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    6 views31 pages

    After Nature Steps To An Antiessentialist Political Ecology

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    Mara Monteiro
    Ecologia Política

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    After Nature: Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology Arturo Escobar Current Anthropology, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Feb., 1999), 1-30. Stable URL: fttpflinksstor.orgsici?sici=001 1320428 1999025204023 3C L%BAANSTAA GAB 0.CO%AB2-P Current Anthropology is curcently published by The University of Chicago Press. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhupvful-jstor-orp/abouv'terms.himal. ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have ‘obtained prior permission, vou may not download an entire issue of a joumal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial us. Please contact the publisher cegarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at bhupsfuk-jstor-orp/journals/uepress.ftml Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transtnission. ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding ISTOR, please contact support @jstor.org- hupsfuk.jstor.org/ ‘Sun Aug 21 21:55:43 2005 Cunnent Awrinarocagy Volume 49, Number 1, Bebeuary 2999 {5 ggg by The WennersGren Faundstion fat Antiroplegeal Reseteh. Al sighs reserve core 32/ag/agot000153.00 After Nature Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology’ by Arturo Escobar This paper pesese the outhine af ax scthropologicl political ‘logy da ly ackroleges the constructs of Tare sre teagesting wept weave teeter the enteral and the bi Iege gnconstucivs grounds Pom mopial rin fren to ‘ead Bowedology ioral, the esouees for invend a {nes and cultres a unevesly dusted: Je paper proponce, Shvantescataist amework fr mvesepating the mata deems ce he avaal takes in eocaya sed. This proposal bua om eumene ends (ccologelanthsopclogy, alia ecol Gy. and social and ultra ies of ease an technology ie fnultag cameos denis and conceptalzes ares da tine but incencateg nature regmes"ongane, capt, and ‘ethno-andseotches thes cherceenste, ste actors, Sed tse: concadicuone Toe pola! iplteatons of the anaiy- Sate discassed terms of he stems of pid mars eat, feoat seta gr sem toe faced with a hey encounter, and Seem, pordcular masifeatons of the extconmer Antone Escosan is Profescar of Anthropology at the Universey (of Massachusetts, Amherst |Amherst, Mass. or003, U.S.A). Bore and raised in Colombie, be was eductced initially in the fences, with a BS. cheruical engineering at che Universidad del Valle in Cali, Calambi {ro75) a year cf graduate work in bio- chemistry at ce same university, and a Master's in cutrition and food science st Cornell University (e078). Alter an interdseipline ary PhD. at Berkeley (2687), he taugt at ehe University of Cai fornia, Santa Crs, and Smith College before joining the fzcaley at the University of Massachusetts in c9g4, His incevesta ate por Liucal ecology 2nd the anthropology of developmen, social move ments, and stience and technology. He is ene author af Enceur- tering Development (Princeton: Princeton Univetsiey Press, 7595), sad cnedieor of Colts of Politics Politic of Cultures: Re ‘lsloning Latin American Social Movements Boulder. Westview Press, 1998) He ig currently working cn 2 book based on feld- work in the Pacific Coast rain fest of Colembia tencatvely teneited Hyinad Natures: Cultural and Biologtea! Diversity in tise Lave Twentieth Cencury, Tne present paper was submitted A} MK gy and accepted $198; the Bnal version reached the Ee tors office 311 98 1. The base framework of this paper was frst presented in 4 panel ‘nthe anthropology of science a che 1994 anriual meetings of the ‘American Anthropalogseal Assecistin. thank Rayna Repp for her ‘comments on that occasion. The frst ful-lengch version was pre pared for Neil Sroith’s special seminar, "Ecologies: Rethinking Nature/Ouleare” at Rutgers Universey, Qetober 32, 1996. thank hhim and che other parieipants for thelr generous and ctestive com. ‘ments. ao chank Dianne Rochelesu, Soren Fvalkol, Aletta Bier- ‘ack, and sade my sade ein om the ancopslay of nature (Fall 1996} or enieal comments on the paper's ideas ‘Ac che end of the 20th century, the question of nature remains unresolved in. any modern social or epistemo- logical order. By this I mean not only modern people's inability to find ways of dealing with nature without de- stroying it but the fact that the answers given to “the question of nature” by modem forms of knowledge— from the natural ta the human sciences—have proven insuificient to the task, despite the remarkable leap for- ‘ward they seem to have taken in recent decades. That at the root of most environmental problems lie particular forms of social organization—domineering, capitalist, patriarchal, or what have you—is no explanation for the Impasse at which. the ‘environmental sciences find themselves today. The fact is that we (who, and why?) seem compelled t0 raise the question of nature in a new. way. Could it he because the hasic constructs with which modernity has equipped us for this task—includ- ing nature and culture hut also society, culture, polity, and economy—no longer allow us to interrogate our selves and nature in ways that might yield novel an- swersi Ox perhaps because, as Marilyn Strathemn (19924) has suggested, we have entered an epoch which is defined by the sense of heing “after nature"? The “crisis of nature” js alsa a crisis of nature’s iden- tity, The meaning of nature, to be sure, has shifted throughout history according to cultural, socioeco- nomic, and political factors. As Raymond Williams suc- cinetly pucit, “the idea of nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history" (90:68, Rejecting essential statements about the na- tute of nature, he goes on to assert that in stich state- ‘ments “the idea of nature is the idea of man... the idea ‘of man in society, indeed the ideas of