Relations of divergence and convergence. Political ontology at the intersection of protected areas and neoliberal conservation.

We explore how relational thinking in protected area (PA) conservation both converges with and diverges from neoliberal capitalism. Deploying political ontology as a relational mode of enquiry, we identify how modern world-making continues to undermine the goals of PA conservation by constituting it as a practice for demarcating society from nature. An emerging socio-ecological paradigm has seen PA conservation shift from protecting fortresses of nature to managing PAs as sites for selective forms of human immersion in nature. No longer overtly opposing society to 'Nature', this paradigm, however, continues to mask the relations that join nature's conservation to its destruction. Arguing that embedded practices of society-nature dualism reproduce the illusion that modern worlds stand apart from the rest of reality, we explore how the protected inside of PAs is co-created with the outside that threatens them. We describe a growing reliance of PA conservation on world-making practices that create PAs as sanctuaries of scarce and spectacular 'Nature' that drives neoliberal capital accumulation. While inspired by Indigenous practices of human co-becoming in earthly webs, our aim is to identify opportunities within contradictory modern legacies for practices of PA conservation that can recuperate the more-than-human condition. The interplay of life and death in conservation offers one such opportunity for PA practices that revive multilateral relations between diverse lives, human and otherwise. Through this example, we advocate for modest world-making practices in PA conservation that renegotiate the political and economic realities that threaten the Earth. Key policy highlights: Practices of modern dualism embedded in protected area (PA) conservation continue to create the illusion of social separation from nature. Protecting nature by seeking to seclude it from modern societies has strengthened the convergence of neoliberal capitalism and PA conservation. Socio-ecological thinking is yet to significantly challenge the relations that bind PA conservation to the causes of ecological degradation in modern societies. Connecting politics and ontology, we identify opportunities for creative departures in PA conservation that expose the relations between the protected nature within PAs and the threatened nature outside of them. We advocate for relational forms of PA conservation that contribute to political, economic and cultural transformations in modern societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]