Hi,
Below please find a panel to be proposed for the meeting of the American
Anthropological Association in December. If you are doing related research,
please consider submitting your 250 word abstract to this email address by
the end of the day Sunday, April 6th. Thanks!
Pete Taber and Rodrigo Renterķa Valencia
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Ethics and Affects of Environmental Government
From the reverence that a geologist feels for the nature she encounters in
her fieldwork, to conservation project designers' aspirations to
stewardship over national biodiversity, environmental institutions tend to
be affectively and ethically complex sites. This panel seeks to understand
the ethical commitments, normative imperatives and affective charges that
nourish or trouble the work of scientists, managers, consultants and others
working in institutions tasked with knowing and managing the environment.
The ethnography of ethics and affect in environmental institutions might
examine direct confrontations between full-blown ethical philosophies;
crises in which habits of body or thought become problematized; moments of
particular hope for specific projects or practices; or atmospheres of
anxiety or malaise that facilitate a diagnosis of subjectification in the
context of biological research or natural resource management. While the
environment will probably figure as a preoccupation in any of these
ethnographic contexts, it is likely to exist amidst a constellation of
other commitments or concerns (e.g. science, nation, democracy, race).
Work showing how affect, normativity and ethics are interrelated in
environmental institutions is especially welcome, and may contend with the
interplay between the affective tinges that adhere to specific scientific,
technical or managerial practices; the regulations and prescriptions of
techno-scientific disciplines; institutional norms; and more readily
identifiable and articulable ethical positions. The goal of the panel is
neither to morally recuperate scientists and managers, nor is it to put the
sincerity or sufficiency of their beliefs on trial. The purpose is rather
to foster an anthropological understanding of the sources and effects of
ethical and normative subject formation in the context of those
institutions charged with knowing, regulating or reconfiguring the
environment. The panel hopes to present a diverse range of ethnographic
contexts and approaches. Topics that might be treated include:
-Programs for environmental education or responsibilization
-The ethical and affective complexities of conservation interventions in
local livelihoods
-The emergence of biodiversity or particular species as sources of national
or local pride
-Contrastive framings of environmental issues and commitments in
North-South collaborations
-The ethical stakes of specific technical or scientific practices for
knowing and managing the environment
-The historical development and consequences of normative institutional
cultures
-The impacts of institutional activities on affective relationships to
particular landscapes or environments
-How similar ethical commitments can lead to divergent scientific or
managerial practices
--
Peter Taber, PhD Candidate
Cel (Ec): 09-67009235
Cel (U.S.): 520-784-9834
School of Anthropology
University of Arizona
1009 E. South Campus Drive
Tucson, AZ 85721
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