tradition and draw attention to ways in which and culture are co-constituted in and through practice.In his landmark essay Ideas of Nature, Raymond Williams famously observed that the idea of contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human (1980:67). Williams traced notion of a singular, abstracted from age of antiquity to modern period, examining how it was that Nature came to be viewed as a separate realm of which humans were not a part. He notes that classical accounts defined as simply the quality of or essential constitution of (1980:68), but this view came to be refined in early Christian period, as Nature came to be understood as God's minister or deputy (1980:69).With growth of modern sciences, this understanding gradually gave way to a notion of as something with its own laws that could be understood and manipulated for benefit of humans, an idea that persists to this day (see also Guha 2000). By mid-19th century, however, growing acceptance of evolutionary theory began to unsettle idea of a stable and orderly nature. Furthermore, view of existence as a ruthless, competitive survival of fittest that accompanied this new perspective gave heightened legitimacy to increasingly stark forms of social and environmental exploitation, as inequalities produced by capitalist market economy increasingly came to be viewed as a reflection of natural order of things (Williams 1980:73; see also Johnson and Murton 2007).Paradoxically, Williams notes that it was only during this period-when capacity of humans to reshape world to suit their own ends had escalated to new heights-that conceptual separation between humans and was finally complete. The ravages of industrial society ultimately gave rise to fetishization of remote, inaccessible, and marginal landscapes, which began to be seen as places of beauty, tranquility, and primal innocence (Williams 1980:80; see also Grove 1995). As many other scholars have noted, this ethos was at heart of emergence of national parks movement in US and global protected areas movement that followed (Brockington et al. 2008, Neumann 2004, Walley 2004, West et al. 2006). This romanticization of unspoiled, pristine landscapes, however, masked degree to which many of these places had been shaped by human activity, whether consciously or not. As Williams explains: ...to speak of man 'intervening' in natural processes is to suppose that he might find it possible not to do so... (1980:74).Building upon insights of Williams and others, a number of anthropologists (Balee and Erickson 2006, Bateson 1972, Gupta 1998, Tsing 2005), environmental historians (Arnold 1996, Braudel 1992, Cronon 1983), and cultural geographers (Denevan 1992, Neumann 1998, Peet and Watts 2004, Zimmerer and Bassett 2003) have endeavored to break down binary divisions between and culture, drawing attention to degree to which human groups and their surrounding environments have been co-constituted over time. These scholars have been instrumental in challenging reified and abstracted understandings of nature as a realm outside of culture and history or an inanimate storehouse of natural resources, as well as overly deterministic accounts which presented environmental adaptation as primary driver of human social relations (Little 1999, Orlove 1980). …