An Ecology of Knowledges: Fear, Love, and Technoscience in Guatemalan Forest Conservation

Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), the largest protected area in Central America, is characterized by rampant violence, social and ethnic inequality, and rapid deforestation. Faced with these threats, local residents, conservationists, scientists, and NGOs in the region work within what Micha Rahder calls "an ecology of knowledges," in which interventions on the MBR landscape are tied to differing and sometimes competing forms of knowing. In this book, Rahder examines how technoscience, endemic violence, and an embodied love of wild species and places shape conservation practices in Guatemala. Rahder highlights how different forms of environmental knowledge emerge from encounters and relations between humans and nonhumans, institutions and local actors, and how situated ways of knowing impact conservation practices and natural places, often in unexpected and unintended ways. In so doing, she opens up new ways of thinking about the complexities of environmental knowledge and conservation in the context of instability, inequality, and violence around the world.

Author: Micha Rahder
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 05/21/2020
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.00h x 5.80w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781478006916

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2021

About the Author
Micha Rahder is an independent scholar in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.