Current Anthropology Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
 1999 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/99/4003-0002 $3.50
Analyses and
Interventions
Anthropological Engagements
with Environmentalism1
by J. Peter Brosius
Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and growth
of local, national, and transnational environmental nongovern-
mental organizations (NGOs), national bureaucracies concerned
with environmental management, and transnational institutions
charged with implementing various forms of global environmen-
tal governance. This proliferation and recent theoretical trends
within the discipline have contributed to a dramatic upsurge in
interest among anthropologists in analyzing this phenomenon.
The present discussion is an attempt to take stock of this cur-
rent research trend within anthropology and to contextualize it
within a larger set of topical and theoretical concerns. I examine
some of the theoretical and practical sources of our interest in en-
vironmentalism and review a series of recent trends in the an-
thropological analysis of environmental movements, rhetorics,
and representations. I also identify a set of other issues that I be-
lieve a critically informed anthropology might address in the pro-
duction of future ethnographic accounts of environmental dis-
courses, movements, and institutions.
j. peter brosius is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Georgia (Athens, Ga. 30602-1619, U.S.A.). Born in
1954, he was educated at California Lutheran University (B.A.,
1976), the University of Hawaii (M.A., 1981), and the University
of Michigan (Ph.D., 1992). His research interests include en-
vironmental discourses, political ecology, and community-based
natural-resource management. Among his publications are
‘‘Endangered Forest, Endangered People: Environmentalist Repre-
sentations of Indigenous Knowledge’’ (Human Ecology 25:45–69),
‘‘Prior Transcripts, Divergent Paths: Resistance and Acqui-
escence to Logging in Sarawak, East Malaysia’’ (Comparative
Studies in Society and History 39:468–510), (with Anna Tsing
and Charles Zerner) ‘‘Representing Communities: Histories and
Politics of Community-Based Natural Resource Management’’
(Society and Natural Resources 11:157–68), and ‘‘Green Dots,
Pink Hearts: Displacing Politics from the Malaysian Rainforest’’
(American Anthropologist, in press). The present paper was sub-
mitted 17 iii 98 and accepted 3 vi 98; the final version reached
the Editor’s office 15 ix 98.
1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at a panel entitled
‘‘Human Dimensions of Environmental Change: Anthropology En-
gages the Issues’’ (Carole Crumley, organizer) at the 1996 annual
meetings of the American Anthropological Association in San
Francisco, Calif. I wish to acknowledge Anna Tsing and Charles
Zerner, both of whom, in a series of discussions over the past sev-
eral years, have had a profound influence on my thinking about en-
vironmentalism and environmental discourses. I must also thank
Steve Rayner, Kate Sullivan, and two anonymous referees for their
extensive and very helpful comments on an earlier version of this
manuscript. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Ellen Walker, for the
Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation and
growth of local, national, and transnational environ-
mental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), na-
tional bureaucracies concerned with environmental
management, and transnational institutions charged
with implementing various forms of global environ-
mental governance. What has emerged is a ‘‘globalized
political space’’ (Smith 1994:15) in which new forms of
political agency are being invented and contested
against both established and newly reconfigured struc-
tures of domination. If ever there was a rich site of cul-
tural production, it is in the domain of contemporary
environmentalism: a whole new discursive regime is
emerging and giving shape to the relationships between
and among natures, nations, movements, individuals,
and institutions.
Both this proliferation and recent theoretical trends
within the discipline have contributed to a dramatic up-
surge in interest among anthropologists in analyzing
this phenomenon. Scores of anthropologists are work-
ing and publishing in this area,2 and anthropology de-
partments throughout the country are training graduate
students interested in studying indigenous eco-politics
in Brazil, NGOs in Nepal, community-based conserva-
tion in East Africa, and environmental racism in East
Los Angeles.3
The present discussion is an attempt to take stock of
this current research trend within anthropology and to
contextualize it within a larger set of topical and theo-
retical trends. More important, however, I wish to iden-
tify a set of other issues that I believe a critically in-
formed anthropology should address in the production
of future ethnographic accounts of environmental dis-
courses, movements, and institutions. My suggestions
for future forms of scholarly engagement with environ-
mentalism are premised on the belief that anthropology
has a critical role to play not only in contributing to our
understanding of the human impact on the physical and
biotic environment but also in showing how that envi-
ronment is constructed, represented, claimed, and con-
tested. As environmental concerns have come to oc-
cupy a central place in local struggles, national debates,
and international fora, there is an important place for
an analytical enterprise which seeks to bring a critical
perspective to bear on these diverse, often contested, vi-
sions of the environment, environmental problems, and
many insights she provided on the material presented here and for
her superb editing.
2. For instance, see Milton (1993) and Kempton, Boster, and Hartley
(1995).
3. One could also cite a number of anthropology departments in
the United States and elsewhere that are currently engaged in
efforts to develop programs with an ecological/environmental
focus, among them, in addition to my own department at the
University of Georgia and Rutgers University’s long-established
interdisciplinary Program in Human Ecology, the University of
Washington, the University of Hawaii, the University of Arizona,
the University of Kent at Canterbury, and the University of
Geneva. The recent establishment of the Anthropology and Envi-
ronment Section of the American Anthropological Association is
also an exemplar of this trend.
277
278 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
the forms of agency such discourses conjure into (or out
of) being.
My approach is based on the premise that discourse
matters—that environmental discourses are manifestly
constitutive of reality (or, rather, of a multiplicity of
realities). In their constitutiveness they define vari-
ous forms of agency, administer certain silences, and
prescribe various forms of intervention. It is impor-
tant that we examine the assumption that there exist
self-evident environmental problems requiring some
equally self-evident set of rational solutions. Anthro-
pologists might stimulate those engaged in environ-
mental debates to problematize the vocabulary with
which they frame both environmental issues and solu-
tions. At the same time, we are currently witnessing
an increasingly earnest backlash which denies the
existence of an environmental crisis or promotes the
idea that environmental problems can best be amelio-
rated by market forces. National elites and transna-
tional capital interests—at times working in concert
with mainstream environmental organizations—are
engaged in attempts to displace the moral/political
imperatives that galvanize grassroots movements with
a conspicuously depoliticized institutional apparatus
that is by turns legal, financial, bureaucratic, and tech-
noscientific. It is imperative that we bring a critical
perspective to bear on the discursive foundations of
such efforts and show how, in the process, various
structures of domination are constituted and perpetu-
ated.
Studies of environmental movements, rhetorics, and
representations provide a tremendously fertile site for
exploring and extending any number of current theoret-
ical discussions within and beyond the discipline of an-
thropology: how we approach the task of ethnographic
writing in multi-sited contexts (Marcus 1995), how we
discern articulations between the local and the global
(Kearney 1995), how we understand emerging forms of
political agency (Escobar and Alvarez 1992, Lipschutz
and Conca 1993, Taylor 1995), how we view the inter-
sections between issues of identity and notions of hy-
bridity and authenticity (Bhabha 1994, Garcı́a Canclini
1995, Gupta and Ferguson 1992), and how we analyze
systems for the production of knowledge (Buttel et al.
1990, Escobar 1995, Saurin 1993).
In this discussion, the term ‘‘environmentalism’’ is
used in the widest possible sense, referring to a broad
field of discursive constructions of nature and human
agency. Stressing this broader conception of environ-
mentalism represents an attempt to avoid thinking
about it merely within the limited purview of social
movements. Indeed, any attempt to understand the so-
cial-movement aspects of environmentalism must nec-
essarily frame them within a larger set of questions
about this wider discursive domain and examine the
complex relationship which exists between historical
and contemporary forms of domination, existing or
emerging structures/institutions, the politics of repre-
sentation, processes of discursive production, and
emerging forms of political agency.
Sources of Anthropological Engagement
with Environmentalism
The recent trend toward anthropological engagement
with environmentalism was not at all inevitable.
Rather, it is the result of a series of particular historical
contingencies, both practical and theoretical. I will pref-
ace my brief consideration of some of these4 with two
observations. First, there is a rather sharp discontinuity
between the ecological anthropology of the 1960s and
early 1970s and what some are calling the ‘‘environ-
mental anthropology’’ of the present. Drawing its in-
sights primarily from the field of ecology, the former is
characterized by a persistent interest in localized adap-
tations to specific ecosystems and by an abiding scien-
tism: to the extent that cultural or ideational factors en-
ter into analyses of this sort, they are viewed primarily
with respect to their adaptive significance. The latter
draws its insights from a range of sources: poststructur-
alist social and cultural theory, political economy, and
recent explorations of transnationalism and globaliza-
tion, among others. Contemporary environmental an-
thropology is therefore more alert to issues of power and
inequality, to the contingency of cultural and historical
formations, to the significance of regimes of knowledge
production, and to the importance of the acceleration of
translocal processes. With the exception of a few indi-
viduals, there is very little overlap between those who
played a role in the ecological anthropology of the past
and those who are participating in the environmental
anthropology of the present.5 Second, relative to those
in other disciplines, anthropologists have come rather
late to the study of environmental movements.6 In
4. I recognize that my attempt to provide a genealogy for our inter-
est in environmentalism is to some degree conditioned by my own
theoretical perspective. Those whose work on environmentalism
derives from other theoretical sources might have other stories to
tell about the basis for our interest in this phenomenon.
5. Bonnie McCay, Benjamin Orlove, Stephen Brush, Roy Rappa-
port, Conrad Kottak, Leslie Sponsel, Tim Ingold, Robert Rhoades,
Roy Ellen, and Emilio Moran come to mind as individuals who
have spanned this divide. In drawing this distinction between
1960s–’70s ecological anthropology and contemporary environ-
mental anthropology, it is not my intention to suggest that this
more recent approach renders the insights of an earlier ecological
anthropology irrelevant. To the contrary, I believe that ecological
anthropology laid the groundwork for much of the present valoriza-
tion of indigenous knowledge (Brush and Stabinsky 1995, Orlove
and Brush 1996) and deserves considerable credit for advancing ef-
forts to promote community-based natural-resource management
(Western, Wright, and Strum 1994). It also seems to me that Roy
Rappaport stands as a particularly pivotal figure in linking these
two perspectives. This is most evident in his 1992 Distinguished
Lecture in General Anthropology entitled ‘‘The Anthropology of
Trouble’’ (Rappaport 1993), where with typical clarity he brings the
systems perspective developed in Pigs for the Ancestors (Rappaport
1968) to bear on his concern with the way in which economics has
come to supply contemporary ‘‘society with its dominant social
discourse’’ (Rappaport 1993:298) at the expense of fundamental
ecological concerns.
6. Two conspicuous exceptions here are Mary Douglas (Douglas
and Wildavsky 1982) and Luther Gerlach. Gerlach’s interest in
social movements dates back to the late 1960s, and he published
several pieces on environmental movements in the 1970s and

fields such as political science and sociology, the study
of environmental movements has a rather long history;
the extensive literature on ‘‘new social movements’’
(Offe 1985) and ‘‘environmental sociology’’ (Dunlap and
Catton 1979) is testimony to this fact.
In assessing what lies behind the rather striking
growth in interest in environmentalism among anthro-
pologists, I would cite three factors. The first is simply
the more general trajectory of growth in environmental
scholarship across a wide range of disciplines, a process
which accelerated in the late 1980s. Indeed, the past de-
cade has witnessed a remarkable florescence in environ-
mental scholarship and the emergence or growth of
a host of new subdisciplines: environmental history,
environmental ethics, environmental economics, en-
vironmental law, environmental security, and political
ecology, to name just a few. To the extent that anthro-
pologists have developed an interest in environmen-
talism, then, we are participating in a larger, transdisci-
plinary process. One of the things that makes the
current moment so promising is the degree to which
scholars from a range of disciplines—geography, politi-
cal science, history, legal studies, science and technol-
ogy studies, media studies, and others—are engaged in
projects that converge on an interest in environmen-
talism. This is a period with great potential for building
rich transdisciplinary intersections, and many anthro-
pologists appear to be doing that. One might go so far
as to claim that, in the study of environmentalism at
least, the boundaries between disciplines are eroding to
a degree not seen before.
A second factor leading to the present anthropological
interest in environmentalism is the simple fact that so
many of us have witnessed the emergence (or arrival) of
environmental movements at our field sites. Environ-
mental NGOs have become highly visible players in the
terrain that we once thought we could claim as our
own—the rural/remote community. As this has oc-
curred, we have seen local communities mobilize or
adopt elements of transnational environmental dis-
course in ways we had not witnessed before (Brosius
1997a, b; Fisher 1997; Turner 1991).
A third element that has engendered an interest in en-
vironmentalism among anthropologists has been a se-
ries of recent theoretical trends both within our disci-
pline and beyond. This is a rather complicated scenario,
with a considerable degree of overlap between various
areas of theoretical and empirical focus. Most notable,
perhaps, has been the trend since the mid-1980s toward
what Marcus and Fischer refer to as ‘‘the repatriation of
anthropology as cultural critique’’ (1986:111). Uncom-
fortable with the way we see otherness essentialized in
indigenous rights campaigns, acculturative processes
elided in an effort to stress the authenticity of indige-
nous peoples, and concepts such as ‘‘wilderness’’ de-
ployed in environmentalist campaigns, we have taken
it as our task to provide critical commentary.
1980s (Gerlach 1980, Gerlach and Hine 1973, Gerlach and Meiller
1987).
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 279
On the face of it, critiques such as this may not ap-
pear to be very good examples of ‘‘repatriation,’’ given
that they so often focus on movements occurring in de-
cidedly non-Western contexts. However, such studies
are often premised on the assumption that the forms of
representation which social movements partake of in-
corporate discursive elements that are derived from
Western/metropolitan contexts and therefore not truly
autochthonous. That the messages deployed by these
movements are often communicated to Western audi-
ences by Western environmental organizations only
serves to reinforce this assumption.
More significant than Marcus and Fischer’s call for
the repatriation of anthropology have been a series of
insights into the intersections of discourse/power/
knowledge (Foucault 1972, 1980b). Particularly signifi-
cant for the present discussion have been insights de-
rived from Foucault’s discussions of governmentality
(1991) and bio-power (1980a). The ways in which these
insights have been refracted into other concerns is an
important part of the story of our engagement with en-
vironmentalism.
