Naturalizing the environment: Perceptual frames, senses and resistance (with E. Ruiz‐Ballesteros, J.M. Valcuende, V. Quintero, and E. Rubio) (original) (raw)
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Journal of Material Culture, 2009
Following the closure of the mines and the crisis in agriculture, an alternative process of cultural and natural `heritagization' has been taking place in certain areas of Andalusia with a marked tourist focus. Productive spaces have been transformed into post-mining and post-agrarian landscapes. The aim of this article is to analyse representations and perceptions of surroundings in these contexts through the discourse of those who have experienced these changes most acutely: farmers and miners. This interpretation invites reflection regarding the concept of nature in the western world. Nature is one of our most genuine cultural creations, but we cannot ignore that, in addition to its discursive dimension, it also has a perceptive component. Hence, the analysis carried out here seeks to gain a more in-depth understanding of the perceptive frames through which nature acquires meaning and significance. The dual perceptive and discursive dimension of nature yields a more comprehen...
2013
Beyond the boundaries of a physical space, places, as a means where it is registered the way in which man relates to the world, contain multiple spatiotemporal realities. Its reading requires, therefore, a look that can decipher the universe of ecological, historical, perceptual and cultural relationships that characterize them. However, at the present time, technique and reason seem to have tipped the balance on the tangible values against the intangible ones, banishing to oblivion its cultural, perceptual, emotional and phenomenological components. This article takes a brief look at a range of experiences that, from different disciplines involved with space, allow us to approach a collective and timeless readability of the place. These looks fruit of memory, the experience and creativity, show a very clear direction to serve the project from its identity. In this context, to visualize the information and bring out elements and relations forgotten or unknown, is in itself a creativ...
“En la Otra Esquina”, Landscape and Power.
Can the representation of landscape reveal inner power structures? In order to address the issue of how landscape can uncover power structures, first I would like to frame this discussion and define the concept of landscape: it will refer to the 'physical and visual form of the earth as an environment and as a setting in which locales occur and in dialectical relation to which meanings are created, reproduced and transformed.' (Tilley 1994:25). For landscape to appear as 'a medium rather than a container for action' (Tilley 1994:10) it should be then considered beyond a neutral condition but as a social construction that takes place and is part of our everyday lives, changing with us, not only in its material form, but entangled with the way we perceive it. It is through these relations that landscape as a cultural form can materialise and our understanding of it transformed. Landscape in this perspective is constituted by people, actions and places and it is through them and the relations they establish that landscape takes shape, therefore landscape cannot be separated from people, places and actions. Following this framework we ask: if landscape is an interwoven space where people cannot be separated from it, to what extent traces and narratives built around the landscape form part of the power structures that lie underneath? Landscapes develop as part of human lives, not as containers that 'signify or symbolise power relations' (Mitchell 2002:2) but as 'an instrument of cultural power' (ibid.) The following analysis will explore how landscape appears as a tool, a medium to access and understand through established relations and symbols, the power relations that take place within it.
The worldwide expansion of nature conservation initiatives has attracted a great deal of attention among political ecologists. Concerned about the effects on people and the environment, critical scholars have attempted to identify the drivers of conservation, and how power operates. Conservation policies, practices and conflicts have generated a large literature about the role of states, expert bureaucracies, private corporations, NGOs and technologies of government. In this article I aim to extend this literature by paying attention to a largely neglected field of power relations, defined by the efforts made by new inhabitants of natural protected areas, who have moved to these new locations and have strived to construct and maintain an idyll wherein they can enjoy a new, 'natural life.' Using Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus, I demonstrate that, in certain places, it is in the everyday practices of making a natural protected area a new home where power relations unfold more subtly, although no less intensely. I illustrate this empirically with a particular case study: the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park in southeastern Spain. I examine the role played by neo-rurals in the establishment of this protected area, present an ethnographic account of their everyday practices, and link them to the conflicts that have emerged with other social groups, with whom they compete for the right to use and access local resources. L'expansion mondiale des initiatives de conservation de la nature a attiré beaucoup d'attention chez les écologistes politiques. Préoccupée par les effets sur les personnes et l'environnement, les chercheurs critiques ont tenté d'identifier la façon dont le pouvoir fonctionne dans la conservation. Il y a maintenant pluiseurs ouvrages sur la politique, les pratiques et les conflits sur la conservation de la nature, avec un accent sur le rôle de l'état, des bureaucraties d'experts, des entreprises privées, des ONG et des technologies de gouvernement. Dans cet article, je fais attention à un domaine largement négligé: les relations de pouvoir entourant les efforts déployés par les nouveaux habitants de zones naturelles protégées, qui ont déménagé dans ces nouveaux lieux et se sont efforcés de construire et d'entretenir une idylle dans laquelle ils peuvent profiter d'une nouvelle «vie naturelle». Les notions de Bourdieu, le capital culturel et habitus, sont utiles, afin de démontrer qu'au cours des pratiques quotidiennes de fonder un nouveau foyer dans une zone naturelle protégée, où les relations de pouvoir se dérouler de façon plus subtile, mais non moins intense. J'illustre cela avec une étude de cas: le parc naturel de Cabo de Gata-Nijar dans la région sud-est de l'Espagne. Je examine le rôle joué par les néo-ruraux dans l'établissement de cette zone protégée, et je présente un compte rendu ethnographique de leurs pratiques quotidiennes. Ces pratiques sont liées aux conflits qui ont émergé avec d'autres groupes sociaux, avec lesquels ils sont en concurrence pour le droit d'utiliser et accéder aux ressources locales. La velocidad con la que las políticas de conservación se han expandido a lo largo y ancho del planeta en épocas recientes ha atraído poderosamente la atención de aquellos que desarrollan su trabajo dentro de la ecología política. Preocupados por el impacto de estas políticas sobre las poblaciones locales y los ecosistemas, numerosos autores se han esforzado por desenmascarar las relaciones de poder y el papel jugado por determinados actores clave, como son el estado, los mercados, las tecnologías de gobierno, los procedimientos burocráticos y las ONGs medioambientalistas. Mi intención en este artículo es contribuir al estudio de las relaciones de poder en las políticas de conservación mediante el análisis de un campo por ahora bastante inexplorado: el de las prácticas cotidianas y los estilos de vida de aquellos que cambian su lugar de residencia habitual y se mudan a espacios naturales protegidos en busca de una vida alternativa dentro de lo que para ellos es un ambiente idílico. Mi estudio se centra en un caso concreto: el Parque Natural Cabo de Gata-Níjar, en el sureste del estado español. En estas páginas muestro el papel que la población neorrural ha jugado en la declaración de este espacio como protegido, analizo etnográficamente sus estilos de vida y prácticas cotidianas y exploro, haciendo uso de las nociones de capital cultural y habitus de Bourdieu, la relación que existe entre estos estilos de vida y estas prácticas cotidianas con los conflictos que han surgido en este espacio desde la introducción de políticas de conservación.
