An Anthropological Perspective on Some Unexpected Consequences of Protected Areas

One of the remarkable transformations of the conservation community in recent years has been the proliferation of sociocultural anthropologists in and around protected areas and in conservation meetings and organizations. Anthropologists have been increasingly involved in institutions such as the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group. This change reflects an increase in the extent of protected areas, their tendency to be located in remote rural areas where anthropologists have traditionally conducted long-term ethnographic field research, and academic and theoretical changes within anthropology, with its increasing interest on globalization, environmentalism, and political ecology. This proliferation has had a mixed reception. Some believe it results in work that is eccentric at best or that dangerously diverts resources (and journal space); others believe it is an essential move. Anthropologists’ interests may seem tangential (or opaque) to the practical work of saving nature. But we see protected areas not just as sites rich in biological diversity but also as rich sites of social interactions and social reproduction. By social reproduction we mean the maintenance and replication of social practices, beliefs, and institutions that would have been considered “culture” in anthropology in the past. We also see protected areas as sites that work to both meet conservation goals and restructure how people understand, use, and interact with their surroundings (P.W., J. Igoe, & D.B., unpublished). As such, protected areas affect people living within and adjacent to them and people displaced by them. They also affect the lives of people working for the agencies, governmental and nongovernmental, who create them and manage them.