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For cultures around the world, a journey, particularly one undertaken by foot through landscapes that are simultaneously natural and cultural, is both a metaphor for the discovery of the self and t...

In many religions, the simple act of walking from one point to another, sometimes over great distances, becomes a life-changing event, often undertaken only once in a lifetime at great financial an...

Bioenergy development in the Southern United States was said to promise a future with renewable energy, energy independence, expanded wood markets, and rural development. We view this vision of wood-based bioenergy as a sociotechnical imaginary involving a future where energy and rural development needs are met using sustainably-harvested local resources. While this vision has led to bioenergy development, it has not been universally shared and counter-narratives have circulated. Local people receive multiple messages and have diverse experiences with bioenergy, which affect how they interpret the imaginary. We use cultural models to examine the extent and ways that elements of the national bioenergy imaginary occurred in everyday talk in three communities where bioenergy plants had recently been developed. We show how local people articulated, responded to, and altered the national bioenergy imaginary while simultaneously drawing on diverse experiences, values, and other important social discourses. While local people had limited opportunities to alter the national imaginary, they contested and diluted it in ways that indicated that they were not fully in support of the imaginary and the development it spurred. Ultimately, this may hinder bioenergy development.

Wood-based bioenergy in the US South is a key element in a sociotechnical imaginary that brings together rural development, energy independence, and environmental sustainability; it is also a key element in another imaginary in which powerful interest groups from the private sector and government collude in ways that enrich them regardless of success of the endeavor, while simultaneously posing risks to the host community. We contend that bioenergy development can introduce new risks for local communities that are often overlooked in imaginaries promulgating bioenergy as a driver of community resilience. Based on ethnographic research in Soperton, Georgia, site of the failed Range Fuels cellulosic ethanol plant and current LanzaTech experimental plant, we show how various aspects of these imaginaries merge, overlap, and compete as different actors experience the opening—and sometimes closure—of these facilities in rural communities that are often economically depressed, politically conservative, and deeply rooted in forestry both economically and culturally.

Multiple experiences and sources of information influence ideas about wood-based bioenergy, and people often use similar language to reference various discourses (e.g., energy independence, rural development, environmental sustainability). We collected data during ethnographic research in three primary and three secondary field sites in the southeastern United States in which wood-based bioenergy facilities are located and at regional bioenergy conferences, as well as from publications on bioenergy from various sources. We use qualitative content analysis to show how various stakeholders in this region frame issues related to bioenergy, which bioenergy narratives and metaphors they employ, and how recurring linguistic elements are shared among bioenergy stakeholders. We focus on several key metaphors that people reference when they talk about bioenergy in different contexts, including public media, policy and management discussions, bioenergy conferences, outreach programs, and among landowners and within...

International environmental negotiations such as the 10th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP10) are state-dominated, and their outcomes are highly publicized. Less transparent is the role of non-state delegates who effect changes during negotiation processes through myriad strategies and relations. This article focuses on the influence of indigenous peoples and local community (IPLC) delegates in official COP10 negotiations using collaborative event ethnography to identify and evaluate ‘moments of influence’ that have gone largely unnoticed in the literature on global environmental politics. Findings indicate that IPLC delegates influenced negotiations by enrolling, shaming, and reinforcing state actors. Such relational maneuvers and interventions may appear inconsequential, but their implications are potentially far-reaching. Recognizing moments of influence improves understandings of non-state influence, relational power, and the multiple ways diverse actors reach a...

Recent promotion and development of wood-based bioenergy in the U.S. South have targeted cellulosic liquid fuels for the transportation sector and wood pellets for power generation. Bioenergy development has promised to meet multiple sustainability goals including renewable energy, energy independence, new markets for wood, and rural development. On the other hand, it has garnered opposition from environmental groups for threatening forests and air quality and from conservatives who object to government subsidies and doubt climate science. A team of anthropologists undertook research on narratives, interests, and behaviors of various bioenergy stakeholders. We conducted multi-sited and cross-scale ethnographic research around emerging bioenergy facilities and at extension events, workshops, and conferences attended by landowners, managers, bioenergy industry representatives, and scientists. We also analyzed written materials from websites, news articles, and policy statements. We use the concept of imaginaries to analyze of the promotion of wood-based bioenergy as a new sustainable energy system, while noting the ways the dominant bioenergy imaginary excluded some sustainability goals and voices. As a result, counter-narratives emerged, success was limited, and landowners and communities received few of the expected benefits. This case provides important lessons for envisioning and implementing new sustainability technologies.

