Browsing by Author "Foster, Katie"

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Fluid Ecologies and Plural Ontologies: Breaking Apart Biodiversity to Reimagine Conservation
(2019) DuPuy, Walker; Lear, Kristen; Foster, Katie
"Biodiversity conservation has a long history and primary place in environmental governance practice. Its role in shaping governance regimes and prioritizing particular species and places makes it critical to interrogate and ask the question of what such efforts make visible, and likewise invisible, for environmental governance. Drawing on literature from conservation practice, ecological science, critical scholarship, and ontologically-attuned ethnographies, we examine the roots of the biodiversity concept and its dominant framings and enactments; what is rendered visible and invisible across these fields; how an ontological perspective and approach might conceive of biodiversity otherwise; and what this might mean for the pursuit of environmental governance. While biodiversity conservation still largely emphasizes charismatic, and now so-called umbrella, species, and places a primacy on ecological science and Western knowledge systems, there is increasing attention to the need to respect and engage other knowledges; recognize the political effects of conservation efforts; and see biodiversity as intertwined within larger landscape scale and human-inclusive and -synergistic ecological relationships. We build on this history and work to ask how different ontologies conceive biodiversity and complicate human-animal and human-nature dichotomies, how ontological thinking can open new ways of relating to and with the world, and what a conservation governance concept that takes such fluidities, hybridities, and plural ontologies seriously might look like."
Land as an Object of 'Good Governance': Beyond Rights and Property
(2019) Bonanno, Anya; Foster, Katie; German, Laura
"Recent years have witnessed growing interest in land as a resource to be exploited, object of discursive engagement, and problem arena within international development. 'Land governance' as a concept has come to be codified in very specific ways. This paper takes an historical and ontological approach to interrogate this evolution and the visibilities and invisibilities rendered by the consolidation of a global land governance regime. To do this, we draw on original documents in the grey literature to examine how land governance has 'come to be' as a concept and domain of practice; critical scholarship that interrogates these concepts to render visible the work that they do; and ontologically-rich ethnographies that articulate other ways of knowing 'land' to highlight the invisibilities rendered by these framings. Dominant framings of land governance emphasize land as an entity isolated from other things or relationships; land as 'resource'; a strong focus on property and rights to frame engagements with land, and in particular formal and privatized title; and land as a commodity, among others. The flip side of this construction include outcomes rendered invisible by these framings, and the possibility of governing land otherwise. The 'work' owing from these framings include the freeing up of customary land (and tenure security) for investors; reduced ecological connectivity; and the disruption of ecological functions and social relationships. Ontologically-attuned ethnographies show how land might be envisioned otherwise - as an entity calling for duties as much as rights; constitutive of and continuous with social relationships; or as relationally linked to all life forms."