kinds of societies” fp. 72}. That nature came to be thought of as separate from people and increasingly produced through laber, for instance, is related to the view of “man” brought ahout by capitalism and modernity. Following in Wil- liams’s tadition, Barbara Bender writes that people’s experience of nature and landscapes “is based in large measure on the particularity of the social, political and economic relations within which they live aut their lives" [39930:246). A landscape ethnography emerges from these works which would read history back into the seemingly natural text of nature ‘There are other sources that newly unsettle our Long- standing undesstanding of nature. As various writers have observed Haraway rg9t, Strathem 1992b, Rabi now 1992, Soper r996}, we might be witnessing—in the wake of unprecedented intervention into nature at the moleculat level—the final decline of the modean ideol- ogy of naturalism, that is, the belief in the existence of Pristine Nature outside of history and human context. ‘Let us be clear about what this ideology entails. We are talking here about nature as an essential principle and foundational category, a ground for both being and soci- evy, nature as “an independent domain of intrinsic value, truth, or authenticity” (Soper 1996:22}.'To assert the disappearance of this notion is quite different from denying the existence of a biophysical reality—predis ‘cursive and presocial, if you wish—with structures and 1 2) CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 40, Number :, February 1999 processes of its own which the life sciences wry to un- derstand. It means, on the one hand, that for us humans (and this includes life scientists and ecologists} nature is always constnicted by our meaning-giving and dis- cursive processes, so that what we perceive as natural is also cultural and social, said differently, nature is si miultaneously real, collective, and discursive—fact, power, and discourse—and needs to be naturalized, soci Ologized, and deconstructed accordingly (Latour 1993} On the other hand, it means that our own beliefs in na- ture 48 untouched and independent are giving way— ‘with molecular technosciences ftom recombinant DNA to gene mapping and nanotechnology—to a new view of nature as artificially produced. This entails an un- precedented ontological and epistemological transfor- mation which we have hardly begun to understand. ‘What new cambinations of nature and culture will be- come permissible and practicable? Worldwide, the transformation of the biological is yielding a great variety of forms of the natural. From tropical rain forests to advanced biotechnology labora- tories, the enltural and biological resources for collec- tively inventing natures and identities are very un- evenly distributed. As much as identities, natures can be thought of as hybrid and multiform, changing in character from place to place and from one set of prac tices to another. In faet, individuals and collectivicies are compelled today to hold various natures in tension. One might situate these natures according to various ‘coordinates or draw cartographies of concepts and prac tices to orient oneself in the complex feld of the natu- sal, This paper will suggest one such particular cartogra- phy in terms of the axes of the organic and the artificial ‘The first part presents the basic principles of philo: sophical and political antiessentlalism. The second pro- poses a framework of nature regimes an antiessentialise grounds, identifying organic, capitalist, and techno- natures. The third pact argues ftom the perspective of rain-forest social mavements for the inevitability of hy- brid natures in the contemporary world. This part also readdresses the question of the possible relation be- tween the biological and the social sciences in terms of antiessentialist conception. In the conclusion I. deal ‘with some of the political implications of the analysis Antiessentialism: From History to Political Ecology Political ecology is the most recent fleld to claim a stake in illurainating “the question of nature.” Its main predecessors were the variety of orientations in culeural and human ecology in vogue from the 19508 to the 19708 {see Hvalkof and Escobar 1998 for review and Kottak 1997, Moran 1990), The field seems to he experi- fencing a renaissance today. While geographers and eco- logical economists have taken the lead in this endeavor (Blaikie and Brookiield 1987, Bryant ro9a, Peet and ‘Watts 1996, Mattinez Aliet 1995, Rocheleatt, Thomas- Slayter, and Wangati 1996] other fields, suck as anthro: pological political economy {Johnston 1994, 997; Greenberg and Park t994; Brown nd, social ecology {Heller n.d_), feminist theory, enviconmental histary, sociology, and historical archaeology, are joining in this, collective effort. The initial step, as some recent re- viewers see it, was the infusion, in the 1970s, af cultural and human ecology with considerations of political economy [Bryant 1992, Peet and Watts 1996). In the r980s and the 19908, this political-economy-driven po- litical ecology absorbed other elements, particularly the poststructuralist analyses of knowledge, institutions, development, and social movements {Peet and Watts, 1996) and femninist insights into the gendered character of knowledge, environment, and organizations (Rocke- cau, Thomas-Slayter, and Wangari r996). From these ‘wo recent volumes—intended to guide research under the rubrics of liberation ecology and feminist political ecology, respectively—a more nuanced account of both, nature-society relations and political ecology is emerg- ing, It highlights the interwoven character of the discur- sive, material, social, and cultural dimensions of the human-environment relation. While empirical smdies based on these frameworks have been taking place for some years, “in a sense the theoretical work has only just began” (Peet and Watts 1996:39}. This paper takes these accomplishments asa point of departure in reexamining the