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A B S T R A C TIn this commentary we respond to Fletcher and Büscher's (2017) recent article in this journal on Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) as neoliberal 'conceit'. The authors claim that focusing attention on the micro-politics of PES design and implementation fails to expose an underlying neoliberal governmentality, and therefore only reinforces neoliberal capitalism as both the problem and solution of ecological crises. In response, we argue that a focus on the actions of local actors is key to understanding how and why such governmentality fails or succeeds in performing as theorized. Grand generalizations fixated on a particular hegemonic and neoliberal PES ontology overlook how actors intertwine theory and practice in ways which cannot be explained by a dominant structural theory. Such generalizations risk obscuring the complexity and situational history, practice and scale of the processes involved. Rather than relegating variegated and hybrid forms of what actually emerges from PES interventions as neoliberal conceit, we argue that an actor-oriented, 'weak theory' approach permits PES praxis to inform knowledge generation. This would open up a more inclusive and politically engaging space for thinking about and realizing political change.

This paper adopts a processual understanding of mapping to empirically explore the workings of satellite-based forest visualisations and maps within the REDD+ process in DR Congo. Our analysis approaches maps as ongoing contingent practices and highlights the recursive interplay between maps and the socio-natural world. We first show how REDD+ (mapping) assemblages enact a uniform portrayal of community-induced threats to nature, which in turn legitimises a monoculture of abstract space often to the detriment of communities' authority over land and their particular socio-ecological relationships. However, these mapping attempts at reordering forest landscapes are locally met with and reshaped by everemergent socio-spatial practices, ways of seeing and appropriating landscape. Complexity, fluidity, and ambiguity are indeed rendered absent by these seemingly immutable and complete representations although they are essential for understanding struggles over resources. We conclude that adopting a processual understanding of maps opens up ways of enacting socio-environmental justice.

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