One could point to a number of other theoretical
trends that have been of significance in contributing to
our present interest in environmentalism. Of central
importance have been a number of innovative examina-
tions of the phenomenon of resistance (Comaroff 1985;
Gaventa 1980; Guha 1989b; Ong 1987; Scott 1985,
1990). Equally influential has been the work of a num-
ber of writers interested in theorizing nature (Cronon
1995, Escobar 1996, Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994, Har-
away 1991, Rabinow 1992, Strathern 1992); much of
this work is premised on the idea that any attempt to
understand human interventions into nature must be-
gin with an effort to rethink the terms by which we
have conventionally described how we place ourselves
or are placed within or outside it. Allied with this has
been the emerging field of science studies, a broad effort
to theorize the bases upon which we presume to know
about nature in the first place (Franklin 1995; Haraway
1989, 1994; Latour and Woolgar 1979; Rabinow 1996);
this work has important implications for our thinking
about ecology, environmental science, and other fields
concerned with the production of scientific knowledge
about the planet.7 Also of importance in contributing to
our interest in environmentalism has been the work of
a series of writers interested in critical examinations of
contemporary discourses of development (Escobar 1995,
Ferguson 1994, Parajuli 1991, Pigg 1992, Sachs 1992);
this work has been particularly influential in demon-
strating how large institutions such as the World Bank
can have a transformative effect on the discursive con-
tours of the issues they are designed to address and how
by creating certain kinds of subjects they lay the
groundwork for their own interventions. Efforts to un-
derstand the phenomenon of globalization and the
7. For a response to science studies and other ‘‘deconstructive’’ en-
terprises as they pertain to conservation biology, see Soulé and
Lease (1995).
280 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
forms of articulation between ‘‘the local’’ and globaliz-
ing processes (Appadurai 1996, Featherstone 1990, Han-
nerz 1996) have also been of significance. Feminist the-
ory, particularly a series of debates around issues of
feminism, essentialism, and Third World women/
women of color (Agarwal 1992, Biehl 1991, Braidotti et
al. 1994, Carlassare 1994, Carney 1993, Diamond and
Ornstein 1990, hooks 1984, Jackson 1993, Mies and
Shiva 1993, Sturgeon 1997), has infused recent discus-
sions of indigenous peoples and indigenous rights
movements (Beckett and Mato 1996, Jackson 1995, Lat-
tas 1993) that intersect with environmentalism in nu-
merous ways. Much more diffuse though no less impor-
tant has been the influence of cultural studies (During
1993, Grossberg, Nelson, and Treichler 1992); to the ex-
tent that environmentalism today is a rich site of cul-
tural production, it is fertile ground for analyses of this
sort (Slack and Berland 1994). The attempt to address
the relationship between representation, knowledge
making, subject making, and domination in postcolo-
nial theory (Guha and Spivak 1988, Williams and Chris-
man 1994) has been equally significant, particularly in
showing how the ‘‘Third World’’—the site of many
forms of environmental intervention—continues to be
authored and scripted in terms of Northern forms of
representation (Escobar 1995, Sturgeon 1997). Finally, I
would note the importance of a broad transdisciplinary
effort to define the nascent field of political ecology, an
enterprise concerned with understanding the ways in
which the environment serves as a locus for the enact-
ment and perpetuation of patterns of inequality (Blaikie
and Brookfield 1987, Greenberg and Park 1994, Peet and
Watts 1996).
Trends
Having considered some of the primary influences lead-
ing to the present anthropological interest in environ-
mentalism, it can be said that the forms that our en-
gagement has taken are quite varied. There are,
however, three trends that have been particularly con-
spicuous with respect to our treatments of environmen-
talism: (1) a sustained critique of romantic, essential-
ized images, (2) an emphasis on contestation, and (3) an
interest in globalization and in the transnationality of
these movements and discourses. In briefly discussing
each of these, my intent is to identify both how they
have furthered our understanding of environmental
movements and how they have caused us to elide much
of what is interesting and significant about them.
I have previously noted the degree to which the study
of environmentalism is a transdisciplinary undertaking.
Indeed, in many cases it seems that identifying a partic-
ular contribution as ‘‘anthropological’’ or as belonging
to another discipline is a product not of content but of
where it is published and the institutional affiliation of
the author. Therefore, though my focus is on the contri-
butions of anthropologists, I deliberately take note of
the work of individuals from other disciplines. This
merely serves to stress the degree to which our present
projects involve issues that are being debated across a
range of disciplines.
essentialized images
Whatever else they aim to do, environmental move-
ments or organizations are concerned with efforts to
valorize natural or cultural communities that have his-
torically been disregarded, subjugated, and in other
ways denied standing. That process of valorization de-
pends on the deployment of images to a broad audience.
When anthropologists (or others) turn their attention
toward the examination of a particular environmental
movement, often one of the first things that catches
their attention is the images they see being deployed.
Such images may, for instance, assert the ‘‘natural con-
nections’’ between indigenous peoples and the environ-
ment. Whether because, as the result of long experience
‘‘in the field,’’ we recognize them to be idealizations or,
because of our theoretical commitments, we are con-
cerned with the ways in which essentialisms have his-
torically been employed to perpetuate systems of in-
equality, anthropologists tend to be put off by such
images.
Certainly in my own work on the transnational cam-
paign against logging in Sarawak, East Malaysia (Brosius
1997a, b), I was profoundly disturbed by the images I
saw being purveyed by Euro-American environmental-
ists. This campaign, which began in 1987 and continued
through the early 1990s, involved numerous environ-
mental organizations not only in Malaysia but through-
out North America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Much
of the rhetoric of this campaign was focused on the
Penan, a group of hunter-gatherers who have been
deeply affected by logging. The images used in the cam-
paign presented a portrait of Penan that was over-
whelmingly obscurantist and romantic. My concern has
been that such images objectify and dehumanize the
Penan, making them FernGully icons rather than au-
thentic political actors. More often than not, such im-
ages obscure rather than reveal existing structures of
domination. Examples of this kind of critique of essen-
tialized images are particularly to be found in work fo-
cused on preservationist campaigns of one sort or an-
other, whether aimed at cetaceans, baby seals, rain
forests, wilderness, or indigenous peoples (Einarsson
1993, Freeman and Kreuter 1994, Kalland 1993, Zerner
1994).
Compelling though it may be for us to produce such
critiques, I cannot help but feel that doing so is some-
thing of a dead end. For one thing, we seem to forget
that not all essentialisms are the same. We need to give
more thought, for instance, to the distinction between
romantic and strategic essentialisms. Critiques of es-
sentialism developed in conjunction with our efforts to
understand how such representations create and sup-
port patterns of inequality. It is thus rather ironic that

just at the moment that anthropologists have embraced
such a critical perspective, historically marginalized
communities have begun to recognize the political po-
tency of strategically deployed essentialisms. Thus
whatever theoretical commitments may lead us to pro-
duce such critiques, doing so compromises us politi-
cally. It is incumbent upon us to confront this irony di-
rectly. Another problem is that in focusing on the
critique of obscurantist essentialisms we ignore the
more pernicious discursive moves of those who would
deny any sense of enchantment with nature whatso-
ever, putting in its place ‘‘commonsense’’ solutions pro-
moting passionless, technoscientifically based manage-
ment initiatives that elide every trace of politics or that
reduce every form of engagement with nature to an ex-
tension of capital.
contestation
The second trend—an emphasis on contestation—is, of
course, part of a more general turn within the discipline
and beyond. All one need do is look at the titles of a
number of recently published books from a range of dis-
ciplines: Going Wild: Hunting, Animal Rights, and the
Contested Meaning of Nature (Dizard 1994), Contested
Frontiers in Amazonia (Schmink and Wood 1992), Con-
testing Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmoder-
nity (Zimmerman 1994), and Contested Lands: Conflict
and Compromise in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens (Mason
1992). While this emphasis on contestation has pro-
vided us with a number of important insights, it is be-
coming increasingly formulaic. The irony here is that
in the very process of trying to foreground the existence
of zones of contestation, the analytical apparatus we
employ in describing such zones has the effect of rou-
tinizing and naturalizing contestation. We need only
consider the degree to which the bureaucratized version
of the idea of contestation—that is, the notion of
‘‘stakeholders’’—has become a dominant motif in a
large number of contemporary analyses and interven-
tions.
transnationality
As any number of recent commentators have observed,
the discursive regime of contemporary environmen-
talism is global in scale. At a time when the preserva-
tion of biodiversity and the rights of indigenous peoples
have become global concerns, localized movements
have found common ground outside national borders.
Such groups, while asserting locality, simultaneously
legitimate local concerns with reference to global dis-
courses and are increasingly brought into transnational
informational and funding networks. At the same time
Northern NGOs disseminate local discourses, gener-
icizing them so that they partake of globally valorized
discourses. Often it is no longer clear what is local and
what is not: the origins of representations are obscured
in the processes of translation and distribution.
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 281
This state of affairs has given rise to the third trend
in the analysis of environmental movements: an inter-
est in processes of globalization and the linking of local
environmentalisms to transnational, metropolitan dis-
courses (Conklin and Graham 1995, Princen and Finger
1994, Turner 1991). Globalization and transnationality
are, of course, ideas being spoken about a great deal
within the field of anthropology and beyond. When
these ideas are brought to bear on environmental move-
ments, we see attention being paid to the processes by
which environmental discourses are deployed, appro-
priated, transformed, circulated, and recirculated by
variously positioned actors, as well as the ways in
which environmental imperatives are framed and de-
ployed with respect to claims about local authenticity,
national sovereignty, or global significance.
Elements for Future Engagement
Having considered some of the sources for and present
forms of engagement with contemporary environmen-
talism, I would like to address a series of concerns that
I believe anthropologists might address in future efforts.
Central to my argument is that we need to problematize
the vocabulary with which we frame our engagements
with environmentalism, particularly to the extent that
our engagements extend beyond pure scholarship to the
promotion of ameliorative projects. Bringing a critical
perspective to bear on environmental discourses is it-
self, I would argue, an important form of environmental
praxis.
Several of the topics and concerns I discuss below are
currently being addressed in work outside the disci-
pline, and I take note of this where appropriate. My
comments are based on the premise that, whatever is
being done in other disciplines, anthropology can make
a distinctive contribution to the study of these issues,
extending and enriching such inquiries with the partic-
ular kinds of insights that an ethnographic approach can
provide.
topologies
One of the more urgent tasks in the analysis of contem-
porary environmentalism is to understand the ways in
which particular topologies—constructions of actual
and metaphorical space—are discursively produced and
reproduced. Such topologies are not incidental to envi-
ronmentalism but in fact constitutive of it. Indeed, one
could argue that the emergence of particular topologies
is at the very heart of the growth of environmentalism
in the latter half of the 20th century. Such topologies
provide the discursive stage for assessing the state of the
planet, create subjects, and presume to describe the
ways in which particular categories of subject affect the
environment. They lay the groundwork for interven-
tions by defining the political and institutional space of
environmental debates, by prescribing certain forms of
282 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
environmental amelioration, and by identifying the
most appropriate agents to undertake such interven-
tions. It is therefore critical that anthropologists inter-
ested in contemporary environmental discourses be
alert to the constitutive power of such topologies.
The discursive production of topologies is not, of
course, a practice limited to environmentalists. Indeed,
in our own analyses of contemporary environmen-
talism we too engage in this practice. Thus, a task of
equal urgency is to understand how our own analytical
categories are likewise constitutive of particular topolo-
gies.
Perhaps the clearest example of an emergent topology
is that of globality, whether in the form of ‘‘global envi-
ronmental governance,’’ the Gaia hypothesis, claims of
global heritage and global citizenship, or our own con-
cern with globalization. Numerous observers have re-
cently remarked on this trend, and both activists and
academics have provided critical analyses and commen-
taries (Ingold 1993, Lipschutz and Conca 1993, Milton
1996, Ross 1991, Sachs 1993, Taylor and Buttel 1992,
Thompson and Rayner 1998). Another topology that has
received a considerable degree of attention in recent
years is the idea of wilderness (Cronon 1995; Guha
1989a; Nash 1967; Oelschlager 1991, 1992; Proctor and
Pincetl 1996). In addition to these two topologies
widely recognized by anthropologists and others, how-
ever, there are a number of others that seem to me
equally critical for any attempt to understand contem-
porary environmental discourses but have been virtu-
ally ignored.
As Euro-American environmentalism has increas-
ingly been subjected to the criticism that it ignores so-
cial justice (Broad 1994, Guha 1989a, Kothari and Para-
juli 1993, Shiva 1993) and as global environmental
governance has increasingly established itself as the pri-
mary vehicle for the amelioration of environmental
problems, the distinction of ‘‘North’’ (Western Europe,
North America, Japan, Australia) and ‘‘South’’ (all the
rest, excepting the former Soviet bloc) has emerged as
one of the central topologies of contemporary environ-
mentalism. Yet it remains curiously unexamined.
There are steps being taken in this direction, but they
are as yet rather oblique. To the extent that ‘‘the Third
World’’ often stands in for ‘‘the South,’’ Escobar’s En-
countering Development: The Making and Unmaking
of the Third World (1995) is an exemplary attempt to
understand the genesis and consequences of this partic-
ular topology. Though not explicitly concerned with en-
vironmentalism, Doty’s Imperial Encounters: The Poli-
tics of Representation in North-South Relations (1996)
is a highly perceptive analysis of the significance of rep-
resentational practices as they apply to the categories
‘‘North’’ and ‘‘South.’’
Yet another critical topology for anthropologists to
attend to in their examinations of environmentalism is
the many ways in which the idea of the ‘‘local’’ is en-
coded. Our current interest in local/global articulations
certainly represents progress in this direction, but there
seem to me to be dimensions of locality, or of the ways
in which the local articulates with wider entities (the
state, global agents/institutions/discourses), that are
escaping us. For instance, we frequently contrast ‘‘top-
down’’ and ‘‘bottom-up’’ approaches to development,
we are attentive to how conservation programs affect
people ‘‘on the ground,’’ and we characterize some ac-
tivists as working ‘‘close to the ground’’ or at the ‘‘grass
roots.’’ More conventionally, perhaps, we take the no-
tion of ‘‘community’’ as unproblematic, as when we
talk about ‘‘community-based natural-resource man-
agement.’’ There are yet other, more oblique ways in
which the language we use produces the topology of lo-
cality: one example might be the current vogue, in envi-
ronment and development circles, of ‘‘participation’’ or
‘‘participatory management’’ (Rahnema 1992, Ribot
1996, World Bank 1996). Attempts to examine dis-
courses of locality are as yet uncommon, though there
are a few notable recent efforts (Brosius, Tsing, and
Zerner 1998, Li 1996, Peters 1996, Zerner 1994).
