2nd CFP: AAG 2019 Call for Papers 

“The environmental state in the village: the place of the state in neoliberal and community-based conservation”

Organisers: Myung-Ae Choi (LSE) & Valeria Biffi (LSE)

Where is the state in contemporary environmental governance? It is often argued that the state has retreated in the regime of new environmental governance, where transnational private actors and market-based policy instruments have replaced state intervention. However, recent work in critical policy studies challenge the purported transition “from government to governance” by revealing the continued intervention of the state in market-based environmental management (Jordan et al. 2005; Howlett et al. 2009; Bell and Hindmoor 2012; Giessen et al. 2016). Similarly, political ecology studies have pointed out the “actually existing” (Brenner and Theodore 2002) significance of the state and civil regulations in neoliberal environmental reform, which produces a form of “hybrid neoliberalism”(Mansfield 2004; McAfee and Shapiro 2010; Roth and Dressler 2012). A growing body of governmentality studies has also engaged with the simultaneous operation of disciplinary forms of intervention alongside the prevalent neoliberal ones, producing a form of state-led neoliberal restructuring (Fletcher and Breitling 2012; Boelens et al. 2015; Bluwstein 2017; Fletcher 2017). These studies suggest the state in new environmental governance is not completely dismissed, but actually “reconfigured”. 

Critical scholarships have looked at the retained, or returned, significance of the state in international environmental agreements and environmental policy restructuring at the national level. Yet, empirical details are remain limited in exploring the ways in which the state intervenes in market-based environmental reform at the local/community levels. How local people experience environmental intervention of the state? How the state intervention affects the ways in which the society understands the state in its attempt to manage and control natural resources (Painter 2006; Sharma and Gupta 2009)? Our attempt to address this gap leads to a series of further questions: What practices of intervention do the state make? What roles are played by the state bureaucrats and on what grounds? What political consequences would this mode of intervention produce? How different levels and scales of government operate to intervene local environmental development? Are there conflicts or unintended collaborations? What factors could account for the significance of the state in local and neoliberal environmental reform? 

In this session, we invite empirical contributions that illustrate how the state intervenes in local environmental development, with particular reference to market-based environmental management - payment for ecosystem service (PES), ecotourism, wetland banking, and environmental certifications, among others. This might involve empirically grounded papers but conceptual contributions are equally welcomed. Please send your abstract of no more than 250 words to both Myung-Ae Choi ([log in to unmask]) and Valeria Biffi ([log in to unmask]) by 18 Oct 2018. 

References

Bell, S. and Hindmoor, A. (2012). Governance without government? The case of the Forest Stewardship Council. Public Administration, 90(1), 144-159.
Bluwstein, J. (2017). Creating ecotourism territories: Environmentalities in Tanzania’s community-based conservation. Geoforum, 83 101-113.
Boelens, R., Hoogesteger, J. and Baud, M. (2015). Water reform governmentality in Ecuador: Neoliberalism, centralization, and the restraining of polycentric authority and community rule-making. Geoforum, 64 281-291.
Brenner, N. and Theodore, N. (2002). Cities and the geographies of “actually existing neoliberalism”. Antipode, 34(3), 349–379.
Fletcher, R. (2017). Environmentality unbound: multiple governmentalities in environmental politics. Geoforum, 85 311-315.
Fletcher, R. and Breitling, J. (2012). Market mechanism or subsidy in disguise? Governing payment for environmental services in Costa Rica. Geoforum, 43(3), 402-411.
Giessen, L., Burns, S., Sahide, M. A. K. and Wibowo, A. (2016). From governance to government: The strengthened role of state bureaucracies in forest and agricultural certification. Policy and Society, 35(1), 71-89.
Howlett, M., Rayner, J. and Tollefson, C. (2009). From government to governance in forest planning? Lessons from the case of the British Columbia Great Bear Rainforest initiative. Forest policy and economics, 11(5-6), 383-391.
Jordan, A., Wurzel, R. K. W. and Zito, A. (2005). The Rise of ‘New’ Policy Instruments in Comparative Perspective: Has Governance Eclipsed Government? Political Studies, 53(3), 477-496.
Mansfield, B. (2004). Rules of privatization: contradictions in neoliberal regulation of North Pacific fisheries. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(3), 565-584.
McAfee, K. and Shapiro, E. N. (2010). Payments for ecosystem services in Mexico: nature, neoliberalism, social movements, and the state. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 100(3), 579-599.
Painter, J. (2006). Prosaic geographies of stateness. Political Geography, 25(7), 752-774.
Roth, R. J. and Dressler, W. (2012). Market-oriented conservation governance: the particularities of place. Geoforum, 43(3), 363-366.
Sharma, A. and Gupta, A. (2009). The anthropology of the state: a reader. John Wiley & Sons. 

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