Environmentalities and changing subjectivities: A cross-national comparison of Irrawaddy dolphin conservation projects

• In Event: 2251 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 14. Everyday Environmentalism: Critical Perspectives

Abstract

Foucault’s concept of governmentality continues to be one of the most prolific concepts in critical theorizations on the production and reification/hegemonization of neoliberal knowledge. It is no surprise, then, that the deconstruction of the capitalist development-conservation nexus has generated theories of environmental governance such as ‘green governmentality,’ and ‘environmentality.’ However, while such theorizations offer ideas about how governmentalities are meant/intended to function, few have empirically documented the form that resultant changes in subjectivity take. Additionally, most empirical work on changes in subjectivities do not problematize the ontological shifts that often precede and/or accompany such changes. In this cross-national comparison, I examine the socioecological and ontological changes associated with conservation/development projects from the perspectives and experiences of the people most affected by these projects. Through 128 individual interviews, 25 focus group discussions, and participant observation, I compare two approaches to Irrawaddy dolphin conservation: one in Myanmar that focuses on preservation of traditional livelihoods and the other in Cambodia that focuses on neoliberal economic development. Using Fletcher’s environmentality typology, I argue that ‘truth environmentality’ operated in Cambodia to produce nature via the commodification of the dolphin and that, along with the other three forms of environmentality (‘disciplinary,’ ‘neoliberal,’ and ‘sovereign’), it operated to socially reproduce this new relationship to the dolphin and extend it to the ways in which participants relate to their worlds in general. I contrast these findings to those in Myanmar and explain how Myanmar has so far blocked these processes.

Author

• Sierra Deutsch, Wageningen University