human-environment rela- tion in the context of both the ontologica} transforma. tion of nature and its unevenness. Building upon che Inreakdown of the ideology of essential nature and echo: ing wends in poststructuralist feminist, political, and critical race theories,*it asks: Is it possible to articulate, an antiessentialist theory of nature? Is there a view of ‘ature that goes beyond the truism that nature is con- structed to theorize the manifold forms in which it is culturally constructed and socially produced, while fully acknowledging the biophysical hasis of its consti- tution? Moreover, is an antiessentialist stand not a nec- essary condition for understanding snd radicalizing con- temporary social struggles over che biological and the cultural? On the political side, what implications ‘would such a stand have for social struggles, collective ‘identities, and the production of expert knowledge? Fi- nally, is it possible to construct a theory of nature that, will give us an indication of the totality of forms nature, takes today without heing totalizing? Postmadernists and poststructuralists have too hast- ily come to think that since there is no nature outside of history, there is nothing natural about nature. AS Kate Soper (1996) constructively points out, this has placed cultural theorists at odds with environmental- ists, wha for the most part continne ta espouse the be- 2. Forposeeentenalise political cheony I tely particularly on Lacla and Mouffe [15857 Mouite 1993, Laclau cou6} A comprehensive {eader on enstical ace theory ix Delgado (299s), Postarructuralist and antiestencislist debates in fericist theary caver a vast eld Impossible «0 summarize in this paper, Twill vefer the reader 10 those dhat focus om nature and enviranment istuss, parieulanly Haraway (1989, 1991, 1998) lief in external, prediscursive nature (Soule and Lease 1995) Its necessary to strive for a more balanced posi- tion tisat acknowledges both the constructedness of na ture in human contexts—the fact that much of what ccologists refer to as natural is indeed also a product of ‘culture—and nature in the realist sense, that is, the ex- istence of an independent order of nature, including a biological body, the representations of which construc- tivists can legitimately query in terms of their history political implications, It is thus that we can navigate between ““nature-endorsing’ and ‘nature-sceptical’ pet- spectives” in order “to incorporate a greater awareness of what their respective discourses on ‘nature’ may be ignoring and politically remnessing” (Soper 1996: 24; see also Berglund 998]. For constructivists, the challenge Jies in learning to incorporate into their analyses the biophysical basis of reality; for realists it is examining their frameworks from the perspective of their histari- cal constitution—accepting that, 2s scholars in science and technology studies have been demonstrating, the natural sciences axe nat auistorical and nonidealogical This double and pressing need rust he addressed in any political ecology framework. As Roy Rappaport put it, ‘the relationship of actions formulated in terms of meaning to the systems constituted by natural law within which they accur is, in my view, the essential problematic of ecological anthropology” (1390:60). This, statement suggests the need for a dialogue herween ‘hose who study meanings and those who study natu- ral lav.” From here, however, to an anticssentialist theory of nature that acknowledges equally the cultural and the biological there is a vast terrain to cover.’ Politics and science do not Jend themselves to easy articulation. A. political theory of nature has yet to be built. The sources of antiessentialism arc multiple. Two of its more eloquent proponents, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Moutfe, start by recognizing that the political “must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every hu. man society and determines our very ontological condi. téon” (Mouffe 19933). {I would add, including our con- dition as biological beings) Social fe, they argue {Laclau and Moutfe 1985, Moufie 1993, Laclau 1996), is inhesently political in that it is the site of antagomisms that arise out of the very exercise of identity. Every identity is relational, which means that the existence of any identity entails the affirmation of difference and, hhence, @ potential antagonism. Antagonisms are consti- tutive of social life. In addition, given that meaning can- not be permanently fixed—a basic postulate of herme- ncuties and poststrcturalism—identities are the result of articulations that are always historical and contin- gent. No identity or society can be described from a sin- sle and universal perspective. Similarly, with poststructuralism’s theory of the sub- 3, ‘The contradiction, peshaps inevitable, between the cultural and he bislogiel is, in my view, amang the most fundamental prob: lepes ca he addressed by an ecologically avave anchopalogy” Rep. aport 1590.56), uscopar After Nature | 3 ject we are further compelled to give up the liberal idea Of the subject as a seli-bounded, autonomous, rational individual. The subject is produced by/in historical dis- courses and practices in @ multiplicity of domains ‘Antiessentialist conceptions of identity highlight the fact that identities (racial, sexual, ethnic, or what have youl are continually and differentially constituted — partly in contexts of power—rather than developing out of an unchanging and preexisting core. What matters, then, is to investigate the historical constitution of sub- jectivity as a complexity of positions and determina- tions without any true and unchanging essence, always ‘pen and incomplete. Some see this eritique of essen- tialism arising out of poststructuralism, thephilosophy of Language, and hermeneutics as a sine qua non for rad: ical social theory today and for understanding the wid- ening of the field of social struggles {Laciau 1996, Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar 1998) Is the category “nature” susceptible to this kind of analysis? If seemingly solid categories like society and the subject have been subjected to anciessentialist cri- tique, why has nature proven so tesistant? Indeed, even so entrenched a category as “the capitalise economy” hhas heen the target af a recent antiessentialist decen tering {Gibson-Graham 1996). The poststructutalist re- thinking of the social, the economy, and the suhject— and other targets of antiessentialist thought, particu- larly binary gender and essential racial identities—sug- gests ways of rethinking nature as having no essential identity. As in the case of the other categories men- tioned, the analysis would have a dauble goal: to exam- ine the constitutive relations that account for “na- ture’’—-biological, social, culeural—and to open the way for revealing ethnographically or imagining discourses of ecological eultural difference that do not reduce the multiplicity of the social and biological worlds to a sin- ale overarching principle of determination ("the laws of the ecosystem,” “che mode of production,” "the knowl. ‘edge system,” genetics, evolution, ete.) If discourses of nature can be said ta have heen either biocentric {partic- ularly in the natural sciences) or anthropocentric{in the social and the human sciences|, itis time to question what is taken as essential co “nature” or “Man in these discourses. Ar the end of the road we might be able to recognize a plurality of natures—capitalist and noncap. italist, moder and nonmodern, let us say for now—in which hath the social and the biological have central, albeit not essential, roles to play. Let us now attempt a definition of political ecology that will facilitate this anticssentialist exercise. I pro- pose this definition as a theoretical minimum for the task at hand: Political ecology can be defined a5 the study of the manifold articulations of history and biol ‘ogy and the cultural mediations through which such ar- ticulations are necessarily established. This definition does not rely on the common categories of nature, envi ronment, of culture (as in cultural ecology, ecological anthropology, and much of environmental thinking) oF fn the sociologically oriented nature and society (asin ‘Marxist theories of the production of naturel. The 4|cuanent anrenororocy Volume 49, Number 1, February 1999 choice of history and biology has a precedent in Mi- chelle Rosaldo’s (r980] attempe at analyzing the rela- tion between sex and gender in terms of what she called ‘the mucial accommodation of biology and history.” It also resonates with some recent proposals for looking at history/biology intetaction from phenomenological perspectives. It may he objected that in the proposed definition T am introducing biology and history as new and perhaps essential and binary centers of analysis. This may be s0, although the binarism will be compli- cated shortly. The definition does, however, displace nature and society from their long;held position of pav- ilege in Western analyses, “Nature” is a specifically modern category, and many nonmodemn societies have bbeen shown to lack such a category as we understand it {Williams 1980, Strathern r980l, [ have already sug ‘gested that our modem notion of nature is also disap- pearing under the weight of new technologies. “Soci- ety” has similarly been shown by-poststructuralist cnitics to lack the stricture and laws with which it has been endowed by the social sciences and not to exist in many nonmoder contexts. Thus in both the nonmod- em and the postmodern domain we find nature and so- ciety absent conceptually, and the attempt to construct an analysis that does not rely an these categories has political and epistemological dimensions, Defined as the articulation of biology and history, po- litical ecology examines the manifold practices through which the biophysical has been incorporated into his- tory—more accurately, in which the biophysical and the historical are implicated with each other. Examples range from chose that can be gleaned from the prehis- toric past to the most contemporary and futuristic— from ancient articulations through agriculture and for- estry to molecular technologies and artificial life, ik we understand this latter as a particular representation of the biology/histary relation, Fach articulation has its history and specificity and is related to modes of percep: tion and experience, determined by social, political, economic, and knowledge relations, and characterized hy modes of use of space, ecological conditions, and the like, It will be the cask of political ecology to outline and characterize these processes of articulation and its goal to suggest potential articulations realizable today and conducive to mare just and sustainable socia] and ecological relations. Another way to state this goal is to say that political ecology is cohcerned with finding new ‘ways of weaving together the biophysical, the culeural, and the technoeconomic for the production of other ‘types of social nature Antiessentialist Political Ecology: Regimes of Nature ‘To facilitate the task of visualizing the span of articula tions of the hiological and the historical, Jet us conduct 4 brief imagination exercise. Let us situate ourselves in 4 tropical rain-forest area such as the Pacific Coast of Colombia, where I have heen working in recent years* We sec here three actors at work. The first of these is ‘made up of local black and indigenous communities that for several centuries have heen active in the cre- ation of lifeworlds and landscapes of particular kinds. ‘These lifeworlds and landscapes are unfamiliar to us. Let us say that we start out journey at the source af ane of the innumerable rivers that flow from. the Andean slopes towards the littoral and that as we descend we find that indigenous communities give way to black settlements and, as the river opens into an estuary, we start sceing stall towns and even a few whites. Soon wwe find ourselves