Affecting the Rest of the World: Environmentality and Geography in an Ecotourism Experience

• In Event: Spatial and Geographic Analysis in Environmental Education Research

Abstract

Introduction & Objectives

In 2003, eleven American high school students and four adults (including two researchers) participated in a two-week field-based learning experience in Belize. The trip involved hiking, snorkeling, photographing, investigating and experiencing coral reefs and rainforests. A large portion of the time involved learning from stories told by local naturalists. Participants were given opportunities to re-author these stories through their own small-scale scientific research, journal-writing and on-site interviews.

This study aims to understand how the naturalists’ stories and performances engaged the students with science, environmental conservation, local culture and spatial perspectives. We focus on the sociohistorical and geographic development of these subjectivities and how they shaped particular identity practices among guides, adult participants, and students, leading to the educational embodiment of particular environmental and geographic ideals.


Theoretical Framework(s)

We use the Foucauldian concept of environmentality (Agrawal, 2005) or green governmentality (Foucault, 1991; Luke, 1999) to understand how humans develop constructions of “the environment” and act accordingly. This post-structural theory focuses on discursive mechanisms between the environment and the construction of narratives. We combine this framework with Casey’s (2001) “geographic self” to explain the relationship between identity and place at multiple scales. Connecting the production of environmental and geographic subjectivities allows us to explain how these Belizian educators come to understand themselves as part of larger ecogovernmental spaces.

Modes of Inquiry & Data Sources

This program occurred in two distinct contexts: a field station within a 250,000-acre conservation management area and a barrier reef island. We entered the trip with a broad research question concerning how learning takes place when high school students visit the rainforest. Data sources included semi-structured interviews, field notes, map and document analysis, video-recorded activities and conversations (including storytelling) and student journals.

Results

Local naturalists performed pedagogical identities on the need to conserve the local ecosystem and culture. They positioned themselves as spokespeople of a counter-narrative to American exceptionalism. Additionally, we, as research scientists, and the accompanying high school teacher each exhibited diverse environmentalities that shaped our interactions. Finally, the students re-told versions of the stories and drew on them as access points for understanding science, conservation and their relationship to Belizian cultures. We also discuss the implication of governmental action to preserve the study area by purchasing carbon offsets, and how this action shapes identity and pedagogy.

Scholarly Significance

Ferreira (2000) suggests that environmental educators need to “take seriously the means by which we come to conduct our lives as this will offer us opportunities for conducting them differently” (p. 34). We answer this by analyzing how participants in an ecotourism experience construct and embody conceptions of the environment. Further, by showing how educators develop complex “geographies of citizenship” (Desforges, Jones & Woods, 2005), we explain how geography influences the learning that occurs in this setting. This is important, for environmental education often works to educate students about “the environment” at different scales and we need to study this process with greater geographic sophistication.

Authors

• Joseph A. Henderson, University of Rochester

• Brian Bailey, Nazareth College

• April L. Luehmann, University of Rochester