Related to this larger project of critically analyzing
topologies is the need to understand more clearly the
relation between topologies and the creation of certain
kinds of subjects, whether as targets for interventionist
projects, as agents designated to effect such interven-
tions, or as topics for our own research efforts. Thus,
the emergence of concern about the destruction of trop-
ical rain forests has resulted in the valorization of par-
ticular categories of subject who we feel should live in
them: indigenous peoples (how often have we heard
them referred to as ‘‘guardians of biodiversity’’?).8 Ex-
cluded by this topos are categories of people who should
not live in rain forests: peasants and migrants from ur-
ban areas.
There is at present exemplary writing emerging from
other fields that can provide anthropologists with some
direction in approaching the relationship between
topologies and subject making. Most significant per-
haps is work being done in the field of geography on the
production of space and on the intersections between
geographical knowledge and technologies for the in-
scription of that knowledge and how these articulate
with structures of domination (Harvey 1996, Sibley
1995, Smith 1984, Soja 1989). Of equal interest is work
being done in the field of critical geopolitics (Dalby
1991, O’Tuathail 1996, Routledge 1996), an emerging
area of enquiry concerned with understanding ‘‘the poli-
tics of writing global space’’ (O’Tuathail 1996).
8. The concept of biodiversity is one of the more interesting con-
cepts in the lexicon of contemporary ecology and environmen-
talism. Apparently describing an objective reality, this concept si-
multaneously contains a sense of crisis. It constructs the threat to
the environment in a certain way, constructs how that threat
should be ameliorated, and lays the groundwork for prescribing the
role that certain kinds of actors—scientists, NGOs, indigenous
peoples, Western consumers—should play (see Martı́nez Alier
1996, Takacs 1996, Weizsacker 1993, Zerner 1995).
 b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 283

temporalities and dynamics issues are debated between North and South. What was
once a fairly simple issue—from the Northern perspec-
If, in our studies of environmentalism, we are con-
tive a morality play—was transformed into something
cerned to understand the processes by which emerging
much more complex. The campaign was transformed
forms of political agency are constituted, it defeats our
from a singular focus on the imperative to stop the prog-
purpose to consider these debates merely a matter of
ress of bulldozers to one forced to contend not only with
multivocality—of differently positioned actors giving
powerful Malaysian counterarguments but with the Ur-
voice to contested representations. In fact, certain
uguay Round of GATT, post-UNCED conventions, the
voices may change what they are saying, certain voices
International Tropical Timber Organization, ‘‘criteria
may succeed in edging others out, certain voices may
and indicators’’ of sustainability, and the North-South
be co-opted, and certain voices may be judged irrele-
debate. As this occurred, Northern NGOs could not de-
vant. How does the process of forcing open spaces for
cide among themselves what the central issue was: the
newly emerging political agents occur? How or why do
Penan alone, indigenous rights in Sarawak, Malaysia’s
such spaces close for others? These processes are, at
forestry practices, the tropical timber trade, timber mar-
base, temporal. Understanding the diverse forms of
kets more broadly, Northern consumption, or some
temporality that underlie the ways in which particular
other thing. Perceptions of ‘‘the issue’’ were fundamen-
environmental issues unfold must form a central part
tally conditioned by the positionality of individual
of any anthropological account of environmentalism.
actors. It is with respect to these types of transforma-
For one thing, it is important that we grasp something
tions, reevaluations, and repositionings—and the rela-
of the dynamism of particular environmental debates.
tions between them—that the story of the international
In laying out the perspectives of various actors in our
Sarawak campaign raises a series of compelling issues
descriptions, we tend to assume their interests and the
concerning how we might approach the analysis of en-
forms of representation upon which those interests are
vironmental discourses. A campaign such as this is not
based to be relatively fixed. We therefore fail to consider
merely the sum total of a series of points of contestation
the extent to which those interests and representations
among actors with a diversity of perspectives. What I
may be subject to reformulation, whether in response
have attempted to show in my more recent work (Bro-
to critique, because new linkages are recognized (for in-
sius 1995, n.d.) is some of the shifting historical, rhetor-
stance, between race and the locating of toxic waste
ical, and institutional contours of this campaign as it
sites), or because of changes in the positioning of vari-
has evolved over time.
ous actors. This both hinders our ability to recognize
Another aspect of the temporality of environmental
the dynamism that characterizes environmental move-
campaigns that deserves our attention is the somewhat
ments and discourses and obscures the agency of the
chimeric but no less real quality of momentum. As I
actors involved.
have interviewed those involved in the Sarawak cam-
If there is one thing that characterizes environmental
paign, this quality has been mentioned with remarkable
discourses, it is the rapidity with which they—and the
frequency by a surprising number of participants. The
counter-discourses which they provoke—evolve. Un-
history of this campaign can in part be written as one
derstanding something of the complexity and dyna-
of increasing and then decreasing momentum. Nearly
mism of the relationship between representations and
all those involved in the campaign agree that there were
the process of discursive production places us in a better
periods when the possibility of success seemed certain,
position to comprehend the emergence (or submer-
enthusiasm was high, and events followed one after the
gence) of particular agents. Such agents are not just po-
other. At some point in the early 1990s this momentum
sitioned but may reposition themselves or be reposi-
began to dissipate. Different participants have varying
tioned; environmental debates are not merely zones of
interpretations of why this is so. Some are confused
contestation but zones of constantly shifting position-
about where it went; others recognize, as Wade Davis
ality.9
observed (personal communication), that ‘‘every cam-
An example of this kind of dynamism can be found
paign exists on a bell curve.’’
in the Sarawak campaign. Early in the campaign much
Not only do the contours of particular debates change
of the rhetoric, from Northern NGOs in particular, cen-
but the larger phenomenon of environmentalism is
tered on the imperative to ‘‘save’’ the Penan. This, it
transformed as well. Environmental discourses are
was believed, could be achieved by concerted interna-
changing in response to critiques of elitism, to charges
tional pressure on Malaysia. Direct action aimed at rais-
that they ignore social justice issues, to accusations
ing the profile of the Penan was viewed as the best way
that they are a form of neocolonialism, and to criticisms
to realize this end, and numerous such actions oc-
that they ignore North/South imbalances. Institutions
curred. But Malaysia talked back, and in so doing it fun-
are emerging and evolving. Things are moving very fast.
damentally changed the terms by which environmental
Thus, for instance, arguments about preserving the
rain forest are very different today from the arguments
9. The approach described here is consonant with what Rosaldo,
of a decade ago. There is a much greater sense of aware-
borrowing a term from the Manchester school of anthropology, ness among Northern NGOs concerning the appropri-
called a ‘‘processual analysis’’ (1989:92). ateness of campaigning in certain ways in the South.
284 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
Notions of political space are given more thought than
previously, and there is a much more clearly articulated
conception of here-ness and there-ness with respect to
the geographical/political space of environmental ac-
tion. When we speak today of political agency, we need
to remember that agency exists in political space and
that we must be more explicit in defining where and un-
der what circumstances environmental praxis is pre-
scribed by differently positioned actors within that
space. Issues such as this, along with particular cam-
paigns or debates, are embedded within a broader tem-
poral stream.
One of the sources of this temporal dynamism in en-
vironmentalism is the so-called green spectrum (Gott-
lieb 1993, Sale 1990) between radical and mainstream
environmentalists. Radical environmentalists concen-
trate their efforts on direct action, tend to be relatively
nonhierarchical, stress the role of the committed indi-
vidual in bringing about change, and focus on attracting
media attention. They see their primary role as con-
sciousness raising. Mainstream groups, such as the
World Wide Fund for Nature, place a much greater em-
phasis on long-term, cooperative institutional solutions
to environmental problems and on establishing good
working relationships with elites. The relationship be-
tween these two can be problematic. Mainstream
groups are considered by direct-action groups to be
overly accommodationist, hidebound, bloated, and
more concerned about institutional survival than about
producing change. Direct-action groups are considered
by mainstream groups to have little appreciation for
long-term goals and little understanding of the need to
establish working relationships with opponents in order
to produce real change. They are thought to be short-
term actors, nomadic subjects (sensu Deleuze and Guat-
tari 1987), as likely as not to disappear after stirring
things up. What is significant here is that in the context
of any environmental debate, as well as at a broader
scale, the balance between these tends to shift over
time, usually from early consciousness raising by radi-
cal groups to environmental management in which
mainstream groups play a larger part. One of the most
critical dynamics of a campaign is not merely the exis-
tence of tensions or disagreements—points of contesta-
tion—but the shifting pattern of marginalizations and
privilegings that occurs as the terms of a debate shift.
Who is listened to or ignored, and in which contexts?
Who is it useful to be engaged with, and who is it neces-
sary to establish distance from? Such questions are at
the center of any campaign and are a central element in
its dynamics.
Another source of dynamism in environmentalism
has been the process by which discursive and institu-
tional linkages evolve between environmental concerns
and other issues or debates. Environmentalism has en-
countered a series of different conversations, particu-
larly in the past decade, and in many cases this has
shifted the discursive contours around which environ-
mental issues are debated. In our efforts to understand
environmentalism, anthropologists need to attend more
carefully to the ways in which these linkages have oc-
curred, recognizing that they are a function not only of
abstracted, decontextualized discourses but of dis-
courses subscribed to or contested by particular politi-
cal agents. Among the most significant discursive inter-
sections have been between environmentalism and
indigenous rights (Baviskar 1996, Burger 1990, Durning
1992, McNeely 1995), environmentalism and social jus-
tice (Bullard 1993, Di Chiro 1995, Kothari and Parajuli
1993, Szasz 1994), environmentalism and gender (Agar-
wal 1992, Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, and Wangari
1996, Shiva 1994), and environmentalism and develop-
ment (Escobar 1995, Peet and Watts 1996, Redclift
1987, Sachs 1992, World Commission on Environment
and Development 1987).
environmental risk and peril
Underlying the dynamics of the development of any en-
vironmental issue is a series of conceptions, often im-
plicit, about the nature of the risk to humans (or, per-
haps, cetaceans) or the peril to the environment
resulting from some particular state of affairs: the exis-
tence of a toxic waste site, the persistence of whaling,
or the rate of logging in some rain forest. To a degree
that I do not think has been sufficiently appreciated, en-
vironmental debates often turn on the concerns and pre-
dictions that arise from such conceptions, particularly
with regard to differences in the degree of urgency felt
by various actors and the different forms of ameliorative
practice that are prescribed as a result. As much as the
green spectrum referred to above, these set the stage for
contestation or solidarity on any environmental issue.
Anthropologists must be alert to the ways in which
such concerns are encoded, deployed, contested, and
perhaps transformed.
Thus, for example, in the Sarawak campaign, the con-
cerns of many Northern environmentalists were framed
in terms of great urgency: that there were six months
or two years or five years left before the forests of Sara-
wak were completely destroyed. It was precisely this
sense of urgency, supported by figures on logging rates,
that was used so effectively to mobilize support for in-
digenous communities in the international Sarawak
campaign, to frame the prescription of ameliorative
measures, and to justify the intervention of a particular
set of agents. But it was also this sense of urgency that
framed the Malaysian government response to the cam-
paign. It is a very short distance from a rhetoric of ur-
gency that draws its force from statements about rates
of logging to measured discussions about what an ap-
propriate sustainable rate of logging might be, shifting
the debate from the domain of moral imperative or
apocalyptic urgency to one of composed, well-adminis-
tered sustainable forest management. Along with this
shift comes a set of assumptions about the appropriate-
ness or inappropriateness of certain agents’ acting in
various ways (Brosius n.d.a).
Differences in the degree to which prescriptions for
immediate action must be submerged in the interest of

larger institutional imperatives also lie at the heart of
the green spectrum. The irritation of radical environ-
mentalists with mainstream organizations often arises
from their frustration that such groups are complicit in
ill-advised efforts to manage apocalypse—in efforts that
obscure the acuteness of a particular threat.
Several anthropologists have, in fact, examined the
phenomenon of environmental risk. Indeed, some of the
earliest anthropological engagements with environ-
mentalism focused on the ways in which the perception
of environmental risk is culturally constructed (Doug-
las 1972, Douglas and Wildavsky 1982, Downey 1986,
Gerlach 1987, Gerlach and Rayner 1988, Rayner and
Cantor 1987).10 Interesting work on the perception of
environmental risk continues (Cole 1993, Konstantinov
1995, Kottak and Costa 1993, Rappaport 1996, Rayner
1992, Schwarz and Thompson 1990), though, perhaps
because this work has an applied bent and tends toward
methodological formalism, it does not enjoy wide rec-
ognition. Anthropologists interested in environmen-
talism would do well to consult this body of literature
in their efforts to understand the shape that particular
notions of risk give to environmental mobilizations, in-
stitutions, and interventions. We should also be cogni-
zant of a developing body of literature inspired by Ul-
rich Beck’s articulation of the concept of ‘‘risk society.’’
Beck and others are concerned with the attempt to
develop a theory of ‘‘reflexive modernization’’ linking
the various forms of economic, technological, and in-
stitutional rationality that characterize contemporary
industrial society with a more politicized conception
of risk (Beck 1992, 1996; Beck, Giddens, and Lash
1994; Lash, Szerszynski, and Wynne 1996). This body
of work provides anthropologists a rich foundation from
which to develop an innovative course of ethnographic
inquiry.
nations, nativisms, natural connections
The publication of Imagined Communities (Anderson
1983) was a watershed in scholarly interest in the study
of nations and nationalism. For the most part, however,
anthropologists have not subsequently done a very good
job of making sense of the nation-state.11 This is partic-
ularly the case with respect to environmentalism. Our
interest in the ‘‘local’’ has been either truly localized,
rarely extending to the metropole or the nation, or
linked to the transnational realm. We have been so
fixed on local social movements, transnational NGOs,
and globalizing processes that we seem to have forgot-
ten about the need to understand how national political
cultures might mediate between these.
Such national political cultures have a strong envi-
ronmental component. On the one hand, they have as
10. See Thompson (1980) and Thompson and Wildavsky (1982) for
more general attempts to develop a cultural theory of risk.
11. However, see Fox (1990) and Gellner (1983). Recent work in-
formed by postcolonial theory is also something of an exception
here.