This special issue introduces readers to collaborative event ethnography (CEE), a method developed to support the ethnographic study of large global environmental meetings. CEE was applied by a group of seventeen researchers at the Tenth Conference of the Parties (COP10) to the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) to study the politics of biodiversity conservation. In this introduction, we describe our interests in global environmental meetings as sites where the politics of biodiversity conservation can be observed and as windows into broader governance networks. We specify the types of politics we attend to when observing such meetings and then describe the CBD, its COP, challenges meetings pose for ethnographic researchers, how CEE responds to these challenges generally, and the specifics of our research practices at COP10. Following a summary of the contributed papers, we conclude by reflecting on the evolution of CEE over time. © 2014 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Win–win solutions that both conserve biodiversity and promote human well-being are difficult to realize. Trade-offs and the hard choices they entail are the norm. Since 2008, the Advancing Conservation in a Social Context (ACSC) research initiative has been investigating the complex trade-offs that exist between human well-being and biodiversity conservation goals, and between conservation and other economic, political and social agendas across multiple scales. Resolving trade-offs is difficult because social problems – of which conservation is one – can be perceived and understood in a variety of disparate ways, influenced (in part at least) by how people are raised and educated, their life experiences, and the options they have faced. Pre-existing assumptions about the “right” approach to conservation often obscure important differences in both power and understanding, and can limit the success of policy and programmatic interventions. The new conservation debate challenges conservationists to be explicit about losses, costs, and hard choices so they can be openly discussed and honestly negotiated. Not to do so can lead to unrealized expectations, and ultimately to unresolved conflict. This paper explores the background and limitations of win–win approaches to conservation and human well-being, discusses the prospect of approaching conservation challenges in terms of trade-offs and hard choices, and presents a set of guiding principles that can serve to orient strategic analysis and communication regarding trade-offs.

New conservation approaches challenge us to go beyond parks and protected areas to conservation in a matrix of land uses. Promoting the use of trees and woody species in landscapes and on farms is a frequently used but under-studied aspect of this approach. This article synthesizes recent field research at six sites in Africa on agroforestry in and around protected areas. It finds that the complex interactions among people, parks, and trees show that for agroforestry to contribute to conservation and livelihoods, policy, technology, and human rights issues have to be addressed.

“The essence of tyranny is the denial of complexity”. Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt The biocultural perspective, a direct result of the crisis narrative regarding cultural and biological extinctions, overemphasises the homogenising effects of globalisation and fails to recognise processes that actively produce diversity. Cartographic visualisations depicting overlapping zones of biological and cultural diversity simplify complex realities and provide little guidance for policy and practice. Moving beyond this perspective requires problematisation of essentialist notions of culture, analysis of the politics surrounding the production of knowledge, and acknowledgement of the anthropogenic nature of landscapes often deemed “pristine”. The biocultural perspective is reviewed within the context of recent trends in conservation, from community-based conservation to the more recent “Strategic Turn” in conservation. To define a new perspective linking cultural diversity and conservation, the authors argue that we need a new politics of knowledge that: (a) moves beyond notions of TEK as the only valid form of local knowledge that can be integrated into conservation planning, (b) examines how local perspectives are translated between scales, and (c) creates new linkages between local knowledge and the policy domain. This new politics of knowledge can help make visible multiple actors, multiple forms of agency, and multiple regimes of credibility and can elucidate the ways in which knowledge about cultural diversity and biological diversity is produced, circulated, and incorporated into decision-making.

In this paper, we first discuss various vantage points gained through the authors' experience of approaching conservation through a "cultural lens." We then draw out more general concerns that many anthropologists hold with respect to conservation, summarizing and commenting on the work of the Conservation and Community Working Group within the Anthropology and Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association. Here we focus on both critiques and contributions the discipline of anthropology makes with regard to conservation, and show how anthropologists are moving beyond conservation critiques to engage actively with conservation practice and policy. We conclude with reflections on the possibilities for enhancing transdisciplinary dialogue and practice through reflexive questioning, the adoption of disciplinary humility, and the realization that "cross-border" collaboration among conservation scholars and practitioners can strengthen the political will necessary to stem the growing commoditization and ensuing degradation of the earth's ecosystems.

SUMMARY Some years ago there was a proliferation of bottom-up models for conservation under the rubric of community-based conservation. More recently there has been a resurgence of protectionist approaches to conservation, and conservation science has moved to large-scale modeling and planning under rubrics such as ecoregional planning, ecosystem management, and transboundary protected areas. Though recognizing that there are compelling reasons for these shifts, we believe that there are many possible paths to implementation and that it is necessary to maintain community and participation as central precepts of conservation. Our argument proceeds in three stages. First, we examine a series of key concepts and approaches in contemporary conservation that we consider problematic. Second, we describe three current research trajectories that we believe have considerable promise in contributing to the development of future approaches to conservation. Finally, we propose a number of specific measures that we be...

