Development and the Wild: State, Economy, and Nature
Convenors: Holly High, University of Sydney; Chris Haynes, University of Western Australia
Panel Description: A concerted effort at transforming economies is underway in the form of international development aid and attempts to ‘make poverty history.’ But how do these efforts conflict or overlap with concurrent efforts to make a sustainable future in the form of environmental sustainability and protection? While environmentalism and development can appear at odds with one another, they can also appear complementary. This is particularly apparent in their parallel effects in terms of ‘transforming states,’ especially insofar as they are instrumental in rearticulating ‘governmentality’ and establishing ‘states of exception’. Both rely on constructing persuasive images of the global and the local, and both operate through transnational networks. Biodiversity conservation zones, nature reserves, and protected areas are particularly telling spaces where competing claims for poverty reduction and environmental protection intersect. Environmentalism has always carried with it an aspect of class: there is frequently a positive relationship between economic prosperity and nature loving, despite the contradictory fact that prosperity is often premised on environmental degradation. Likewise, the development industry has a preoccupation with nature. Contemporary trends such as land titling, eco-tourism and ‘sustainable development’ express the urge to both conserve and to transform. This panel brings together papers that utilize ethnographic data to examine the intersection between state, economy and nature.
Abstracts
Andrew Walker, Australian National University - Biodiversity, Protected Areas and the Spectre of ‘Monocropping’ in Northern Thailand
Sarinda Singh, Australian National University - Anti-conservation Discourse as a Strategy of Government in Laos
Holly High, University of Sydney - The Lao Resettlement Controversy: Poverty, Wilderness, and Ethnicity
Nick Long, University of Cambridge - Not the Mountain We Conquer but Ourselves: Self-formation in a ‘Natural Tourist Attraction’ in Kepulauan Riau, Indonesia
Mike Fabinyi, Australian National University - Mutualism or Parasitism? Dive Tourism and Marine Protected Areas
Maylee Thavat, Australian National University - The Marketing of Cambodia: De Facto Organics and De Jure Trade
Erin Hobbs, University of Western Australia - ‘We Are All Environmentalists Now’: Mining Development and the Meaning of Environment in an Ecotourism Destination
Jane Walker, Charles Darwin University and Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre, Alice Springs - Management Narratives: Local Participation in Indigenous Protected Areas
Margaret Ayre, CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Darwin - Doing Ranger Work
Simon Foale, Australian National University - The ‘Subsistence Curse’: How Subsistence Affluence in Melanesia Helps and Hinders Marine Resource Management and Biodiversity Conservation.
Vanessa deKoninck, Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, Darwin - ‘Where is the Equilibrium Here?’: Perceptions of Economy and Conservation
Chris Haynes, Charles Darwin University, Darwin - Strathernograms of Joint Management in Kakadu National Park