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 285
their basis particular topologies, not just of the larger
national ‘‘geo-body’’ (Thongchai 1994) but of zones of
inclusion and exclusion within that geo-body. What are
the appropriate spaces (intensively cultivated plains vs.
sparsely populated upland rain forests) and occupations
(urban dweller, peasant farmer, shifting cultivator,
hunter-gatherer) for citizenship in the nation-state? To
what extent are government decisions about the siting
of mines, dams, plantations, or timber concessions
premised on assumptions about communities that exist
in those areas? Such is the stuff of national environmen-
tal ideologies. Anna Tsing’s discussion of marginality in
Indonesia (1993) is perhaps the best ethnographic treat-
ment of a national topology of citizenship to date.12 Re-
cent work on what Rosaldo (1994) has termed ‘‘cultural
citizenship’’ also holds great promise for understanding
national topologies.
Another aspect of national environmental ideologies
concerns the matter of blood-and-soil essentialisms. To
what degree, and in what ways, do national govern-
ments purvey images of timeless rootedness, and to
what extent do such images serve to include or exclude
certain categories of people? At a time when conserva-
tion is increasingly tied up with identity politics and
the line between the potentially emancipatory and the
potentially reactionary is no longer clear, understanding
the discursive linkages between national communities
and natural communities is critical (Malkki 1992, Zim-
merman 1994).13
the circulation of images
Environmentalist mobilizations and the countermobili-
zations deployed against them are today as much about
images of the environment as they are about the envi-
ronment itself. That is to say, environmentalism is
thoroughly enmeshed in the global circulation of im-
ages, a state of affairs mediated by the mass media.
Though anthropologists have in recent years begun to
recognize the importance of theorizing the public
sphere (Habermas 1991), they have yet to make much
progress in extending Habermas’s insights about the
significance of the mass media in shaping public opin-
ion, particularly with respect to environmental issues.
There are a number of ways in which such projects
might be undertaken.
First, in the context of environmental campaigns, we
need to understand much more about the bases upon
which strategic decisions are made concerning the de-
ployment of images. In the first instance, it is problem-
atic to take the images deployed in a campaign at face
value. Environmentalists may be quite self-critical
about the kinds of representations they purvey, recog-
12. Michael Dove has produced a number of insightful studies
of official conceptions of rural/indigenous communities (1983,
1986).
13. A great deal of interesting work has also recently been done on
National Socialist environmental ideologies: Bramwell (1985,
1989), Dominick (1992), Ferry (1995), Pois (1986), Schama (1995).
286 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
nizing them to be romanticized or in some other way
wanting. Yet foremost for them is the imperative to
raise public consciousness about a particular issue and
thereby effect change. Furthermore, the kinds of images
deployed in a campaign may be revised and reformu-
lated as a result of critique, internal or external. For in-
stance, the essentialized image of Penan as wide-eyed,
forest-dwelling innocents in need of saving was the
dominant one in the initial stages of the Sarawak cam-
paign. What became of that image as various critiques
were directed at it (and its deployers) and as the center
of gravity in the campaign shifted from the imperative
to stop bulldozers to a campaign more mired in the
complexities of transnational capitalism and postcolo-
nial global politics?
Second, at a time when environmental journalism
has become a specialty in its own right, we have a great
deal more to learn about the practices and politics of en-
vironmental reporting and about the mass media in gen-
eral. The momentum of an environmental campaign is
to a large extent an artifact of the amount of media cov-
erage that it is able to attract. What are the factors that
draw media attention to a particular issue in the first
place? In what ways are the terms of a campaign or issue
translated into media accounts? What accounts for the
media’s loss of interest in an issue? In what ways do the
media gauge public eagerness for, or satiation with, ac-
counts of a particular issue? Certainly some work is be-
ing done in the field of media studies and elsewhere
(Hansen 1993, Killingsworth and Palmer 1992, LaMay
and Dennis 1991), but research that is ethnographically
informed would contribute a great deal to our under-
standing of the relationship between the media, envi-
ronmental discourses, and environmental politics.14
Third, anthropologists interested in the study of envi-
ronmentalism must recognize that environmental de-
bates are not simply sites of cultural production, not
just zones of contestation, and not simply reported in
the media. At a time when environmental concerns are
circulating widely within the public sphere, leading to
laws and regimes that place a higher priority on envi-
ronmental protection, environmentalism is perceived
as a threat by many industries and governments. As a
result, in the past few decades we have witnessed an in-
creasing tendency for public relations firms contracted
by governments and industry to engage in the deploy-
ment of images in order to sway public opinion. Such
efforts at what has been termed ‘‘greenwashing’’ are
geared toward manufacturing uncertainty about envi-
ronmental threats, for instance, about the reliability of
the scientific evidence for global warming (Athanasiou
1996, Karliner 1997, Stauber and Rampton 1995). Thus,
for instance, in the case of logging in Sarawak, the Ma-
14. See Spitulnick (1993). It should also be noted that there is an
emerging literature by anthropologists on indigenous appropria-
tions of media technology: Ginsburg (1991), Turner (1992), Weiner
(1997). As significant as this literature is, I am urging attention by
anthropologists to the broader domain of environmental media, es-
pecially that not mediated by subaltern communities.
laysian government has retained the services of the pub-
lic relations firms Burson-Marsteller and Hill & Knowl-
ton to reassure a concerned Euro-American public that
logging in Sarawak is being carried out on a sustainable
basis. In other cases, industries have supported the for-
mation of ‘‘astro-turf’’ organizations (in other words, ar-
tificial grassroots organizations), which then emerge as
‘‘stakeholders’’ or as spokespersons for an ostensibly lo-
cal pro-industry constituency (Helvarg 1994, Shabecoff
1993). We need to remember that not all actors speak
their minds. The question for us is how to deal ethno-
graphically not only with strategic solidarity but also
with sophistry, evasion, deflection, spin, outright de-
ception, and the like. How does one interpret a dis-
course that is generated by a public relations firm that
describes its goal as ‘‘orchestrating effective campaigns
which motivate the right behaviors’’?15
Finally, I would point to the need for further attention
to more subtle forms of discursive displacement. An ex-
ample of this is the official environmentalism of the
Malaysian government. Since the late 1980s—precisely
the time that Malaysia was receiving worldwide atten-
tion for destruction of forests in Sarawak—the govern-
ment and the media (which are closely controlled by the
government) have increasingly deployed a rhetoric of
‘‘greening.’’ The Malaysian media today carry environ-
mental stories, once virtually absent, on a daily basis.
To a large extent, once however, these stories deal with
matters such as the planting of trees along highways or
efforts to clean up polluted rivers. What is not touched
upon—or is addressed only from an official perspec-
tive—is, among other things, the dispossession re-
sulting from the establishment of timber concessions or
plantations. This narrative of greening is, in short, a res-
olutely aestheticized, nonpoliticized discourse closely
tied to a broader official discourse of development. An-
thropologists would do well to examine similar displac-
ing narratives in other national contexts.
managing nature: from movements
to institutions
To the extent that we equate environmentalism with
environmental movements and campaigns, we are ig-
noring a crucial contemporary development: the pro-
gressive envelopment of environmental politics by in-
stitutions for national and global environmental
governance (Caldwell 1996, Haas, Keohane, and Levy
1993, Litfin 1994). An immense institutional apparatus
is descending on the environment much as it once did
on development—and is, in fact, becoming increasingly
enmeshed in the existing transnational ‘‘sustainable-
development’’ apparatus (Escobar 1995:192–99). Such
institutions, whatever else they may do, inscribe cer-
tain discourses. They simultaneously create certain
possibilities and preclude others. The political impera-
15. This statement can be found at the Burson-Marsteller website:
http://www.bm.com/files/per/PER-R02.html.

tives that spawned environmental movements are in-
creasingly excluded by bureaucratic and technoscien-
tific forms of institutional intervention. This process is
occurring across a range of environmental issues.
It is only in the past few years that a critical literature
on environmental institutionalization has begun to
emerge, drawing to a considerable extent (though not
exclusively) on Foucauldian notions of governmentality
and bio-power (Darier 1996, Eder 1996, Lipschutz and
Mayer 1996, Luke 1995, Myerson and Rydin 1994,
Rutherford 1994, Sachs 1993, Smith 1996). Anthropolo-
gists have an important role to play in understanding
the dimensions of this proliferation of institutional
structures and extending this critical perspective.
The need exists, first of all, to understand more about
the relationship between emerging forms of political
agency—particular environmental movements, NGOs,
and the like—and continuing processes of environmen-
tal institutionalization. NGOs, for instance, are very
aware that in the real world their goals are most likely
to be achieved when they can be incorporated into the
workings of institutions, and consequently they are
concerned that they be given a voice in the develop-
ment and operation of such institutions. At the same
time, they are aware that one of the best ways to
counter their efforts is to establish institutions which
obstruct meaningful change through endless negotia-
tion, legalistic evasion, and compromise. Many envi-
ronmentalists are profoundly concerned that moral and
political imperatives are excluded by the process of in-
stitutionalization.16 They are also cognizant of the fact
that NGO participation can give progressively envel-
oping institutions a degree of legitimacy that they
would otherwise lack and that NGO participation may
be sought for that purpose alone. The question that con-
cerns them—and divides them—is at what point they
should turn down the chance to get their issues on the
agenda by having a place at the table. At what point
does participation become co-optation?
Associated with this is the matter of the
institutional/organizational space of environmental
praxis. Institutions, be they governments or organiza-
tions such as the ITTO, are both enabling and limiting.
Defining themselves as filling particular spaces of dis-
course and praxis, institutions in effect redefine the
space of action; they privilege some forms of action and
limit others, they privilege some actors and marginalize
others. This proliferation of institutional structures, a
bureaucratization designed—if I may echo the work of
Michael Herzfeld (1992)—to produce and maintain en-
vironmental indifference, is occurring across a wide
range of environmental issues. We see it, for instance,
in the emerging domain of community-based natural-
resource management (Brosius, Tsing, and Zerner
1998). What began as a diffuse transnational movement
is increasingly being appropriated as multilateral aid
16. Ferguson (1994) describes precisely this process in the context
of development in Lesotho.
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 287
agencies adopt the language of ‘‘community’’ and ‘‘par-
ticipation’’ and invest large amounts of money in proj-
ects formulated around these concepts throughout Af-
rica, Asia, and Latin America.
Conclusions
Theoretical discussions in disciplines such as ours gen-
erally aim at one of two things. Some attempt to pro-
vide comprehensive models by which we might achieve
more adequate descriptions of the phenomena we are
interested in studying. Others are more concerned with
the attempt to interrogate our own categories. The for-
mer are aimed—rather unselfconsciously—at produc-
ing a better understanding of ‘‘them,’’ while the latter
are more concerned with trying to understand what we
think we know about ‘‘them’’ and why we should want
to ask about them in the first place.
It is useful to keep the distinction between these two
orders of inquiry in mind as we think about our engage-
ment with environmentalism. I am not at all concerned
about our ability to produce ‘‘better’’ descriptions of en-
vironmental movements. The danger does exist that the
present proliferation of studies will result in the kind of
routinization that led so much of the discipline to aban-
don ecological anthropology in the 1970s. Nevertheless,
given the remarkable transdisciplinarity of the mo-
ment, I am confident that environmentalism will con-
tinue to be a productive zone of inquiry. What most
concerns me is a series of questions that foreground our
role in the study of environmental movements. Such
questions are, at base, political in nature, and they ur-
gently require our attention. Thus, while there is great
promise in the current moment, there are also reasons
to step back, take stock of what we are doing, and ask
ourselves why we are doing it.
Environmentalism, broadly defined, is a series of
transformative discourses. Our analyses, to the extent
that they impinge upon the transformative possibilities
of those discourses, are nothing less than direct inter-
ventions. We need to attend to the question not only of
the circulation and contestation of images and dis-
courses that link local, national, and transnational
forms of environmentalism but also of how our own
works enter into that equation, possibly to the detri-
ment of those whose struggles we are trying to make
sense of. My concern has less to do with the ‘‘politics
of representation’’ than with the politics of representing
these movements—and the discourses they produce—
in the first place.
In many instances, environmental debates are tied to
broader struggles for democratization and rights. The
language of environmentalism has increasingly come to
be deployed by local communities as part of an effort to
challenge traditional structures of domination (Gerlach
1991), often against destructive resource extraction
practices or forms of resource exploitation that do not
take account of local rights. These are discourses in-
288 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
tended to empower historically disempowered commu-
nities, to preserve biodiversity, or to secure lives free
from the threat of pollution. When we describe these
movements we are mapping terrains of resistance and
making public what Scott (1990) has termed ‘‘hidden
transcripts.’’ We thereby give an airing to that which
was never intended to be aired and provide maps which
might be used to the detriment of those whose efforts
we study.
Further, the production of meanings and identities is
today occurring in a global political space in which
claims to authenticity are a critical dimension of legiti-
macy. To the extent that environmental movements
represent an attempt to renegotiate the terms by which
political agency has been exercised, their primary task
has been to legitimate their efforts through assertions
of authenticity. In that sense, environmental struggles
today are irrevocably tied up with identity politics. As-
serting their authenticity with reference to timeless
cultures and blood-and-soil essentialisms (at times
counter to national rhetorics of blood and soil), indige-
nous voices are being heard and local communities are
being allowed to assert control over the management of
resources.
There is great irony in all of this: as I noted previ-
ously, at the very moment that subaltern voices are at
last being heard, anthropologists have taken to sub-
jecting those voices to ethnographic scrutiny. We do so
on the basis of a series of theoretical commitments that
center around a profound dissatisfaction with the tradi-
tional anthropological concept of culture or, indeed,
with any kind of concept that denies agency by assum-
ing that individuals or categories of persons are to be
defined by some essential nature or by membership in
some naturally bounded community. This is something
that we should be very nervous about. Not only is it un-
clear what impact our commentaries might have on
these movements and discourses but also it is no longer
very clear what is emancipatory and what is potentially
reactionary, either in the movements we wish to study
or in our own commentaries on those movements. It
would be comforting to think that we might be able to
resolve this merely by interrogating the nature of our
authorial presence or the position from which we write,
but I am not sure that that is possible. In short, we have
to think very hard about the relationship between the
types of conceptual apparatus that we bring to bear on
these issues and the possible outcomes of our analytical
interventions.
Having said this, I also believe that there is the poten-
tial to regain some of the emancipatory promise of an
anthropology engaged in the study of environmentalism
to the extent that we are able provide analyses that re-
veal how various forms of environmentalism are being
discursively transfigured by powerful actors: national
governments, industries, public relations firms, multi-
lateral agencies, and the like. The process of environ-
mental institutionalization and multiple forms of dis-
cursive incarceration continue apace. There is much
work to be done to understand the precise dimensions
of this ongoing process.