Despite a global scientific consensus on the anthropogenic nature of climate change, the issue remains highly contentious in the United States, stifling public debate and action on the issue. Local perceptions of and attitudes toward climate change—how different groups of people outside of the professional climate science community make sense of changes in climate in light of their personal experiences and social, political, economic, and environmental contexts—are critical foci for understanding ongoing conflicts over climate change. Contributing to a growing body of literature on the social science of climate change, we use an ethnographic approach to examine these perceptions and attitudes in three sites in Georgia across the urban–rural continuum. Our research demonstrates that the way people view the concept of climate change, its potential effects, and mitigation strategies are mediated by a range of factors, including political and religious affiliation, race and ethnicity, personal experience, economic status, environmental context, media exposure, and sense of community and place. We argue that an ethnographic approach that explores the perceptions and attitudes of specific communities in detail can add nuance to the broad-scale surveys that have dominated the field to date.

Since 1987, the Malaysian state of Sarawak has been the focus of a broad‐based transnational environmental campaign concerned with large‐scale mechanized logging and the dispossession of indigenous communities. In the present discussion I examine a series of concerns relating to my efforts to write a history of the Sarawak campaign. I do so as a way of elucidating the argument that taking seriously the multi‐sitedness of such research projects, particularly those that focus on subaltern social movements, demands that anthropologists and other scholars engaged in the study of such movements rethink the implications of their ethnographic presence and their efforts at representation. This in turn might have a transformative effect on their thinking about the possibility of alternative forms of ethnographic practice.

(1999). On the practice of transnational cultural critique. Identities: Vol. 6, Ethnographic Presence: Environmentalism, Indigenous Rights, and Transnational Cultural Critique, pp. 179-200.

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and growth of local, national, and transnational environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), national bureaucracies concerned with environmental management, and transnational institutions charged with implementing various forms of global environmental governance. This proliferation and recent theoretical trends within the discipline have contributed to a dramatic upsurge in interest among anthropologists in analyzing this phenomenon. The present discussion is an attempt to take stock of this current research trend within anthropology and to contextualize it within a larger set of topical and theoretical concerns. I examine some of the theoretical and practical sources of our interest in environmentalism and review a series of recent trends in the anthropological analysis of environmental movements, rhetorics, and representations. I also identify a set of other issues that I believe a critically informed anthropology might address in the production of future ethnographic accounts of environmental discourses, movements, and institutions.

Recent years have witnessed the progressive envelopment of environmental politics within institutions for local, national, and global environmental governance. Such institutions inscribe particular forms of discourse, simultaneously creating certain possibilities and precluding others, privileging certain actors and marginalizing others. Apparently designed to ameliorate environmental destruction, these institutions may in fact obstruct meaningful change through endless negotiation, legalistic evasion, and compromise among “stakeholders.” More importantly, however, they insinuate and naturalize a discourse that excludes moral or political imperatives in favor of indifferent bureaucratic and technoscientific forms of institutionally created and validated intervention. Drawing on Rappaport's insights about “the subordination of the fundamental to the contingent and instrumental” (in “The Anthropology of Trouble”), I examine this process of institutional development with reference to an international rain forest campaign that focused on Sarawak, East Malaysia, from the late-1980s to the mid-1990s, [environmentalism, institutionalization, governmentality, rain forest politics, Sarawak (Malaysia)]

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of a loosely woven transnational movement, based particularly on advocacy by nongovernmental organizations working with local groups and communities, on the one hand, and national and transnational organizations, on the other, to build and extend new versions of environmental and social advocacy that link social justice and environmental management agendas. One of the most significant developments has been the promotion of community‐based natural resource management programs and policies. However, the success of disseminating this paradigm has raised new challenges, as concepts of community, territory, conservation, and indigenous are worked into politically varied plans and programs in disparate sites. We outline a series of themes, questions, and concerns that we believe should be addressed both in the work of scholars engaged in analyzing this emergent agenda, and in the efforts of advocates and donor institutions who are engaged in designing and implementing s...

