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The sustainability episteme &
conservation biopolitics
[email protected]
More-than-human social change in
the Anthropocene
Olive Ridley turtles in Odisha
Michel Foucault: epistemes and biopowwer
Wildlife conservation: concepts and
practices of care
Olive Ridleys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZGVQ3AeoGo;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZGVQ3AeoGo
Olive Ridleys in Odisha, India
Threats and Protections
Incidental mortality
Habitat disruption, artificial light
• Indian Wildlife
Protection Act
• Gahirmatha Marine
Sanctuary
• Orissa Marine
Fisheries Regulation
Act and Rules
• IUCN – Dhamra port
mitigation programme
• Local and national
conservation groups
Conflicts
• Fishing income, harassment, even
suicides in the fishing community:
“there are vested foreign interests at
play” (fishing union leader)
• Greenpeace’s anti-port campaign:
conservationists as antidevelopment
blacklisting of Greenpeace by Odisha
Assembly
IUCN-Dhamra port mitigation programme
(deflectors, ‘turtle-friendly’ lighting)
Regularities…
• “It is not important to have a sanctuary,
but it is important to protect turtles”
(Fishing union leader)
• “Something serious should be done to
prevent it [turtle mortality]” (Port
company official)
Regularities…
• “economic growth and infrastructure can go hand in hand
with protection of the environment” (Greenpeace)
• “conservation projects have to include human livelihood
programmes” (conservationist)
• “safeguarding both biological diversity and the needs of
people” (IUCN)
Win-win conservation underpinned by two sets of normative
objectives:
human-oriented and animal-oriented
Episteme
• Michel Foucault: regularities within and
across academic disciplines
• Episteme: that which ‘makes it possible
to grasp the set of constraints and
limitations which, at a given moment, are
imposed on discourse’ (Foucault 2002)
Sustainability episteme
• Regularities in turtle debates:
a) local livelihoods and regional economic
development must be safeguarded.
b) the Olive Ridley species must be
protected.
The sustainability episteme
“we need to find a delicate balance between
environment and development” (Forest
department official)
Norms in the sustainability episteme
Assumptions/values that operate at a
scale that is more-than-individual
• Species extinction is a ‘bad’
• Reduction of income is a ‘bad’
• Economic development is a ‘good’
Epistemic norms > conservation biopolitics
Biopower
A mode of power “bent on generating
forces, making them grow, ordering them”
(Foucault 2008: 136)
- Population, collectives
- Entanglement of harm and care
Population
• “It isn’t about the life of an individual turtle or how it is
treated” (environmentalist)
• “there are numerous turtles…casualty numbers may be
high, but rate might be low. 10-15,000 deaths might be
nothing” (forest department official)
• wildlife conservation is “concerned with populations and
habitats” (Paquet and Darimont, 2010)
The collective: species, population, ecosystem
Entanglement of harm and care
On behalf of the existence of everyone…in the
name of life necessity” (Foucault 2008: 137)
“a bandwidth of the acceptable” (Foucault 2009,
6):
•
“we should come up with an acceptable
figure for turtle mortality”
(Environmentalist)
• Turtle take allowances
• ‘Turtle-friendly’ lighting
Flexible fishing regulations
Not complete
protection:
10,000 turtles die
annually
The sacrificial logic of population…
Sustainable harvesting: to give the
turtles “a stronger representation at the
negotiating table” (Mrosovsky 2008: 14)
Orissa “can sustain the exploitation of a
few hundred or a few thousand adult
turtles every year” (conservationist)
Harm and care…tagging
“where religion once demanded the sacrifice of bodies, knowledge
now calls…us to the sacrifice of the subject of knowledge”
(Foucault 1984: 96)
Harm, curiosity, care…
population census, turtle walks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5k39Mynfus;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XySxEEo5uv0
Not specific to Odisha or Olive Ridleys
Conservationists all over the world
“rationalise suffering of individual animals
as being necessary to achieve more
important ecological goals of population or
species preservation, or even their own
research goals” (Paquet and Darimont,
2010, page 87).
Biopower in conservation
Why are these spaces of care
infused with harm?
Biopolitics and
sustainability episteme
Limits and possibilities of the
sustainability episteme:
conservation must not cause serious
disrupt existing human ways of life in
pursuit of turtle survival
Win-win conservation and
ontologies of the collective
Population, ecosystem, biodiversity:

trawling

port development

dredging

harvesting

ecotourism and turtle walks

scientific research
The sustainability episteme > the individual
becomes invisible; the collective gains
prominence
An altruistic turtle?
Take me, take my
body, take my eggs…I
want to help gather
enough human
support for survival.
“species as an entity does not answer to
selection” (Mayr, 1997, page 2092).
Population, species, ecosystems are social
constructs not morally neutral facts
Biopower and
the tensions of social change
The Anthropocene: more-than-human
activisms intersect with tradition, history
The sustainability episteme: human and
animal – oriented normative objectives
Ontologies of the collective resolve these
tensions and enable win-win solutions