Comments
a m i t a b a v i s ka r
Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, Delhi
110007, India (baviskar@unv.ernet.in). 20 xi 98
Brosius’s essay is a pithy and comprehensive review of
themes in environmental anthropology rendered espe-
cially significant by its attention to the politics of aca-
demic intervention. As Brosius argues, ‘‘we need to
problematize the vocabulary within which we frame
our engagements with environmentalism, particularly
to the extent that our engagements extend beyond pure
scholarship to the promotion of ameliorative projects.’’
I shall address my comments to his concern about the
implications of our analyses for environmentalism as a
transformative discourse.
A brief excursus before I begin: Although environ-
mental anthropology has concentrated on interrogating
the categories through which we constitute the world,
this process has not been as thoroughgoing as it might
be. Brosius points to some topologies, such as ‘‘locality’’
and the ‘‘North-South divide,’’ which remain largely
unexamined by environmental anthropologists. To
these I would suggest adding ‘‘rurality.’’ The environ-
ment is still fundamentally constituted in rural land-
scapes that seem to present themselves as self-evident
states of ‘‘nature.’’ While some recent research has
highlighted the constructed character of rural land-
scapes by focusing on state practices of classification
and on the transformative power of technological inter-
ventions, the parallel movement of making visible the
evacuation of ‘‘nature’’ from ‘‘industrial’’ and ‘‘urban’’
landscapes has still not occurred within the frame of in-
quiry of environmental anthropology. The unwitting
assumption that environmental anthropology is not rel-
evant to urban-industrial topologies needs to be exam-
ined more carefully.
Brosius points out that, in focusing on the production
of meanings and identities through discursive practices,
environmental anthropology conforms to the central
preoccupation of anthropologists with interrogating re-
ceived categories of thought. However, while it is im-
portant to see categories as dynamic and contested con-
structs, highlighting their contingent character is not
enough. The heuristic need for stable topologies, refer-
ence points, and boundaries cannot be denied. This
need is felt not only by members of environmental
movements but by everyone engaged in meaningful ac-
tion. Practice demands working assumptions, tempo-
rary certitudes, and acts of faith. Where do we anchor
practice if our conceptual shores keep shifting? For in-
stance, a social movement’s claim that indigenous com-

munities’ rights to forests have priority over distant ur-
ban consumers may be criticized for constructing a
problematic topology around locality, closed commu-
nity, nativism, subsistence, and so on. But if we take
away these concepts, what are we left with? What alter-
native analytical categories do we use to support strug-
gles against the structures of domination? The dilemma
of interrogating categories even as one continues to use
them is not exclusive to environmental anthropologists
but shared with everyone who is sensitive to the politi-
cal implications of academic practice.
Brosius presents a clear exposition of the political pre-
dicament confronting anthropologists when their theo-
retical dissatisfactions threaten to compromise emanci-
patory efforts. He makes a compelling case for giving
priority to the emancipatory project by arguing that the
‘‘strategic essentialisms’’ of historically marginalized
communities should not be interrogated, especially
since they are already fighting against overwhelming
odds. However, interrogation need not necessarily be a
move away from praxis. When we deconstruct our sub-
jects’ practices only in order to speak to a separate audi-
ence which does not include those subjects, our cri-
tiques may be rightly attacked for pandering to
academic vanities to the detriment of academic politics.
Implicated as we are in creating representations, we
bear responsibility for addressing the concerns of our
subjects and their self-images and for creating legiti-
macy for complex self-representations which are not
trapped by the demand for a spurious ‘‘authenticity.’’
Though the anthropological representation of environ-
mental movements can be a political minefield where
accusations of sabotage and betrayal may explode with
deadly effect, it is possible to rescue a dialogical rela-
tionship between anthropologist and subject. While
Brosius feels that a critique of the essentialisms of so-
cial movements leads to a dead end, I would prefer to
believe that such critiques are an important way of re-
fining political practice, provided that we engage sin-
cerely with the broad emancipatory goals of social
transformation.
The political implications of the critiques engendered
by environmental anthropology become clearer when
we examine to whom and what we are accountable. Ac-
countability is shaped not only by political allegiance
to emancipatory projects but also by the institutional
imperatives which drive academic work. Brosius dis-
cusses the ‘‘bureaucratic and technoscientific forms of
institutional intervention’’ which seek the participa-
tion (and co-optation) of their opponents. The anthro-
pologist is also drawn into the circuit of legitimation,
especially through the mechanisms of research funding.
When an anthropologist is simultaneously an ‘‘expert’’
on a government committee, a consultant to a develop-
ment agency, a lobbyist for an NGO, and an activist,
there is a spilling over of roles and loyalties which needs
to be examined. Development agencies, for instance,
enforce their own logic in terms of demanding ‘‘policy
applications,’’ ‘‘recommendations,’’ and other tips for
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 289
social engineering. Once again, critique alone is not
enough. Development agencies, just like social move-
ments, are actors that need to commit themselves to
‘‘problematic’’ positions and categories. This need ac-
quires greater momentum because of the intractability
of ‘‘the environment’’ and the fact that, culturally con-
structed though it may be, ‘‘nature’’ imposes its own
logic and limits which must be reckoned with. Walking
the tightrope, balancing critique with social commit-
ment, is the difficult but not impossible task before an-
thropology.
e e v a be r gl u n d
Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths College,
University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW,
England. 10 xi 98
The feature that strikes me most about this paper is its
rather abrupt shift of gears towards the end. After en-
thusiastically supporting critical work on the environ-
ment and environmentalism by anthropologists, Bro-
sius concludes with a set of ambivalent remarks: we
should be aware of our motives, of potential misuses of
information, and perhaps, although it remains implicit,
of the tremendous stakes.
Yet the shift does not surprise me. Elsewhere, too, the
anthropology of environmentalism and nature displays
the same kinds of ambivalences and hesitations (e.g.,
Escobar 1999). From my own experience I know only
too well the anxious self-reflection in the wake of un-
flattering feedback from environmentalists whose ac-
tivities and lives I have sought to capture in part for pre-
dominantly anthropological uses (e.g., Berglund 1998).
Clearly, it will not do, in the present climate of co-opta-
tion in the name of ‘‘participation’’ and ‘‘choice,’’ to
provide ‘‘maps which might be used to the detriment of
those whose efforts we study.’’ I do not see, however,
that because of this concern understanding ‘‘them’’ and
interrogating ‘‘our’’ categories should be kept distinct.
The entanglement of description and theory is unavoid-
able but not inevitably debilitating, as, for instance,
Donna Haraway’s (1997) recent work shows. Also, ask-
ing ourselves as anthropologists why we are doing any
project has to be part of the whole enterprise, and the
anthropology of environmentalism should be no differ-
ent from any other subfield. Of course, if it is different,
the reasons for this should become a prime reason for
foregrounding the interrogation of ‘‘our’’ categories and
their shortcomings.
To move on, I particularly appreciate Brosius’s evoca-
tive use of the term ‘‘momentum’’ in reference to cycles
of intensity in protest. It not only captures well the fact
that things are, indeed, moving very fast but also has
made me consider the possibility that there is pattern
in the highs and lows of activism which scholars would
be better placed than those at the centre of the political
action to document. Activism is often successful when
it intellectualizes ecological relations. And resistance
290 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
in an age of technologies such as information super-
highways and video cameras is bound sometimes to re-
sult in the same kinds of out-of-control accelerations of
information exchange that afflict other domains. Is this
where anthropological expertise could be made to count?
I think my two principal reactions on reading the pa-
per in its present form (having already devoured an ear-
lier draft) are related. I would suggest that my second
observation might help me accept, if not quite resolve,
the ambivalence that prompted the first. My sugges-
tion, however, hinges on the acceptability or otherwise
of seeking systematic pattern(s) as a principle for schol-
arly practice. Much as context needs emphasizing in
these globalized times, I believe that anthropological in-
sights can be extended to searching for systematicity
across contexts without totalizing. Poststructuralist an-
thropology together with innovative political action
has already shifted the meaning of ideas of universalism
and comparison so that they pose less of a threat of one-
worldism or technomanagerialism than they used to. At
a more concrete level, how many times have we read or
heard colleagues’ accounts from totally different geo-
graphical and social locations and responded with ac-
knowledgements of familiarity and commonality of ex-
perience? There are huge similarities not only in the
platforms but in the dilemmas faced by environmental-
ists. Why not build on this? The momentum of anti-en-
vironmentalist forces is awesome, posing a real threat
of misuse of our information, but the dangers of silence
seem to me at least as worrisome.
Ethnographic study itself has undergone significant
change, and I think that this in fact puts us in a better
position to make statements about the interrelation-
ships of global circuits of exchange of all kinds—of car-
bon dioxide as much as humans, bytes, or commodities.
In fact, I sense that the reconstructed ethnography that
is being called for here is only contingently place-bound
(the proverbial village hardly constitutes the locus, let
alone the focus, of contemporary fieldwork) but is nec-
essarily embedded in regional, national, and global net-
works. Unruly as these are, they do suggest themselves
as places to look for systematicity and deep transforma-
tions. My assumption is that comparisons of similari-
ties and differences at the surface can help generate
such knowledge. I would be delighted if more field-
work-based material on environmentalism as a political
commitment were available with the help of which I
could begin to consider anthropology (along with disci-
plines such as cultural geography and media and com-
munication studies) as compelling in its claims about
environment-focused anxieties. The concept of mo-
mentum suggests one promising way for discerning
connections between unique situations and systematic
outcomes.
Finally, what allows each anthropologist to decide
which ‘‘maps’’ to display and which to protect is some-
thing that cuts across any division into ‘‘us’’ and
‘‘them,’’ namely, the ability and the responsibility to
make judgements. My hope is that the grounds that in-
fluence those judgements will be not the politics of the
academy but something far more important.
m ic h a e l r. d o v e
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale
University, New Haven, Conn. 06511-2189, U.S.A.
11 xii 98
‘‘Analyses and Interventions’’ is far more than a review
of anthropology’s current engagement with environ-
mentalism; it is an unusually subtle analysis of the
questions—historical and theoretical, practical and eth-
ical—that are raised by this engagement. I will com-
ment briefly on three of the most important of these
questions, the first of which pertains to the history of
ecological anthropology. Brosius notes that we are now
witnessing a remarkable florescence of environmental
scholarship in anthropology (among many other fields)
after a lengthy hiatus of interest in this subject in the
wake of the ecological anthropology of the 1960s and
1970s. What Brosius properly calls the ‘‘sharp disconti-
nuity’’ between the two traditions of study is of inter-
est. The early ecological anthropology waned just as
Marxist/political economic approaches were waxing
within anthropology, and it is still popularly character-
ized, as Brosius notes, by (in part) inattention to issues
of power and inequality.
Drawing on recent poststructural reconceptions of
power, however, the political character of this earlier
scholarship is beginning to be reassessed. In the context
of the then-prevailing deprecation of indigenous socie-
ties under the aegis of high-modernist development the-
ory, the detailed descriptions of vernacular technology
and knowledge central to early ecological anthropology
can now be read as politically empowering counterdis-
courses. As a strategic part of such counterdiscourse,
the borrowing and use of such otherwise dubious high-
modernist conceptual tools as cybernetic theory can be
reassessed as well. A better understanding of this intel-
lectual history is important for what it can tell us about
the nature of politically engaged scholarship. It may
also shed light on a related matter, the politically
charged succession of paradigms that has characterized
our field in recent years. Brosius suggests that early eco-
logical anthropology succumbed, in part, to ‘‘routiniza-
tion.’’ We need greater understanding of the processes
by which creative, paradigmatic movements are made
but then normalized (or routinized), something that has
tended to draw more of our attention when it occurs at
a distance from us (e.g., in high-tech labs) as opposed to
within our own discipline (Dove 1999a).
The politics of scholarship lie at the heart of a second
and related question raised by Brosius, involving the cri-
tique of essentialism that has increasingly character-
ized our discipline in recent years. The essentialized
images of people and environment that dominate cur-
rent environmentalist writings have not been spared
this critique, but, as Brosius notes, ‘‘not all essen-

tialisms are the same.’’ It seems particularly important
to distinguish between the essentialisms of oppressor
and oppressed and to recognize that in relations of
power the only way to counter one essentialism may be
with another (Dove 1999b). The need for greater reflec-
tion in this regard has been dramatized for me in gather-
ings of First and Third World anthropologists, where the
former are often critiquing as disempowering for indige-
nous peoples the same conceptual generalizations that
the latter are attempting to employ in defense of these
peoples.
The existence of this sort of difference in scholarly
projects brings me to a final point of Brosius’s on which
I wish to comment in passing, concerning our study of
environmental movements. There is increasing anec-
dotal evidence circulating within the discipline of con-
flicts stemming from such studies. The potential for
conflict stems from the fact that, as Brosius notes, such
studies make public what were ‘‘hidden transcripts.’’
These studies close the space between theory and prac-
tice in unexpected ways with which the current genera-
tion of anthropologists seems often ill-prepared to deal.
In summary, current anthropological work on the en-
vironment challenges us with critical questions con-
cerning the ethics and politics of scholarship, the rela-
tionship between practice and theory, the nature of
representation, and the evolution of theory. To the ex-
tent to which such issues are foregrounded in our envi-
ronmental work, the current ‘‘florescence’’ may prove
to be longer-lasting than some that have occurred in the
past. We can be grateful to Brosius for so eloquently
framing these problems and prospects for us.
arturo escobar
Department of Anthropology, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. 01003, U.S.A. 8 xii 98
This is an eloquent and constructive statement on the
current state and possible future paths of ecologically
oriented anthropologies. The argument weaves together
a diagnosis of contemporary forms of engagement be-
tween anthropology and environmentalism with a pro-
grammatic statement for further efforts in this crucial
area of collective scholarly, social, and political en-
deavor. Focusing on environmentalism as a discourse—
echoing a project also articulated recently by Milton
(1996)—the author underscores the rapidly evolving
and contested nature of this discourse as a powerful in-
terface between nature and culture.
Brosius’s approach exhibits two distinctive features.
