Abstract
Abstract The closure of Drake's Bay Oyster Farm in Point Reyes National Seashore, California, ignited a heated local and national conflict regarding the roles of stewardship and conservation and private business in protected areas. It is vital to examine parks and conservation critically to identify places where they are exacerbating resource struggles that often result from globalization and development, in the United States and in other countries. This article uses Foucauldian discourse analysis to identify conflicting discourses present in this conflict and to analyze knowledge and power in relation to issues of resource and land use in protected areas. This analysis highlights differences in scale and logic between the discourse used by local stakeholders, and the discourse used by conservation organizations and Park officials, in the Point Reyes conflict and in other National Parks. Key Words: Political ecology, discourse, aquaculture, oysters, Foucault, National Parks, conservation, land stewardship, Point Reyes, protected areas
Highlights
One sunny afternoon I sat across from Bill Rivers 2 at a café in the small town of Petaluma in West Marin County, California
In this article we examine how the Federal Government, the National Park Service (NPS) and the employees of Point Reyes National Seashore have created a powerful discourse of conservation that has long conflicted with a counter discourse of sustainable local agriculture and working landscapes in the area
We argue that a post-structural analysis of discourses present in this conflict reveals larger difficulties that have made the Drake's Bay Oyster Farm conflict virtually unresolvable and damaging to the community, and there are indications that conflicting discourses are present and problematic in other National Parks in the United States
Summary
One sunny afternoon I (first author) sat across from Bill Rivers 2 at a café in the small town of Petaluma in West Marin County, California. There is a growing counter-literature on the importance of protecting working landscapes that support biodiversity and sustainable human livelihoods to address the problematic erosion of community infrastructure and social capital sometimes present in protected areas (Charnley et al 2014; IUCN 2014; Phillips 1999; Robbins 2012). This literature, focuses on private land and lacks in-depth analyses of working landscapes in or around National Parks and similar protected areas. As the preservation of biodiversity becomes more vital and environmental conflicts more pervasive, parks and protected areas will continue to embody the inherent tensions between environment, resources, and humans
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