In 1987, there was an uprising of sorts in the remote interior headwaters of Sarawak, East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. In March of that year, Penan hunter-gatherers in the Baram and Limbang Districts of Sarawak suddenly erected more than a dozen blockades against logging companies. Since that time, scores of Penan have been arrested for resisting the activities of these companies by erecting more blockades and engaging in other acts of civil disobedience. In doing so, they have achieved a great deal of international reknown among environmentalists, indigenous rights activists, and the Euramerican public at large. Their story has received broad international media coverage, and scores of celebrities, from politician Al Gore and musician Jerry Garcia to Prince Charles, have spoken out on their behalf. The Malaysian government has responded to these efforts with a vigorous media campaign of its own and, in the process, has come to play an increasingly visible role as a critic of what is portrayed as neocolonialist attempts at control over environmental affairs in the South.Recently I have been examining the international campaign that emerged around the Penan issue in the late 1980s. In a series of interviews with European and American environmentalists, Penan resistance to logging was repeatedly cited as an important influence in the growth of movements promoting rainforest preservation and indigenous rights. Virtually everyone describes the Penan as exemplars of how an indigenous people can assert control over their own destiny and, in the process, halt the loss of global biodiversity. In short, the Penan have become an icon of resistance for environmentalists worldwide.

A characteristic of the mortuary complexes of central Bornean societies is the existence of systems of “death-names.” Death-names are actually titles, given to persons on the death of a relative. This article examines the system employed by Penan Geng hunter-gatherers. What is significant about the Penan complex is that death-names are employed in a wider range of contexts than that of bereavement: they are used 1) to express affection, 2) to verify statements, and 3) as curses. Each of these usages derives from the assumption that reference to the death of a living individual may bring it about. Much recent scholarship on death has been predicated on the assumption that humans deny death. The Penan case would seem to counter this. Penan have incorporated the theme of death into all forms of social discourse. Rather than denying death, this discursive complex uses reference to the death of self or others to social ends.

A characteristic of the mortuary complexes of most central Bornean societies is the existence of systems of so-called ‘death-names’. Most death-names are actually titles, given to persons on the death of a close relative. The most elaborate complex in Borneo exists among Western Penan hunter-gatherers. This paper examines the Western Penan death-name complex, with a view to addressing a basic issue of ethnographic description: how our definition of a phenomenon affects its translation. Previous treatments of death-names have been based on assumptions about the systemic coherence of these complexes. This results in a detached, formalistic description that obscures the essential properties of the phenomenon: the affective force expressed in usage, the temporality inscribed in the process of appellation, and the social calculus that underlies decisions about the use of particular death-names. A more appropriate entry point is one that begins with the context of death and bereavement, and frames decisions about usage with reference to the principles which Penan themselves invoke: the pull between affective position on the one hand, and curse avoidance on the other. Such an approach reveals more about the constitution of social being in Penan society than one based on a priori assumptions of systemic coherence.

There is a growing recognition that conservation often entails trade-offs. A focus on trade-offs can open the way to more complete consideration of the variety of positive and negative effects associated with conservation initiatives. In analyzing and working through conservation trade-offs, however, it is important to embrace the complexities inherent in the social context of conservation. In particular, it is important to recognize that the consequences of conservation activities are experienced, perceived, and understood differently from different perspectives, and that these perspectives are embedded in social systems and preexisting power relations. We illustrate the role of trade-offs in conservation and the complexities involved in understanding them with recent debates surrounding REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), a global conservation policy designed to create incentives to reduce tropical deforestation. Often portrayed in terms of the multiple benefits it may provide: poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and climate-change mitigation; REDD may involve substantial trade-offs. The gains of REDD may be associated with a reduction in incentives for industrialized countries to decrease carbon emissions; relocation of deforestation to places unaffected by REDD; increased inequality in places where people who make their livelihood from forests have insecure land tenure; loss of biological and cultural diversity that does not directly align with REDD measurement schemes; and erosion of community-based means of protecting forests. We believe it is important to acknowledge the potential trade-offs involved in conservation initiatives such as REDD and to examine these trade-offs in an open and integrative way that includes a variety of tools, methods, and points of view.