Conservation and Society, 2018
The literature on environmentality analyses how local people living in natural protected areas might come to care about, act in relation to, and think of their own actions in terms of environmental protection by becoming actively involved in conservation government and management. In this paper we contribute to a clearer, broader, and more nuanced understanding of the connection between different regulatory regimes and the formation of environmental subjects, using a phenomenological approach that places more emphasis on the agency of the people subjected to conservation. In particular, we examine how people living in three different natural protected areas in Ecuador and Spain negotiate, incorporate, and contest different regulatory frames of conservation; how, in this process, they end up creating and enacting new forms of practice that neither infringe nor fully comply with these regulations. With this analysis, our paper seeks to show that even if conservation makes the inhabitants of natural protected areas act and think differently, these people also have the capacity to manipulate these transformations via the creative use of different environmentalities and under the influence of their own interests, habits, affects, and situated forms of human-environment engagement.
If we accept that landscape is the perceptible result of the dynamic relationship process between a specific human group and an environment, this definition, which enjoys the most acceptance among those people who 'make landscape', immediately raises certain questions: What is the role of the person who aims to create landscapes, if landscape is a process that takes place on its own? To what point does this affect the relationship between people and their daily setting? This article initially aims to explore the consequences of that paradox through a first hypothesis: the intrinsically political nature of the landscape project. This hypothesis springs from the intention of describing the evolution of the reflection on this political role of making landscape, in which 'landscape makers' constantly find themselves affected by the balance of power established between institutions and people. Subsequently, analysis will be conducted on a series of key periods in the history of the political landscape in which landscape makers endeavour to find their place. Pictures of the recent history of my city appear interspersed within the text, in order to illustrate what has been described.
A natural life: neo-rurals and the power of everyday practices in protected areas
Journal of Political Ecology, vol. 21: 493-515., 2014
English: The worldwide expansion of nature conservation initiatives has attracted a great deal of attention among political ecologists. Concerned about the effects on people and the environment, critical scholars have attempted to identify the drivers of conservation, and how power operates. Conservation policies, practices and conflicts have generated a large literature about the role of states, expert bureaucracies, private corporations, NGOs and technologies of government. In this article I aim to extend this literature by paying attention to a largely neglected field of power relations, defined by the efforts made by new inhabitants of natural protected areas, who have moved to these new locations and have strived to construct and maintain an idyll wherein they can enjoy a new, 'natural life.' Using Bourdieu's notions of cultural capital and habitus, I demonstrate that, in certain places, it is in the everyday practices of making a natural protected area a new home where power relations unfold more subtly, although no less intensely. I illustrate this empirically with a particular case study: the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park in southeastern Spain. I examine the role played by neo-rurals in the establishment of this protected area, present an ethnographic account of their everyday practices, and link them to the conflicts that have emerged with other social groups, with whom they compete for the right to use and access local resources. Spanish: La velocidad con la que las políticas de conservación se han expandido a lo largo y ancho del planeta en épocas recientes ha atraído poderosamente la atención de aquellos que desarrollan su trabajo dentro de la ecología política. Preocupados por el impacto de estas políticas sobre las poblaciones locales y los ecosistemas, numerosos autores se han esforzado por desenmascarar las relaciones de poder y el papel jugado por determinados actores clave, como son el estado, los mercados, las tecnologías de gobierno, los procedimientos burocráticos y las ONGs medioambientalistas. Mi intención en este artículo es contribuir al estudio de las relaciones de poder en las políticas de conservación mediante el análisis de un campo por ahora bastante inexplorado: el de las prácticas cotidianas y los estilos de vida de aquellos que cambian su lugar de residencia habitual y se mudan a espacios naturales protegidos en busca de una vida alternativa dentro de lo que para ellos es un ambiente idílico. Mi estudio se centra en un caso concreto: el Parque Natural Cabo de Gata-Níjar, en el sureste del estado español. En estas páginas muestro el papel que la población neorrural ha jugado en la declaración de este espacio como protegido, analizo etnográficamente sus estilos de vida y prácticas cotidianas y exploro, haciendo uso de las nociones de capital cultural y habitus de Bourdieu, la relación que existe entre estos estilos de vida y estas prácticas cotidianas con los conflictos que han surgido en este espacio desde la introducción de políticas de conservación.
Introduction: Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies
A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies, 2023
An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies. From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focused on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world.