faced with a very different landscape, one that we immediately recognize. Perhaps it isa plan- tation of African palm ot an orderly succession of large rectangular pools (over # hectare each] for the artificial cultivation of shrisap for export. Here we find a capital- ist at work, making development happen and, he ar- gues, providing jobs for hundreds of black workers in the plantations or in the shrimp and fish packaging plants, in his view, such worlers would otherwise be idle in the slums of 4 nearby town, which has doubled its population in scarcely 4 decade, fram 50,000 10 100,000. This capitalist is our second actor. Not far from the plantation is an indigenous territory that has recently received « strange visitor, already known in other places as a biodiversity prospector. She has come to the region, pethaps sent by a botanical gar- den in the United States or Europe, perhaps by a phar- maceutical company, in search of plants with poten- ally useful commercial applications, She is in fact interested not in the plant itself but in its genes, which she will take back to her home country. Let us imagine that these genes eventually end up being used t0 modify humans in ways that make them tesistant to certain 4. My research in his ar includes 18 months of fieldwork enue dy t903—fanuary 1994, Summers 2994, 1996 19971 anda con. ieriey eon Scrvation and development planness, sad the gawit sebolrly ‘erwore Focused on the seston, Very bre, the Pacike coset r- flan excenas from Panna in the north to Eauedor im the south and from the westermose chain ofthe Andes to tne seean The region he one ofthe highest levels of hologleal civeray inthe word ‘About 60% of the resins gooo0 inbabiants fean;ma Alo Calorabians, so.000 bers, Watinans, and ether indigenous peas ple, and mestizo colonists ive fe the few large tome, the ves Fabicing the bake of dhe yeore than ago rvecs of te area Black and indigancus people have sainesis disnct mater aug cul tual practices, Such se mluple subsistence and economic sciv ties involving agrcultir fching, hunting, guchecng, and smal fcale gold mining and inher collection, Conventital develop iment and capitalist accvisies [Alien pal, ember, golé mining, Shrimp cUltivacion, tourism] have mereased greatly since the Tasos. The new Colombien conacieaion of s99% geantedculeorl 0d tecrtrial rights 20 che blake commutes a significant Black ‘ovement of ethnocultiral and ezalogical orientation has beer [Rovwing a8 30 atwemipt co defend the region ftom development and apialistitranton and to pres for the demareation or ting of salleciv temtores For general bacgraund and ethoogeaphic in formation, see Escobar ad Pedrotn (rossi an ebnographie reat rent of biodiversity conservation, see Escobar (rg97, #9984) 8 the region's bark movement, sce Grice, Roses, and Escahat liag6 The blac movement pola! ceology ts scussed sn Es cobar (19984) diseases, to produce transgenic organisms or products, or pethaps even to create an entire tropical environment in a northern latitude out of a collection of genes from. many tropical forests—whether in actual biological or virtual form. This is the third and final actor in the nar- rative of nature we want to construct." Finally, let us now situate ourselves in the space of perception of an activist of the social movement of black communities that has emerged in ehis region as a result of the many changes that have taken place there, including the arrival of the capitalist, the development planner, and the prospector. This activist grew tp in a river community and migrated to one of the big cities, in the Andean part of the country in scarch of educs- tion; she is now back organizing for the defense of the cultral and biophysical landscapes of her tego many activists are in fact women), If we take 2 step back and Joak ac what she is doing, we can say that she is holding various landscapes, various natures in tension: foremost in her mind is the landscape of forest and rivers and set- tlements of her childhood, populated with all kinds of Deings, from. the beautiful coconut and staidi® palm ‘ees fo the visions and spiritual heings that populate the under- and supraworlds. If she is in her early twent- ies, perhaps she also grew up alongside of the disci plined landscape of the plantations. As an activist, she has become aware of the discourse of biodiversity and of the fact that her region is in the mire of international organizations, Norther environmental NGOs, multi national corporations, and the government of her own country, all intent on having access to the allegedly rich genetic resources of the region. Social mavement activists—along with all of us in ‘our own ways and with different natures in mind—have to bold these various Jandscapes in tension—the “or ganic” landscape of the communities, the capitalist landscape of the plantations, and the technoseape of the biodiversity and biotechnology researchers and entre- preneurs. A¢ the risk of oversimplification and rigidity, Tweant to suggest that the three actors just sketched em: body significantly different regimes of articulation of the historical and the biological, Twill refer to these re- simes as organic nature, capitalist nature, and techno- nature respectively. [ retain the term “nature” because of our historical proximity to the modem regime, for which nature is a dominant category. In what follows, [would like to lay down the rudiments of a character ization of each of these regimes, hut itis first necessary to make some general and cautionary observations about the madel to clarify its character, 5.1do not sean to educe the biodivecsty canservation mavertent fo biadiversiey areapecting, this ene exercise is only suggestive of certain tends and possibilities 6 The tps af these cers are used co produce the “hearts of palm’” that ae tld in supermarkets of wealthy countries in canned farm. ‘The enciee palm is usually cue daw for ens parpose. Attempts ate tinder way in same pares of the Pacific region to establish planta ‘one of diferent species for commercial production, but the nat ely accra nei which does not reproduce cay, has ben escasan After Nature| 5 First, this is an antiessentialist model. Te is well ac~ cepted already that nature is differently experienced ac- cording to one’s social pasition and that it is differently produced by different groups or in different historical periods. These assertions, however, imply a modern or- der in which experience can be gauged according to modem forms of production and social relations. They do not allow a theorization of the radical alterity in the social forms of natuze. The nature regimes can be seen as constituting a structured social torality made up of multiple and irreducible relations, without a center or origin, that is, a Held of artienlations (Gibson-Graham 1996-26) there is a double articulation, within each re- aime and hetween one and another. The identity of each regime is the result of discursive articulations—wich biological, social, and cultural couplings—that take place in an overall fleld of discursivity wider chan any particular regime (Laclau and Mouffe 198517 Second, the three regimes do not represent a Linear se- quence or series af stages in the history of social nature. ‘They coexist and overlap. Morcover, they co-produce each other; like cultures and identities, they are rela- tional, Whac matters is examining their mutual articu- lations and contradictions—the ways in which they vie for control of the social and the biological. Humans in, these three regimes are differently located, have differ- ent conceptualizarions, and place differentiated de- ‘mands on the biological. What they Jocate in bialogy or in history varies, said differently, they bring different histories inta the biological, and, conversely, the hiolog- ical takes different forms and possibilities in each {al though at some level nature is “always the same”) The three regimes are thus the subject of tensions and contestations; Inophysical laws, meanings, labor, knowledge, and identities are important, although with diverging intensities and configurations, in all of them. The regimes represent actual or potential apparatuses for the production of the social and the biological. They could he seen as moments in the overall and differenti ated production of social-biological nature, Finally, i¢is important co say from the outset that the organic re ime is not essential but historical; it docs not corre- spond to “the natural”; i is not stable or settled, and it is as constructed and connected to other assemblages a8, capitalist and techno- natures. Organic nature does not rest on a wholesome cultural framework—although 3¢ is characterized by a more integral connection between culture and bialogy—hut relies on ceassemblages and recombinations of organisms and practices, albeit some- 7. The nature repimes can 2lgo be likened to a inactal totale, in {ve sense ip which Paul Giltoy (1993) speaks of the black Atlantic fy. fesctal seractare wherein many identsties, political cultures, and cultural polities coewise A fractal seructure has no beginning frend but is always im Fux berween states that ate different yet Sitar eo each other, according to 2 cesseless tecursivly. Fractal theotieslike theories of articulation offer & Vision af a crality ‘without being totalizing. It can be satd that the various regimes of ratte produetion exeate a facta) ecology. Finally, the amcesses- (abst adel of nature regimes ean be related to Palany's prot ntiessentialist model of the economy 2s instituted process [1957] and co Poucaule’sf1973) notion of epistemes 6|cunnent antHROPOLOGY Volume 4o, Namber 1, February 1999 Limes incongruent with those characteristic of moder capitalise nature ‘Third, the knowledge we have at our disposal for ex amining each regime is uneven and differentiated, I pro- ppose to approach each regime from the perspective of the particular form of knowledge that seems best suited to its study, I will suggest that we can more anprapri- ately study organic nature through the anthropology of Joeal knowledge, capitalist nature in terms af historical thaterialisma, and technonature from the perspective of seience-and-technalogy studies. These framewarks are regime-specific modes of analysis because of their af- finities, commitments, and theoretical orientations. A final corollary of these qualifications is that the model is built from a certain partial perspective, that of the critical, antiessentialist political ecologist bound by history to mademn capitalist natuse but attempting (0 visualize a discourse of difference in which organic and techno- natures can become visible in all of their al terity and in which alternative discourses of nature and culture can be cultivated.* CAPITALIST NATURE: PRODUCTION AND. MODERNITY The regime we know est is capitalist nature, which emerged in post-Renaissance Fusope and crystallized ‘with capitalism and the advent of the modem epistemic. arder in the late r8th century. A mumber of its aspects, will be reviewed here under fone rubrics—new ways of seeing, rationality, governmentality, and the commodi- fication of nature Linked to capitalise modemicy. ‘The development of new ways of seeing has been di- rectly linked to the emergence af capitalist nature: the invention of lineat perspective, linked to realist paint- ing {freezing place from a particular point of view and locating the viewer outside of the picture and thus out- side of nature and history), the objectification of land- scape as vista with a concomitant politics of vision (Thomas 1993}, an equation of consciousness with vie sion—a scopic regime (Jay 1988|—and the initiation of surveillance and monitoring on a large scale (Foucault's [1979] panapticism|; and 2 tatalizing male gaze which ‘objectifies landscape and women in particular ways (Haraway 1988, Ford r99x}, With landscape att, nature took on a passive role, deprived of agency under a to- talizing perspective that created the impression of unity and control