Islands of Governmentality: Rainforest Conservation, Indigenous Rights, and the Territorial Reconfiguration of Guyanese Sovereignty

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship increasingly emphasizes that modern state sovereignty does not depend on the control of a strictly bounded and uniformly governed territory. Rather, authority now stems from a variety of different actors, within and external to states, who enact shared forms of power over different areas of national territory for different objectives. In Guyana, contemporary expressions of neoliberal governmentality, environmental conservation and the recognition of indigenous peoples’ rights, have recently emerged as alternative forms of territorial authority in the country's interior rainforest—an area that has historically posed challenges to steady state control. We outline the history and configuration of these territorial ‘islands', demonstrating the ways in which their diverse sources of authority articulate and overlap with—and often contradict—each other, thereby emphasizing that these processes are intrinsic to the very constitution, expansion, and legitimacy of modern state power. This paper contributes to understandings of the territorial reconfiguration of sovereignty in English-speaking South America.