There is a growing recognition that conservation often entails trade-offs. A focus on trade-offs can open the way to more complete consideration of the variety of positive and negative effects associated with conservation initiatives. In analyzing and working through conservation trade-offs, however, it is important to embrace the complexities inherent in the social context of conservation. In particular, it is important to recognize that the consequences of conservation activities are experienced, perceived, and understood differently from different perspectives, and that these perspectives are embedded in social systems and preexisting power relations. We illustrate the role of trade-offs in conservation and the complexities involved in understanding them with recent debates surrounding REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation), a global conservation policy designed to create incentives to reduce tropical deforestation. Often portrayed in terms of the multiple benefits it may provide: poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and climate-change mitigation; REDD may involve substantial trade-offs. The gains of REDD may be associated with a reduction in incentives for industrialized countries to decrease carbon emissions; relocation of deforestation to places unaffected by REDD; increased inequality in places where people who make their livelihood from forests have insecure land tenure; loss of biological and cultural diversity that does not directly align with REDD measurement schemes; and erosion of community-based means of protecting forests. We believe it is important to acknowledge the potential trade-offs involved in conservation initiatives such as REDD and to examine these trade-offs in an open and integrative way that includes a variety of tools, methods, and points of view. Resumen: Cada vez hay un mayor reconocimiento de que la conservacion a menudo conlleva trade-offs. Un enfoque en los trade-offs puede abrir el camino hacia una consideracion mas completa de los efectos positivos y negativos asociados con las iniciativas de conservacion. Sin embargo, al analizar los trade-offs de la conservacion es importante atender las complejidades inherentes al contexto social de la conservacion. En particular, es importante reconocer que las consecuencias de las actividades de conservacion son experimentadas, percibidas y comprendidas de manera diferente desde perspectivas diversas, y que estas perspectivas se insertan en sistemas sociales y relaciones de poder preexistentes. Ilustramos el papel de los trade-offs en la conservacion y las complejidades que implica su entendimiento con debates recientes en torno de REDD (Reduccion de Emisiones por Deforestacion y Degradacion), una politica de conservacion global disenada para crear incentivos para reducir la deforestacion tropical. A menudo descrito en terminos de los multiples beneficios que puede proporcionar – disminucion de la pobreza, conservacion de biodiversidad y mitigacion de cambio climatico – REDD puede implicar trade-offs sustanciales. Las ganancias de REDD podrian implicar la reduccion de incentivos para que los paises industrializados reduzcan sus emisiones de carbono; la reubicacion de la deforestacion en sitios no afectados por REDD; el incremento de la inequidad en lugares donde la gente que vive de los bosques no tiene certeza sobre la tenencia de la tierra; la perdida de diversidad biologica y cultural que no se alinea directamente con los esquemas de REDD; y la erosion de los medios comunitarios para la proteccion de bosques. Consideramos que es importante reconocer los trade-offs de las iniciativas de conservacion como REDD y examinarlos de manera abierta e Integradora que incluya una variedad de herramientas, metodos y puntos de vista.

Bailey et al. (1989) and Headland (1987) have recently proposed hypotheses stating that human foragers are unable to live in undisturbed tropical rain forests without some reliance on cultivated foods. The present discussion considers these hypotheses, as well as some of the evidence by which they have been tested. Four conceptual problems in the way these hypotheses have been formulated are identified: (1) assumptions about the relationship between key features of tropical forest ecosystems and human subsistence potential, (2) in-consistencies in the definition of “pure foraging,” (3) adherence to a dichotomy between foraging and agriculture, the result being that conscious and unconscious effects of exploitation on the demographic parameters of key resources is ignored, and (4) problems in defining the significance of ecotones. I consider the case of Penan hunter-gatherers of Borneo, a population which, by virtue of their reliance on the sago palm Eugeissona utilis, contradicts the conclusions of Bailey et al. and Headland. I consider salient aspects of Penan reliance on Eugeissona, and describe how Penan exploitation of this resource may positively effect its availability. This case is seen to provide a challenge to the hypotheses of Bailey et al. and Headland, not only in the extent to which it contradicts their conclusions but, more significantly, in what it reveals about the assumptions upon which their hypotheses are based. This points to the need for greater precision in the definition of future hypotheses about foraging in tropical forests.

The Ifugao of northern Luzon, Philipppines, have been the subject of numerous ethnographic accounts in the present century. All of these convey the centrality of rice, both agronomically and as a cultural idiom. The impression gained from these ethnographies is that everything truly Ifugao emerges in some degree from rice. However, one consideration that all take note of but none fully account for is that the sweet potato comprises over half of the Ifugao diet. The following discussion considers the implications of Ifugao subsistence production for the interpretation of structurally constituted events and notions of social being. Ifugao agricultural production is first generally described, and the differential significance of rice and sweet potato is considered. Ifugao social structure is then discussed in terms of a key principle, that of family solidarity. The generative significance of this principle is demonstrated with reference to Ifugao stratification. Finally, the manner in which social structure is manifested in the distribution of products is discussed. Production and social existence are seen to be linked by significance; that is, by the meaningful qualities with which products are imbued.