Jn 4, ote philosophical ven, this gaze was inser ‘mental in the hicth of the modern sciences, the develop- ment af clinical medicine, in opening up the comse for ‘observation at the end of the réth century, established an alliance “between words and things, enabling ane ca se and to say,” thus integrating the individual jand the biological) into rational discourse (Foucault 19752ai). From the analysis of tissues through the microscope 8, Partial perspective and standoint epistemology are well-knevn prineipies introduced by feminsse cnties of science, particularly Donea Plaraway and Sanda Hardin. and the camera in the 19th cenauny to satellite surveil: lance, GIS, and sonography, the importance of vision in ‘our treatment of nature and ourselves has only grown, But the most fundamental feature of modernity in this regard is what Heidegger (19771 has called the creation of a world picture” within which nature is inevitably enframed, that is, ordered as a resource for us to use a8, we wish. With the Frankfurt school, the domination of nature became one of the quintessential features of tn- strumental rationality, an aspect that has been. high: lighted from femnimist and ecological perspectives by various writers (Merchant 1980, Shiva 1993). As Fou- cault (1973] vividly showed, all of these developments ate aspects of the emergence of “Man” as an anthropo- logical structure and the foundation of all possible knowledge, With economics, Man" became entrapped in an “analytic of finitude,” a cultural order in which we are forever condemned to labor under the iron law of scarcity. This separation of nature and society is one of the basic features of modem societies—although, ia actuality, as Latour (1993) argues, the divide has only made possible the proliferation of hybrids of nature and culture and of networks linking them in rauleiple ways. ‘The history of Man and of bourgeois perception is re- lated to other factors such as the colonization of time (Landes 1983], the development of maps and statistics, and the association of particular landscapes with na: tional identities. More pertinent, capitalist modemity required the development af rational forms of manage- ‘ment of resources and populations based on the expert knowledge of planners, statisticians, economists, de- mographers, and the like—what Foueaule {r99r) has called “governmentality.” Governmentality is a quin- tessentially modern phenomenon by which inereas- ingly vast domains of daily life are appropriated, pro- cessed, and transformed hy expert knowledge and the administrative apparatuses of the state, This process hhas reached the natural order from scientific forestry and plantation agriculture to the managerialism of sus- tainable development. The ways in which nature has hheen governmencalized—made the object of expert knowledge, regularized, simplified and disciplined, managed, planned for, etc.—are still understudied [Brosius 1997) ‘Most of the attention of chase seeking ta understand capitalist nature has been occupied by the examination ‘of nature as commodity. The articulation of bialogy and history in capitalist nature takes the primary form of the commodity, and analyses at this level have aimed at explaining the produetion of nature 2s commodity through the mediation of Jabor. From a Marxist perspec: tive the separation of narure and society is seen 28 ideo logical; the unity of capital entails the fusion of use value and exchange value in the production of nature, Historically, the production of surplus with the con- comitant social and institutional differentiation al- Jowed humans to emancipate themselves from nature, albeit at the price of enslaving part of the population ‘Wich capitalism the production of nature reached a higher, societal level. Through the mediation of labor, “society” emerged from “nature,” resulting in the pto- duction of what has been called a second nature, namely, the ensemble of social institutions which regu late the exchange of commodities, including the na- tures} praduced by humans. Nature became a universal means of production. With the development of science and machines, nature and society achieved a unity in the generalized production brought about by capitalism, ‘The very distinction between first and second nature became obsolete ance the production of nature had be- ‘come the dominant reality. Capitalist nature became a hegemonic regime (Smith 1984). ‘Al of the factors ontined so fat are 6 product of a par- ticular phase of history—patriatchal capitalise moder nity. Recent Marxist-inspired writings have gone a long way towards conceptualizing this repime in both its classical and current forms and its selation to capital- ism as a whole (Smaith 1984, J. O'Connor 1988, Haraway 1989, Leff 1995). Te is not the point here to summarize these developments or their ecological implications, which represent one of the most active sites of work an the question of nature today fhut sec Escobar 2596}. It 4s impartant, however, to highlight one aspect that will bbe important for our explanation of technonature. Capi- talist nature 18 uniform, legible, manageable, harvest able, Fordist. The accumulation of uniform nature is be- coming an obstacle to capital accumulation for bath social and ecological reasons. It is therefore necessary to start the process of accumulation of diverse nature for “flexible nature,” if we accept that diversity in the biological domain is somewhat isomorphic with flexi hility in the social domain], The discourses of sustain able development and biodiversity conservation are a reflection of this tendency, and so is the argument that capitalism is entering an ccological phase in which its modem, reckless form will coexist with a postmodern, conservationist one (M. O'Connor 1993 and, for discus: sion, Escobar 1996} 9. See Smith's pionecsing work (19845455): “Once the elation swith nature i determined by the loge of exchange value, and frst inatuce is prodced from withis aid as part of seeane nature, fest fnd second nanere ate themeclves redefined. Wich production for ‘xchange, the difference between fst and second navate is simply the dilfresce berween the nanchuman and humanly created ‘worlds, This distinction cesses to have real meaniig ance the ese nate is too produced. Rather, the disenction is now between a first nature that is conczece and material, the nature of usenvalucs in genera, anda second native which ts absteact, and derivative of the abstraction rom use-valua chat ipimherencin exchange value.” 