When reading anthropological writings on global nature conservation, one may wonder: Where are the conservationists? Anthropologists have written nuanced ethnographies of how native people encounter and are dispossessed by transnational environmental NGOs and conservation policies. Yet, anthropologists have neglected the other side of those worldwide encounters: the conservation practitioners. Instead, conservationists are sometimes misrepresented as homogenous, impersonal and voiceless. This is surprising, considering anthropologists’ increasing interest in cultures of expertise, including that of professionals in international development. This paper contributes to building the anthropology of professionals in global biodiversity conservation. It locates and reviews disparate material on conservationists from across the ethnographic literature. It argues for attending to the perspectives and diversity of conservation professionals and institutions, their transnational social worlds, naturalist worldviews and emotional lives. A section discusses the key contradictory positionality of the Global South’s local-national professionals. Lastly, the paper reflects on practical challenges to fieldwork in ‘Conservationland’.
In 2011, the Burmese military-backed government stunned global audiences by unilaterally suspending the construction of the Myitsone Dam, the cornerstone of China’s largest hydropower project abroad. This prominent failure of China’s “Going Out” investment strategy reverberated globally. Both Western and Chinese accounts frame the event as a pivotal moment in Myanmar’s celebrated reform process, the cooling of China–Myanmar relations, and US–China geopolitical rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. However, my ethnographic field and media research from 2010 to 2015 reveals that the mega-project’s failure does not originally stem from inter-state geopolitics or contested economics and ecology. Through chronological narration, I show how the Myitsone Dam is primarily the casualty of a distinctly ethno-political causality, whereby three nationalisms clashed and the replication of China’s “anti-ethno-political” model of development failed. Though no monolithic Chinese state directs “Chinese Development” overseas, individual Chinese entrepreneurs nonetheless draw from the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC’s) anti-political and state-centric paradigm when facing foreign social worlds. In the particular case of Myitsone, Chinese proponents drew from PRC’s state-nationalist heuristics of “national minorities and state-led development” and “Western anti-China conspiracy,” when facing Myanmar’s ethnic Kachin and Burman nationalisms. State ideological subjectivities of these developers seemed to blind them to the weakness in their own anti-ethno-political strategies, even when those collapsed publicly. I conclude that the Myitsone Dam’s construction will likely not be restarted, despite the hydropower company’s efforts. The Myitsone case also exemplifies how China’s previous historical entanglements in its neighboring regions uniquely disrupt the progress of “Going-Out” in Asia.
Title pageHIGHLIGHTS First holistic analysis of hydropower policy legitimation struggles in Myanmar Contention is necessary to re-legitimize a failing hydropower policy regime A weakened or disrupted policy regime yields new opportunities for reform We recommend inclusive stakeholder deliberation and multi-objective planning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 1 Large hydropower and legitimacy: a policy regime analysis, applied to Myanmar Abstract Hydropower development in capacity-constrained countries can unfold through unsound policy arguments, narrow institutional and implementing arrangements, and ad hoc decision making processes. To derive insights for more legitimate policy making, we provide the first holistic account of Myanmar's legitimation struggles over large hydropower, focusing on *Highlights
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