The cultural context of biodiversity conservation - Oapen

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3.1.4 Multi-sited ethnography
The cultural context of biodiversity conservation
To look at the symbolic dimensions of social action – art, religion, ideology, science, law, morality, common
sense – is not to turn away from the existential dilemmas of life for some empyrean realm of deemotionalized
forms; it is to plunge into the midst of them. (Geertz 1975: 30)
The emergence of pluralist perspectives and approaches in environmental anthropology
also applies to new directions in terms of methodological trends that involve the
adaptation of long-standing modes of research practices to more complex issues of
study. In this way, the present work not only draws upon a range of different discursive
threads of social analysis but also incorporates expanded horizons in spatial, temporal
and institutional terms. As it emerged within an interdisciplinary context, it
draws on multidirectional linkages across global, national and local scales. Even the
study itself is inherently interdisciplinary and considers different contexts across a
wide range of divergent scales. Spatial scales run from the community level to institutional
encounters at regional, national and international levels, whereas the overall
frame is defined by the intersection of global environmental policies and their implications
on cultural dynamics at the local level. On the one hand, the ways in which environmental
issues are treated in global discourse may provide a framework for interpreting
specific conditions on the local level. On the other hand, case-specific experiences
on the local level may shed light on how environmental issues can be handled
globally. Thus, the approach focuses on a global phenomenon so as to allow for a
movement in a hermeneutic circle between global and local scales.
The understanding that global flows are embedded in local processes implies a
consideration of ›place‹ not merely as an »isolatable physical space« but as »a dimension
of historical and contemporary connections«, as argued by Gezon and Paulson
(2005: 9). This research mode, which moves beyond the common concept of singlesite
location and considers the application of multiscale research styles that bring together
local spaces and global flows of policy and discourse, may be attributed to what
Marcus (1995) has framed as multi-sited ethnography. 13 This type of ethnographic research
moves from its conventional focus on subaltern or marginal subjects at singlesite
locations, contextualised by macro-constructions of a larger social order, to examine
the circulation of cultural meanings, objects and identities in ›diffuse time-space‹ of
multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the
›local‹ and the ›global‹. It acknowledges macrotheoretical concepts and narratives of
the world system, but does not rely on them for the theoretically constituted holistic
13 As the discipline is an empirical science based on observable data, ethnography is a process of recording,
describing and interpreting ways of knowing, valuing and organising the world. Conventionally,
ethnography meant both the study of a culture from the perspective of those who live it and
the text written by the ethnographer, usually known as monograph. Participant observation has been
the foundation of ethnographic research since the pioneering work of Malinowski (1884-1942), in
which the anthropologist seeks to immerse him- or herself as fully and as unobtrusively as possible
in the life of a community under study (Gardner & Lewis 1996: xiv).