416. This is another side of what fares O'Connor {988} has called the “second contradiction” of eapieaism, According eo thus thesis, ‘capitalise restcturing today takes place chiety at the expense of "production conditions” (abar, land, nacar, space, the Body, chet 1g, thoge elements of production that are not produced as cor:inodi ties although they are tated as such! Driven by competition and ‘ose sifting ariong individual capitals this estructuting cignifies deepening of espital’s encroachment on nature and labor, 2% 2g [revaton of the ecological eis, and a further impainment of cape Tal’ conditions of production and the eegraduction af tsese cond tone. The sestructuring ss cantcadietary for expla, which seeks to ‘overcome this dynamic through a variety of measures éhat simply ‘Gplace the contradiction onto other terrains. An active dehace an this chess has been msintained in the jouenal Capitalism, Newre, Sacsalign since the late 198s Escowar After Nature|7 ‘As a provisional conclusion, [ want to suggest a par tial definition of the political ecology af capitalist na- tire as the study of the progressive incorporation of na- ture into the ewin domains of governmentality and che commodity. Both aspects have biological, cultural, and social consequences that need to be examined more carefully, Ie is now time, however, to move on to the organic regime. From the perspective of capitalist na- ‘ure, this regime may seem a case of ecological atavism ‘ra local manifestation of universal nature and its cul- ‘tural and symbolic mechanisms nature idolatry or primitivism. However, che natures of the local native communities cannot be reduced to inferior manifesta- tions of capitalist nature, nor can they be said to he pro- duced only according to capitalist laws. ORGANIC NATURE: CULTURE AND LOCAL KNOWLENGE Understanding the regime of organic nature calls for dif ferent forms of analysis; ecosystems and production analyses aze no longer suificient."! One defining feature. Of this regime is the fact that natuze and society are not separated ontologically. Anthropological and ecological studies demonstrate that many rural communities in the Third World “construct” nature in strikingly differ- ent ways fram modem forms; they signify and use their natural environments in very particular ways. For pur poses of argument I will refer to che anthropological lit- erature on the subject 5 the “anthropology of local knowledge,” although it is by no means restricted to such knowledge." What is ceetain is that chere is an in- credible ferment of activity in this area; whether this amounts to the emergence of a “new ecological anthto- pology’ {Kottak 1997} ot to a refounding of ecological anthropology on a stirer footing (Descola and Palsson 996! remains to be seen. In a classic. article on the subject, Marilyn Strathern 11 tam aware that che label “orgenic" is problematic, sven its association with trsne sucb. a8 “puty,” waoleness, ime: ieseness" ce, Wile forest peoples ix particular have heen seen += fuincesgetillyoepanie and embedded in nature, [soggest that EE poseible to Launch s defense ofthe organ ae ainevieal regime fn co se fess pon af suppor for tery construction and po Gal action. An aatiesscnaee notin of tie organic can serves 4 Eouacereint to the easentialist and at mes colosials ecohasia Son whsleness and pasty of such envienomental discourse. Til ‘plain the resting of “organse” more fully below ar Agu, iis impossible to iat she pertinent literatoze, which rows cut of eater concerss in ethnobatasy,ethnosciesce, nd fcclopcal snctopology. Seathem's wort {rgt6, 1388, 19938, {onsenutee the moat syetemate attempt in amearopolagy at theo Fiaing nature as locally produced, wheter in nanmoderh pos ‘deen ("posenatar'| settings State-of-the-art diseasigns of el {rl models of mature ste fond me Deseals and Palszon [996] and Gdeinan and Rives (xo90) Fors secent and useful aneesament of zosyatems inspived anaropalosical analyees, tee Morar (2930) ehates on ethaobiology ae sursmanaed ts Berlin [sggab Struc fanalonented analyses ace best exernpliged by Deseois (1993, ‘spa, landscape ethnography by Lessin (igot) Render (19936), 2n¢ Tilley ssh. The andhropology of local kaculedge prope ‘vanced moat cogently in Haber (rags) Milton 1993), aed Des slo and Palsson (1996) 8| CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume go, Number 1, February 2999 {ro8o) made it clear that we cannot interpret native {nonmodern} mappings of the social and the biological in terms of our concepts of nature, culture, and society. ‘Among the Hagen of the highlands of Papua New Guinea, as among many indigenous and rural groups, “eultue’ does not provide a distinctive set of objects with which one manipulates ‘nature’... nauure is not ‘manipulated’ (pp. 174, 175). These dichotomies are imposed onto other social otders hecause of our particu Jar interests, among these the control of the environ. ment. “Nature’’ and “culttre” thus need to be analyzed not as given and presocial hut as constructs if we want to ascertain how they function as devices for cultural creations from human beliefs to gender and the econ- ‘omy (MacCormack and Strathern T980) From the perspective of an anthropology of Jacal knowledge, then, there are questions such as how other societies represent the relation between their human and biological worlds, what distinetions and classifica. tions of the biological they make, in what Janguages fin-

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