Book Description

Contests over knowledge are central to contests over environments. Many of those contests are not just about Ægood scienceÆ or æbad scienceÆ, but over the idea of nature itself: the idea that the nature that science makes known to the world is set apart from æcultureÆ or æsocietyÆ, or that nature is comprised of objects û rivers, fish, soil û the knowledge of which lies outside of social life and democratic politics. Contested Ecologies: Dialogues in the South on Nature and Knowledge focuses on moments in which contests over ecology become moments for rethinking this ecology of knowledge. The chapters cover a wide variety of settings-from urban Cape Town to indigenous activism in Peru; from MugabeÆs Zimbabwe to the Beguela ecosystem fisheries, and include protected areas in the Aboriginal territories of northern Australia. Contested Ecologies could be read as an enlightened report on the status of knowledge worldwide. Not only does it demonstrate, with a powerful collective voice from the Global South that will be difficult to ignore, that differences between knowledges ineluctably imply differences among forms of making the world, it actually succeeds in exemplifying paths for genuine and constructive conversations across seemingly intractable divides. The volume offers the first concrete demonstration that it is indeed possible to go beyond the alleged rift between nature and culture, moving us closer towards the elusive goal of healing our planet through new knowledge formations. At a time when the academy seems mired in training students to perform well in so-called 'globalization' (understood as market success), this courageous volume represents a breath of fresh air in the debates over how to re-imagine the university as a central player in the construction of a new ethics of life. Arturo Escobar, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Extraordinarily interesting ... A new anthropology is afoot. Contested Ecologies sets out a new approach beyond the boundaries of modernity as we know it. Here different versions of nature are at play, and a 'political ontology' has emerged to grasp this problem. Cosmopolitics comes into its own in this collection. Anna Tsing, author of Friction: An ethnography of global connection Book jacket.