The first is its unambiguous poststructuralist stance,
that is, the theoretical position that language and dis-
course are constitutive of reality and that forms of
power are introduced in the socio-natural orders
through the production of discourse. This is a position
that I largely share but that leaves unattended certain
aspects of ecologically oriented anthropology that do
not emerge from such a framework. The second is a fo-
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 291
cus on social movements as privileged spaces for the
production and contestation of discourses of nature and
culture. Although social movements continue to be un-
derstudied in anthropology, it is imperative, as Brosius
argues, that this be remedied as far as the environmen-
tal arena is concerned. All over the world, environmen-
tally inspired social movements are at the center of un-
precedented forms of identity, novel ethnic and gender
practices, political agency, and alternative proposals for
nature/culture construction, among them some con-
cerning seemingly intractable questions such as sus-
tainability and alternatives to development. Social
movements are key actors in the production of environ-
mental discursive regimes and should thus be a primary
focus of anthropological investigation. I find this second
feature of Brosius’s argument very timely and perti-
nent.
Brosius’s division of ecological approaches in anthro-
pology between the ecological anthropology of the
1960s and 1970s (which was an eclectic array itself, in-
spired by many trends from cybernetics and cultural
materialism to ecosystems ecology and political econ-
omy), and the poststructuralist-inspired ‘‘environmen-
tal anthropology’’ of the 1980s and 1990s is not bound
to please everyone. This is a distinction that makes
sense from an epistemological perspective between the
largely positivist or interpretivist approaches of the
1960s and 1970s and the profoundly constructivist ap-
proaches of the present. There are, however, rich forms
of ethnographic constructivism that cannot be de-
scribed in poststructuralist terms, since they are in no
way couched in terms of discourse and power. Examples
of this include the work of many of the contributors to
the Descola and Pálsson (1996) volume on cultural
models of nature and the growing and, in my mind, ex-
tremely interesting phenomenology of landscape and
places in archaeology (Tilley 1994, Bender 1998), an-
thropology (Feld and Basso 1996), geography, and other
disciplines. In these areas, Brosius’s map needs to be
drawn with more shades and contours. I do concur,
however, with a broad distinction between poststruct-
uralist approaches and those that are not. The first
might appear as a relatively unified set, although with
differences among them—for instance, between femi-
nist and nonfeminist approaches or between those pri-
marly concerned with dominant discourses and those
intent on articulating forms of grassroots environmen-
talism. It is important but insufficient to list all of the
influences that have gone into poststructuralist envi-
ronmentalism (from science studies to postcolonial the-
ory); how do these trends influence distinctive ap-
proaches to specific issues and questions? At the same
time, one of the most pressing questions that non-
poststructuralist and nonphenomenological approaches
still pose is that of science. This is particularly true of
those forms of environmental anthropology more
deeply rooted in biology and ecosystems ecology. In a
recent piece (Escobar 1999) I emphasized the need for a
renewed dialogue among the various ecological ap-
292 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
proaches along the science-discourse divide. This need
for dialogue also applies, in a different way, to the ma-
jority of Marxist and political-economy approaches that
have made only superficial overtures towards the post-
structuralist concerns with power, knowledge, and dis-
course. These differences would also have to be mapped
into Brosius’s landscape of discursive regimes on the
nature/culture interface.
Brosius has been among the first to raise the issue of
the critique of essentialized images in connection with
environmentalism (see also Conklin and Graham 1995
for an early example). In the present paper he rightly ex-
tends his critique to the increasingly formulaic charac-
ter of ‘‘contestation studies.’’ He also underscores the
importance of environmentalism for an anthropology of
globalization. All of these are important trends. There
are two additional trends that I see as already important
as far as environmentalism is concerned. The first is an-
thropologists’ contribution to alternative views of con-
servation and sustainability. This trend involves a not
insignificant number of anthropologists doing disserta-
tion research at the grassroots or nongovernmental or-
ganization (NGO) conservation/development nexus
and a growing number of practicing anthropologists op-
erating at the same interface. What new forms of an-
thropological practices are being crafted there? What
new analytical and theoretical contributions are these
anthropologists making? A second and related trend
concerns anthropologists’ attempts to articulate the en-
vironmental discourses currently being developed by
social movements. Through their political strategy, so-
cial movements for the defense of place, nature, and
culture can be seen as elaborating an entire political
ecology. Do we have a role to play in this intellectual
and political project? I agree with Brosius’s cautionary
call about the need for and risks of critiques of essen-
tializing processes. Seen from the perspective of social
movements, this warning can become a positive pre-
scription for theoretico-political work on our part in
conjunction with social movements. These two trends
highlight the importance of reexamining applied an-
thropology, advocacy anthropology, and the anthropol-
ogy of public policy on more sophisticated theoretical
and political grounds than they have incorporated in the
past. There is a great challenge at this level, one that is
being confronted head-on by many students in their
own field situations.
My previous two comments have already begun to ad-
dress the last part of the paper, its ‘‘elements for future
engagement,’’ all of which I find eminently reasonable
and constructive. I would like to offer some comple-
mentary perspectives to each of the items under consid-
eration. The call for examining the construction of
topologies is, of course, related to what has been called
the spatialization of social theory, that is, renewed at-
tention to the role of space and power in the making
of reality. Brosius also contends that we need to look
critically at the construction of spatial categories. The
case could be made more forcefully, given that ‘‘the en-
vironment’’ is in fundamental ways about space. As a
number of mostly feminist geographers have been ar-
guing recently, however, the concern with space has led
to a marginalization of place that has consequences for
how we think about culture, nature, development, and
the like (see, for instance, Massey 1994). It would be im-
possible even to summarize this argument here, save for
mentioning that what emerges from it is the need to ar-
ticulate a defense of place, which is also a way to speak
about a defense of local natures and local discourses of
the environment (see Dirlik 1998 for a statement on
globalism and the politics of place). Anthropologists
have been largely absent from this revival of place as
site of theory and politics, perhaps for good reason, but
we need to address the question in earnest. A comple-
mentary perspective to the issue of ‘‘temporalities’’—
Brosius’s second important category of future engage-
ment—is the concept of network. If it is true that ‘‘envi-
ronmental debates are not merely zones of contestation
but zones of constantly shifting positionality,’’ this is
in large part because they are increasingly produced
through/by networks that connect many sites with dif-
ferent cultures, temporalities, and political stakes. A
number of authors (from Latour to Castells, plus femi-
nist scholars of science and technology such as Rayna
Rapp, Donna Haraway, and Deborah Heath) have
pointed to the centrality of networks in contemporary
society, especially those linking technoscience with
socio-natural practices. Connectivity and interactivity
through networks and apparatuses linking natures and
cultures have important temporal effects, particularly
when they bring together real-time technologies with
other types of temporality arising from place-based
practices. The pervasive transformation of nature by
technoscience should also be an active site of ethno-
graphic and theoretical research.
The importance of studying anthropologically the
emerging regimes for managing nature cannot be em-
phasized enough. Brosius is right in highlighting the
usefulness of the Foucauldian concept of governmen-
tality—the progressive appropriation by state and ex-
pert knowledge appararatuses of ever-larger domains of
the cultural background and daily life of collectivities—
in this regard. Governmentality is fundamentally a
modern process, while the production of nature in
many parts of the world takes place partially outside of
and against modern modes. The growing governmen-
talization of nature needs to be analyzed critically and
resisted. A related development is the emphasis on risk.
If it is true that risk is a growing idiom in environmen-
talism, it is not without its problems. The concept of
risk is being chiefly imported from sociological science
studies, where it has had its productivity. There is,
however, a critical perspective on the rise of risk and
insurance technology in the history of the production
of the social in the 19th century, chiefly in France and
Latin America around the work of François Ewald and
Jacques Donzelot, among others (see Burchell, Gordon,
and Miller 1991 for an introduction to this literature).

This critical perspective needs to be incorporated into
anthropological perspectives on risk in environmen-
talism (Chaia Heller, a student in our department, is
currently doing dissertation research on French biotech-
nology focused on risk and how ‘‘risk’’ is constructed
by various constituencies).
To conclude, I would reiterate Brosius’s call for an-
thropological engagement with environmentalism as
one of the most powerful and complex arenas for the
production of culture in the late 20th century. Environ-
mentalism, as he effectively demonstrates, goes well
beyond questions of nature and even science; it incorpo-
rates issues of power, identity, representation, space
and place, and the global and the local. It is not a coinci-
dence that the defining and long-standing concern in
anthropology with the relation between nature and cul-
ture is coming back to haunt the discipline with unsus-
pected force. As Haraway does not tire of reminding us,
the question of what counts as nature, for whom, and
with what consequences is one of the central questions
of our epoch. Anthropology’s contribution to this ques-
tion has to come from its specific location: what kinds
of natures-cultures are various peoples throughout the
world constructing, through what practices, and with
what ecological and social consequences? As Bro-
sius adds, this is a deeply political process in which ‘‘it
is no longer clear what is emancipatory and what is po-
tentially reactionary.’’ Who does the constructing, how-
ever, makes a big difference.
r a m c ha n dr a g u h a
22a Brunton Rd., Bangalore 560025, India. 28 x 98
Brosius has written a wide-ranging and thoughtful as-
sessment of the past and likely future of anthropologi-
cal studies of environmentalism. I especially like his
plea for a transdisciplinary approach. The accident of bi-
ography or the territoriality of the academy may neces-
sitate a primary identification as an anthropologist, but
environmental problems are generally unmindful of
such disciplinary demarcations. Years ago, the Indian
scholar Radhakamal Mukerjee urged the formulation of
a social ecology, an integrative analytical framework
drawing on the human as well as natural sciences, for a
better understanding of the dynamics of socioecological
change in the modern world (Mukerjee 1942; see also
Mukerjee 1926).
I agree with a great deal of what Brosius says and have
learnt much from his discussion. His analysis of the
promise as well as pitfalls of the transnationalization of
environmental campaigns is most suggestive and help-
ful. There remain, however, one or two points of dis-
pute. I think he insufficiently acknowledges the contri-
butions of older traditions—not just the ecological
anthropology of the sixties, which he mentions, but
also the cultural ecology of the fifties, which he does
not. (A striking omission in an otherwise impressive
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 293
bibliography is the work of Harold Conklin [see, espe-
cially, Conklin 1957].) New-style environmental an-
thropology may be more theoretically astute and politi-
cally savvy, as Brosius writes, but this sophistication
has come at a cost. Few of its practitioners can claim to
have done the kind of meticulously exhaustive field-
work that was the hallmark of the old ecological an-
thropology. Indeed, at times fancy theory and political
posturing seem to serve as a (poor) substitute for careful
description.
Having read his empirical work on the Penan, I know
that Brosius himself is a fine fieldworker. There are,
nonetheless, some comments in the present article that
may currently qualify as good politics but that I reckon
to be bad science. Such, for instance, is the implication
that while scholars need to scrutinize romantic essen-
tialisms, strategic essentialisms are somehow exempt
from analysis or criticism. Scholars should not be sub-
ject to such exceptions, which stem from an exagger-
ated respect for activists. I worry also when Brosius
writes, ‘‘I am not at all concerned about our ability to
produce better descriptions of environmental move-
ments.’’ Surely the production of better—that is, more
accurate and comprehensive—descriptions is the an-
thropologist’s primary task? One reason for his curious
remark could be the fear that a better description will
be used in counterinsurgency, such that (as he writes)
scholars will end up providing ‘‘maps which might be
used to the detriment of those whose efforts we study.’’
Again, I believe his worry to be exaggerated. Commis-
sars and policemen do not read learned essays and books
(one doubts, for example, that the present issue of cur-
rent anthropology will find its way into the head-
quarters of the Malaysian police), and in any case they
have their own sources. Certainly this fear should not
inhibit the pursuit of the truth, which in my old-fash-
ioned way I still regard as the essence of the scholarly
vocation.
What makes Brosius’s argument particularly vulnera-
ble is the fact that in any environmental movement
there are almost always competing factions offering
competing interpretations. Which one of these does the
anthropologist then defer to? To illustrate from per-
sonal example, when I began studying the Chipko
movement I was told (by different people) that it was
a Gandhian, feminist, or environmentalist movement.
There were also two highly charismatic men competing
for the title of the real leader of Chipko. The partisan
might have accepted the label and leader most conge-
nial to his or her politics, but the scholar’s job was to
endeavour to produce the better description that Bro-
sius seems to deride. Through an analysis of its prehis-
tory and a reconstruction of its origins and trajectory, I
was able to locate Chipko in the specific social history
of the Uttarakhand Himalaya, something that general-
izing labels (Gandhian, feminist, etc.) and leader-cen-
tered accounts would disallow (cf. Guha 1999 [1989]).
Some partisans and activists were displeased by the un-
packing, but the risk had to be run.
294 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
a l f h or n b o r g
Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Finngatan
16, 223 62 Lund, Sweden. 12 xi 98
Brosius has outlined a sophisticated and sensible posi-
tion with respect to the difficult balance between con-
structivism and critique that we need to achieve in an-
thropology and other social sciences. This does not
mean that all the problems have evaporated. Under-
standing ‘‘the human impact on the physical and biotic
environment’’ remains a project of a different kind from
‘‘showing how that environment is constructed, repre-
sented, claimed, and contested.’’ How do we reconcile,
for example, Mary Douglas’s cultural analysis of risk
perception with Brosius’s scientistic references, albeit
in passing, to the ‘‘physical and biotic’’? At the same
time, is it really Brosius’s intention to join the crowd of
anthropologists sneering at the notion that indigenous
peoples can be ‘‘guardians of biodiversity’’ or that sav-
ing rain forests is an ‘‘urgent’’ matter? The recent surge
of academic interest in environmentalism no doubt re-
flects the professional progress of a generation of people
who were students in the seventies but a majority of
whom, like the post-Marxists, have chosen to turn their
backs on what they now perceive as an embarrassing
naiveté. As Richard Lee (1988:253) observes, in the cur-
rent climate of opinion ‘‘no one is going to go broke’’
by appealing to cynicism. It is not merely an ironic co-
incidence that anthropologists have turned skeptical
‘‘at the very moment’’ that indigenous voices are gain-
ing a popular audience. Anthropologists, too, engage in
identity politics compelling them—as almost everyone
is becoming an advocate of the indigenous Other—to
distinguish themselves from journalists, globetrotters,
and NGOs.
Brosius’s worries about the impact of our deconstruc-
tive and deessentializing discourse are as commendable
as those of Marshall Sahlins (1993), to which he might
have connected them. He rightly seems to ask whether
skepticism in the end is not a greater problem than es-
sentialism. Equally justified is his concern with the pol-
itics of discursive co-optation and what Hajer (1995)
calls ‘‘ecological modernisation.’’ To understand these
processes—what Raymond Williams and David Harvey
(1996) refer to as the ‘‘politics of abstraction’’—we need
to develop a phenomenological perspective on the rift
between local (indigenous) lifeworlds and abstract sys-
tems (Hornborg 1994, Gooch 1998). The asymmetric re-
lationship between the local/experiential and the
global/discursive is crucial not only to defining the con-
cept of ‘‘indigenous’’ but to conceptualizing modernity
itself. It also relates in important ways to the phenome-
nology of modern personhood (Evernden 1985, Horn-
borg 1998a). Anti-modernist environmental sentiments
have occasionally acquired a brownish hue (cf. Brosius’s
n. 13), but this should not serve to immunize modernity
against critique of its sociological fundamentals. Money
and the abstractions of economics are cultural vehicles
of exploitation and should be quintessential targets for
anthropological analysis and critique (cf. Hornborg
1998b, 1999). Such cultural categories intervene in very
tangible ways in the ‘‘physical and biotic’’ environ-
ment. They are but the most recent additions to the se-
miotics of ecosystems (Hornborg 1996). Brosius touches
only in passing on how we might rethink ‘‘how we
place ourselves’’ in relation to nature, but this is at the
center of several recent anthropological studies of hu-
man–environmental relations which he does not men-
tion (Croll and Parkin 1992, Descola and Pálsson 1996,
Ellen and Fukui 1996). Perhaps European anthropology
does not suffer from the same clear-cut dichotomy be-
tween ‘‘ecological’’ and ‘‘environmental’’ anthropology
that he identifies in the United States. In Europe, much
of the recent anthropological concern with human–en-
vironmental relations (e.g., the articles by Tim Ingold
in the above-mentioned collections) is neither ‘‘scien-
tistic’’ nor simply a study of environmentalism but a
theoretical attempt to transcend Cartesian dualisms
such as mind/body or culture/nature. On the whole,
however, I am impressed with Brosius’s command of
the issues and the literature and with his persuasive ar-
gument for more sensitive, moral commitment in envi-
ronmental anthropology.
s ør e n h v a l k o f
Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology
(NORDECO), Copenhagen, Denmark. 9 i 99
Writing a comment on this article has turned out to be
much harder than I had anticipated. Most articles in CA
put forward a particular position, standpoint, or critical
attitude that makes it possible for commentators to en-
ter a polemical mode of discussion or to add ideas or
critical spinoffs. Brosius’s article is not of that order. It
seems to be mainly a catalogue—a comprehensive list-
ing of issues and topics that have been or can be linked
to ‘‘environmentalism’’ in the social sciences and be-
yond—and a kind of programmatic statement on con-
ceivable poststructural approaches to ‘‘environmen-
talism’’ and ‘‘environmentalist’’ discourses. Sorting,
bunching, and categorizing different contemporary con-
tributions, it leaves few stones unturned as it covers
critical and analytic perspectives on the diverse and
contested views of the environment and associated
problems, criticizing green capitalist market solutions
and making connections with the Foucauldian anthro-
pology of power and knowledge production. It reviews
emerging forms of agency, cross-field analyses of hy-
bridity, authenticity, and identity, and eco- and identity
politics, touching upon institutional co-optation, bu-
reaucratization, and techno-environmental manageri-
alism. As for the problems within anthropology, it high-
lights contradictions in our theoretical scrutiny of and
the ‘‘political potency’’ in essentialization as well as in
articulating the local and the global in transnational
policy discourses. It questions the vocabulary and idiom
of applied research, pinpoints the constituent effects of
‘‘discursive topologies,’’ and reminds us of the hyperdy-
namics and temporalities of environmental issues. Few

articles are so packed with references as this one, and
as such it is an excellent review article for anyone de-
veloping syllabuses, teaching courses in current ecolog-
ical and environmental anthropology, and supervising
or writing on such subjects. But beyond its utilitarian
aspect, I could not escape the thought that much of
Brosius’s warranted emphasis on dynamic and multiple
discourse analyses would have been equally valid for a
number of other approaches and topics. Why environ-
mentalism? What was the message? In its enthusiastic
attempt at justifying the central relevance of a discur-
sive environmentalist approach in current anthropol-
ogy, to which I am absolutely sympathetic, the article’s
encyclopedic zeal tends to flood the deliberation with
global intellectual noise, drowning out or blurring some
very important points.
One of the problems is situating anthropology in
Brosius’s environmentalist universe. The focal point of
the paper is environmentalism, defined in ‘‘the widest
possible sense, referring to a broad field of discursive
constructions of nature and human agency.’’ In this
broad conception ‘‘environmentalism’’ is fully congru-
ent with many other new ecological approaches in the
social sciences often referred to generically as political
ecology, and Brosius’s tasks for anthropology might as
well be accomplished by other disciplines such as cul-
tural studies, geography, philological and semiotic
fields, history of ideas, philosophy, political science,
and sociology. As usual, most of the theoretical inspira-
tion and ballast for the anthropological discussion come
from other disciplines and academic fields. Anthropol-
ogy is not a major theoretical contributor here but
rather a skilled theoretical articulator. What is it, then,
that legitimizes anthropology as a separate discipline,
apart from institutional inertia, and what is our specific
contribution to this ‘‘environmentalist’’ meta-dis-
course? One immediate answer would be that anthro-
pology’s legitimacy is grounded in ethnographic inquiry
and description and that fieldwork as a personal, subjec-
tive engagement of phenomenological nature is the core
of this. Filtering off the article’s encyclopedic academic
ambition and keeping anthropology’s ethnographic sub-
stance in mind, a much more radical and concerned
contribution emerges in which ‘‘environmentalism’’ is
a heuristic device for readdressing an urgent problem in
anthropology: the pursuit of social and political ac-
countability in our practice of the discipline. Not only
does it criticize headless agency and poorly contextual-
ized ethnography, it also takes on a critique of headless
deconstruction, emphasizing its social consequences.
Discourse and our analysis of it matter, and it definitely
matters how this is informed. Read in this filtered way,
Brosius’s contribution in several respects resembles the
critical positions put forward in Dell Hymes’s classic
1969 collection Reinventing Anthropology. Brosius
supplies a contemporary, postmodern, and sophisti-
cated parallel to Laura Nader’s argument for studying
up through institutionalized power hierarchies, Eric
Wolf’s call for reflecting global processes in the histori-
cal construction of power in anthropological analysis,
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 295
and Gerald Berreman’s concern with the sterilization
and depoliticization of anthropology caused by institu-
tional technicalization, to mention a few of the 16 con-
tributions to Hymes’s vintage volume. The present ‘‘en-
vironmentalist’’ theme seems to be a suitable catalyst
for the reinitiation of such critical intervention. Thus I
prefer to appreciate Brosius’s article as a 30-year marker
of such self-reflexive debate in anthropology and not
only as an attempt to outline a politicized environmen-
talism and ecology but, more important, as an urgent
call for the politicized and accountable anthropology
that is so much needed in our postmodern era of relative
truths. Focusing on this could be a good start.
b e n j a m i n s. or l o v e
Department of Environmental Science and Policy,
University of California, Davis, Calif. 95616, U.S.A.
(bsorlove@ucdavis.edu). 11 xi 98
This article—a fresh view on familiar topics, with
many rich and original insights—locates itself in the
self-reflexive globalized present (how appropriate, I
thought, for this article to appear in current anthro-
pology, which has had a stronger commitment to an
international anthropology than any other major jour-
nal published in the United States). From this vantage
point, it looks back to describe major trends in the tran-
sition from ecological to environmental anthropology
and forward to propose directions for future work. Its
synthetic character leaves me wishing for fuller treat-
ment of certain themes that it raises but does not dis-
cuss as fully as others. The title itself offers clues:
‘‘Analyses and interventions,’’ it states; how are these
to be distinguished? Once anthropology confronted the
grounding of claims of realism within strategies of rep-
resentation, it became difficult to oppose thought and
action, to separate word and deed. But one of the appeals
of environmentalism itself is that, in its focus on the
simultaneous givenness and constructedness of the nat-
ural world, it offers suggestions for a way beyond the
duality of names and things. This view, in turn, makes
me unwilling to take analysis simply as a form of inter-
vention and to wish for a treatment of interventions as
full as the treatment of analyses. For all that I accept
Brosius’s discussion of the valuable contributions of en-
vironmental anthropology in directing attention to the
subtle and often hidden ideological work of images, I do
not want such unmaskings and other analyses to substi-
tute for other forms of intervention, forms that I would,
with due caution, be willing to call concrete. This no-
tion, in turn, leads me to the question of ‘‘anthropologi-
cal engagements’’: how is one to decide what counts as
an engagement?
Drawing on themes that Brosius discusses, I see that
the analyses and the interventions provide two general
themes of such engagements. It seems to me that an-
thropologists might fruitfully consider not only the na-
ture of our analyses but the audiences as well. This first
theme of audiences for our analyses does not often
296 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
come to the foreground in the article, perhaps because
it appears in a journal directed at an anthropological
readership; where it does appear, Brosius is often con-
cerned that our writings will be co-opted and used
against the people with whom we study and work. He
warns us, for example, of the dangers of showing that
indigenous identities are contingent and historical.
However, there are ways in which our writings can in-
fluence broader debates in many social contexts. In-
deed, our recording of lives of the poor and the margin-
alized offers an important balance to other dominant
views, as Scheper-Hughes argues for her research in the
shantytowns and slums of Northeast Brazil (1992). We
have the option of writing for different audiences, in dif-
ferent voices, and even in different languages. Our
teaching as well is not directed exclusively to under-
graduate majors and graduate students who form part of
anthropological communities but often to many others
as well. There are opportunities for team teaching, for
offering courses outside anthropology departments and
programs. Though our analyses may be framed in con-
ventional academic forms of professional writings and
of teaching, they can reach broader audiences and thus
constitute a kind of wider engagement.
The second theme stems from the first. The colleges,
universities, professional societies, journals, and books
in which we present academic interventions are only
one of the many sites in which we become involved
with environmentalism. This second theme of the sites
of our interventions also is not treated as directly as
some others in the article, in part because of limitations
of length. In his respect and admiration for grassroots
politics, Brosius may exclude other forms of political
action in which anthropologists may intervene more di-
rectly. We may serve as advocates, as advisers, as inter-
mediaries, as liaisons; we may work with NGOs, with
environmental scientists, with agencies (Orlove and
Brush 1996). Another broad contribution of environ-
mentalism, as Brosius notes, is to contribute to debates
over the constitution of public space and public dis-
course; there are many portions of public space in
which anthropologists can participate.
This concern for sites led me to note Brosius’s treat-
ment of the question of what counts as politics. He sug-
gests that ‘‘national elites and transnational capital in-
terests—at times working in concert with mainstream
environmental organizations—are engaged in attempts
to displace the moral/political imperatives that galva-
nize grassroots movements with a conspicuously depo-
liticized apparatus that is by turns legal, financial, bu-
reaucratic, and technoscientific’’ and echoes this point
elsewhere in his discussion of the ‘‘green spectrum’’
that runs from ‘‘mainstream’’ to ‘‘direct action’’ groups.
If the line between analysis and intervention seems in-
sufficiently clear to me, this separation of politics and
depoliticization strikes me as excessively firm, this sin-
gle axis of forms of politics too simple. Climate issues
offer examples in this regard. I share the concern over
claims such as that global warming is a purely technical
problem and that once the kinks are worked out of the
details of greenhouse gasses, we can develop markets
for carbon emission permits and eliminate the problem
as efficiently as possible. But I also recognize that in the
case of ozone depletion, complex interactions of activist
groups with conventional government agencies and sci-
entific experts have led to international accords that
have greatly reduced threats to the integrity of the at-
mosphere and the biosphere (Benedick 1991). In this
case, it is difficult to draw these lines so neatly.
It is a sign of the strength rather than the weakness
of the article that it can raise these issues of audience
and site in environmental anthropology. Its synthetic
overview highlights the importance of future work. I ea-
gerly await Brosius’s further writings on the Penan and
on environmental anthropology.
d i a n n e e. r o ch e l e au a nd c l a u di a r a d e l
Graduate School of Geography, Clark University,
Worcester, Mass. 01610, U.S.A. (drocky@ma.
ultranet.com). 2 ii 99
Brosius raises a series of questions that emanate from
recent encounters between critical anthropology and
environmental discourses and movements. Drawing
upon insights from feminist theory, we propose to ex-
pand and enrich these questions as they relate to inter-
sections of identity and environmental movements,
policy, and positionality. Brosius’s analysis of research
on environmental social movements, discourse, and
images repeatedly touches on the complex processes of
identity and representation. Perhaps most striking is his
implicit dichotomization of essential and strategic
identities. Our comments first focus on the issue of en-
vironmental essentialisms, their deployment by various
actors, and their potential unmasking by researchers.
We then raise the issue of researcher positionality in
terms of purpose, policy engagement, and relationship
to the researched.
The dilemma of the article—to unmask or not—is
based on a relatively fixed and essential notion of iden-
tities, both environmental and cultural. Brosius is con-
cerned with fallout from training our critical gaze on
the very people and organizations whose struggles we
wish to support. The fear is that if we expose the politi-
cal and intentional nature of environmental social
movements’ claims of ‘‘Green’’ identity we will under-
mine their effectiveness. This is premised on under-
standing identity and its representation as either essen-
tial or strategic and equating the former with
authenticity, the latter with sham. In contrast, Mouffe
(1992, 1995), Harding (1998), Haraway (1991), and Fraser
(1997) theorize identities as contingent and relational,
discarding essentialisms both politically and analyti-
cally. Mouffe understands identities as partial fixations
to ‘‘nodal points,’’ one of which, we suggest, embodies
environmental stewardship. A group’s identity may be
temporarily and partially fixed to this node within a
particular context and a particular set of extragroup so-
cial relations. If we approach Green identities as shift-

ing, contingent, and relational, we can understand them
as both strategic and authentic. The dichotomy be-
tween essential and strategic Green identity is false.
In addition, the concept of strategic identity bears
closer examination. We argue that strategic Green
claims arise from various and multiple sources. They
may be principled, contingent, and/or instrumental, re-
flecting (1) Green values intrinsic to the group sense of
identity or way of living (principled), (2) honestly held
beliefs or interests that intersect with environmentalist
agendas but are subject to change depending on context
(contingent), and (3) coincidental or invented Green in-
terests intended to maintain the group and its place in
the world (instrumental). The source of identity claims
does not, however, obviate the need for their careful
analysis. Social scientists can help to clarify a given
group’s strategy and to predict its consequences for the
group and others. For example, as Brosius notes, ‘‘blood-
and-soil’’ arguments are especially vulnerable to the un-
masking of some of the group as not ‘‘native,’’ ‘‘naïve,’’
or ‘‘natural’’ enough to justify absolutist claims. Claims
need to be considered in less absolutist and more vari-
able and ambiguous terms. Yet Lohmann (1998) notes
that retreat to uncritical pluralism can be equally dam-
aging. He warns of the creation of new publics through
‘‘stakeholder’’ analyses, participatory processes, and
conflict resolution protocols that construct all ‘‘actors’’
and all stakes—from ancestral claims, cultural continu-
ity, and local livelihoods to national security and corpo-
rate profits—as equal.
The question of whether to unmask or not vanishes,
but important methodological issues of the social scien-
tist’s relation to the researched group remain. Feminist
ethnographers grapple with many of these issues. For
example, Ong (1996) and Spivak (1988) address the ap-
propriateness and feasibility of subaltern identity and
interest representation. Behar (1993) and Warren (1993)
explore political and ethical dimensions of life histories
and testimonials. Others discuss reconciling distinct
professional, political, and personal ethical positions,
confronting issues of trust and betrayal, and co-con-
structing knowledge (Visweswaran 1994, Nagar 1997,
Tsing 1993).
We must also consider the self-positioning of the re-
searcher. Policy analysis, among critical social scien-
tists, is likely to be of one of three kinds. Applied re-
search directly informs policy formulation by nation-
states and international organizations. Many of us en-
gage in this activity, often in a reformist capacity. The
second, critical academic work on environment, cul-
ture, and social justice, aims to influence national or in-
ternational policy indirectly or to hold policy-makers
accountable for their actions’ consequences. The third,
rarely acknowledged as policy analysis, tries to inform
the groups about which we write or to influence NGOs
and social movements acting in solidarity with them.
We seek to shape their strategies and actions—in a
word, their policy. Often we are unclear about our self-
positioning and potential conflicts between distinct
policy perspectives. Roe (1994, 1998) uses applied narra-
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 297
tive analysis and complexity theory to trace a viable
path between the theoretical domain of scholarship, the
ethics of planning, the practical realm of applied work,
and the political terrain of policy consequences. We also
need to clarify what kind of policy analysis we propose
to conduct, to determine for whom, with whom, and
about whom we conduct such analysis, and to examine
our reasons for doing so.
This brings us full circle to the question of identity,
that of the researcher. We must consider who we are
when we engage in research (despite Brosius’s reticence
on this point). We refer specifically to the way in which
researchers and social movements position themselves
relative to each other. Are we writing with, for, or about
environmental social movements? On what basis do
the movements participate in our analyses through
their (non)cooperation with our efforts? What are the
political affinities between us? We propose that we, as
researchers, explicitly address the entanglement of our
analyses and our politics and accept at least partial re-
sponsibility for our works’ political and practical conse-
quences. This carries with it a cost—the loss of the uni-
versal ethnographic mask. The consequence of such
transparency is nothing less than the revelation of our-
selves, our purposes, and our personal, professional, and
political relationships to the place, people, and issues
we address in our work. The major unmasking may be
our own.
s us a n c. st o ni c h
Department of Anthropology, Environmental Studies
Program, University of California, Santa Barbara,
Calf. 93106, U.S.A. (stonich@sscf.ucsb.edu). 29 x 98
Reading Brosius’s timely and thoughtful article brought
to mind an incident that occurred during a recent inter-
national meeting on conservation and development in
which I participated. During the conference, a leader of
a network of grassroots nongovernmental organizations
from a nation-state in the South candidly revealed the
political agenda underlying the coalition she repre-
sented. She explained that the network members identi-
fied themselves as ‘‘environmentalists’’ to obfuscate
their true character as a resistance movement deter-
mined to raze the current regime and replace it with a
form of governance that reflected their own values and
visions of the future. She went on to state that if they
openly proclaimed this agenda the government and its
allies would squelch them immediately. Being identi-
fied nationally and internationally as ‘‘environmental-
ists’’ they had created a political space in which to miti-
gate the abuses of the state while also garnering
essential support from Northern environmentalists and
others. The leader’s statements concretely demon-
strated the potential for integrating environmental con-
cerns into broader movements promoting livelihoods
and social justice, linking local ecologies and transna-
tional environmental agendas, and articulating civil so-
ciety and global environmental governance. While mar-
298 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
veling at this revelation, I was grateful that no such
candid public statement had been made by any of the
members of the global network of NGOs with which I
have been working recently. Had such a statement been
made I would have been forced to make a profound pro-
fessional, personal, and ethical decision about what to
do with the information. Such knowledge would cer-
tainly have been central to my scholarly objectives, but
including it in reports or academic articles could have
been devastating to coalition members and their activi-
ties. Further complicating my decision would have been
my somewhat ambiguous role as both an anthropologist
conducting research on the global network and an aca-
demic adviser to the coalition. Fortunately, I have not
yet been faced with such a situation.
Brosius is correct to urge those of us who study envi-
ronmentalisms and social/environmental movements
to confront the implications and repercussions of our
work. It is difficult to resist the siren songs of these
emerging phenomena. They are theoretically compel-
ling in areas of long-standing interest to anthropologists
(e.g., conceptualizations of ‘‘community,’’ the ‘‘local,’’
and ‘‘participation’’) as well as in emerging and exceed-
ingly challenging concerns (e.g., articulations between
the local and the global, civil society networks as actors
in transnational governance, resistance and backlash,
the role of advanced information and communications
technology in facilitating and/or hindering global resis-
tance networks, etc.). Brosius is absolutely accurate in
pointing out that when we choose to study these phe-
nomena we place ourselves squarely in the midst of di-
verse and contending political interests, agendas, and
actions. By assuming a seemingly apolitical position
and not confronting and dealing effectively with this re-
ality we run the risk of having our work co-opted, mis-
represented, and deployed against the groups with
which we are most closely aligned and sympathetic.
What can we do? First, we can directly confront the
political context of our work. As in my case, this may
demand that we take an explicit political position re-
garding our area of inquiry and the groups with which
we work. For academic anthropologists this may have
serious consequences not all of which are positive,
given that (in my opinion) the reward systems of many
academic institutions and departments undervalue the
efforts of scholars engaged in work aimed at under-
standing and ameliorating real-world problems. The
marginal position and relatively low esteem accorded
applied anthropology is a good example. Yet, in my ex-
perience as someone trained in applied anthropology, it
is applied (and development) anthropologists who have
done the most thinking (and writing) about these issues
and have dealt with them the most effectively. Applied
and development anthropologists have been at the fore-
front of defining new roles for anthropologists as true
collaborators with groups formerly conceived as ‘‘re-
search subjects,’’ ‘‘research populations,’’ and/or ‘‘key
informants.’’
From a theoretical and methodological perspective,
we also must find ways to integrate the political
(broadly conceived to include power and power rela-
tions) and the material into our studies of environmen-
talisms. Although I heartily concur with Brosius’s
claims regarding the importance of understanding the
discourse(s) of environmentalism, it is important to
point out that environmentalisms and movements are
concerned not with discourse per se but with advocacy,
practice, and political action. Here I think that recent
developments in political ecology, the boundaries of
which have been pushed by the realities of environmen-
tal movements as well as by the influences of discourse
theory and poststructuralism, are particularly signifi-
cant. The edited volume by Peet and Watts (1996) cited
by Brosius and my own work (Stonich 1998) are exam-
ples of political ecological analyses of environmen-
talisms and social/environmental movements which
are both materialist and discursive. The theoretical,
methodological, and practical constraints faced by an-
thropologists studying environmentalisms and related
phenomena are matched with equal potential. Anthro-
pologists can contribute significantly to understanding
these phenomena as well as to promoting (and hinder-
ing) political action.
jim weil
Department of Anthropology, Hamline University, St.
Paul, Minn. 55104, U.S.A. (weilx001@tc.umn.edu).
17 x 98
As a survey of imminent tendencies in a prominent do-
main of current anthropological practice, the article by
Brosius resembles contributions to the Annual Review
of Anthropology. It differs by incorporating a set of com-
mentaries from other practitioners who might wish to
define the boundaries differently, shift the emphasis
among topics studied, or treat the results according to
other theoretical or ethical criteria. Before addressing
these points I want to say how interesting and useful
Brosius’s efforts have been in accomplishing his stated
objective: to survey a rapidly expanding body of re-
search on contemporary environmentalism as a ‘‘rich
site of cultural production’’ and ‘‘a whole new discur-
sive regime’’ on ‘‘the forms of relationship between and
among natures, nations, movements, individuals, and
institutions.’’ I especially appreciate the comprehensive
treatment of environmentalism as one kind of social
movement engaging in effective activism during a pe-
riod otherwise characterized by much political exhaus-
tion.
Perhaps I am reading Brosius within a conceptual
framework he does not share. Is his construction of ‘‘en-
vironmental anthropology’’ mainly concerned with the
study of environmentalism per se, or is he treating it as
the latest approach to the broader realm of specializa-
tion generally considered under the rubric of ‘‘ecologi-
cal anthropology’’? If the former is correct—bridging
the enterprise over to political anthropology and cul-
tural studies—then the following comments will be
tangential. Brosius may indeed be claiming the heritage

of ecological anthropology, however, when he writes,
‘‘My suggestions for future forms of scholarly engage-
ment with environmentalism are premised on the belief
that anthropology has a critical role to play not only in
contributing to our understanding of the human impact
on the physical and biotic environment but also in
showing how that environment is constructed, repre-
sented, claimed, and contested’’ (emphasis added). In
the research being reported, I find the ‘‘not only’’ side
of the equation much less prominent than the ‘‘but
also’’ side.
In the long, rich, and constantly transforming subdis-
ciplinary and transdisciplinary tradition of ecological
anthropology, this kind of ‘‘environmental anthropol-
ogy’’ seems to represent a shift in the balance from what
has been labeled the etic dimension to the emic dimen-
sion of ethnographic description. The work reported is
simultaneously more concerned with exposing omni-
scient, totalizing tendencies in outsiders’ objectifying
accounts and more eager to recognize the validity of lo-
cal knowledge of biophysical (and social) environments.
This trend has brought a narrowing of ethnographic at-
tention from the full range of daily activities in identi-
fiable social units to cognitive activity, especially in re-
gard to the identity politics of social movements.
Attribution of a ‘‘persistent interest in localized adap-
tations to specific ecosystems’’ to the ongoing legacy of
‘‘the ecological anthropology of the 1960s and early
1970s’’ is fair (insofar as ‘‘adaptation’’ is understood to
subsume cases of maladaptation); linking this research
tradition unequivocally to ‘‘an abiding scientism’’ is
not. But I commend Brosius for including favorable ref-
erences to predecessors in ecological anthropology (in n.
5). He might have cited additional examples of relevant
recent research that document a continuity of interests
and soften the impression of a paradigm shift (for exam-
ple, among those mentioned, by Leslie Sponsel). In any
case, the development of ecological anthropology has
been cumulative. It retains more from, in particular, Ju-
lian Steward’s original formulation of cultural ecology
(demonstrating the embeddedness of a way of life in its
resource base) than has been jettisoned, and, while the
extreme swing of the human-ecology pendulum treated
humans as just another biological population, that too
serves as a valuable heuristic benchmark. An ecological
anthropology textbook by Emilio Moran that estab-
lished this historically cumulative approach has just ap-
peared in a revised edition (1999 [1982]).
If my sense of a narrowing ethnographic purview is
accurate, then what might be the reason? Perhaps the
labor-intensive fieldwork practices of such paragons of
holistic ecological anthropology as Roy Rappaport are
no longer viable in the academic marketplace, which
may resemble other industries in its emphasis on
quickly changing styles of packaging. Yes, ‘‘discursive
regimes’’ reveal much about the cultural globalization
we all are experiencing; but will that conceptual appara-
tus still be employed for environmental analysis, say,
20 years from now? Brosius’s framework does enable
him to make cogent remarks that expand on many fas-
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 299
cinating points. Thus, ‘‘claims to authenticity are a crit-
ical dimension of legitimacy,’’ with the result that sub-
altern groups must essentialize their cultures and
establish transcendental relationships to territory. Like
the need for affirmative action to promote social equity,
this demonstrates how far we still remain from a ho-
meostatic global ecosystem. I share his sense of irony
about contradictory consequences of identity politics
and would add only that such critical wedges have char-
acterized the best moments in anthropology since the
time of Boas.
Reply
j. p e t e r b r o s i u s
Athens, Ga., U.S.A. 12 ii 99
Reading the reactions of commentators to my article
has been a singularly enriching experience, and I have
learned a great deal from their observations and in-
sights. It has been particularly interesting to see the
multiple ways in which my argument has been inter-
preted, paraphrased, summarized, and extended in new
directions. Berglund’s discussion of ‘‘momentum’’ is
particularly incisive, taking this idea in a direction I had
not previously considered. I share her concern for find-
ing ways of ‘‘seeking systematic pattern(s) as a principle
for scholarly practice . . . without totalizing’’ and, in a
time of reactionary antienvironmentalism, see the
value in this as a form of engaged scholarly praxis. Esco-
bar also makes a number of very interesting suggestions
with respect to ‘‘elements for future engagement.’’ Bavi-
skar urges us not to forget ‘‘rurality’’ as a concept deeply
implicated in the constitution of the natural and urges
us to attend to the question of how nature is evacuated
from that which is ‘‘industrial’’ and ‘‘urban.’’ Orlove
rightly chides me for too firmly separating politics and
depoliticization; we do need to be more careful in how
we assess the ways in which various forms of political
agency are constituted, and the process may be more
complex than we have allowed. Dove properly stresses
the need for more careful assessment of the emancipa-
tory impact of an earlier ecological anthropology. Horn-
borg is correct to remind us that ‘‘anthropologists, too,
engage in identity politics’’ as we strive to distinguish
ourselves from journalists and others concerned with
representing terrains of environmental activism or in-
stitutionalization. Rocheleau and Radel argue for a
more complex view of identities as a way of thinking
about the dilemma of critiquing essentialism and nego-
tiating the divide between ‘‘authentic’’ and ‘‘strategic’’
essentialisms. Guha shows how exemplary scholarship
can provide alternative ways of thinking about the sto-
ries we tell ourselves about the history, or histories, of
environmentalism.
In the following, I will first address a series of com-
mon themes: (1) the characteristics of, and relationship
300 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
between, ecological and environmental anthropology,
(2) the relationship between constructivism and cri-
tique and the question of our accountability in the
study of environmentalism, (3) the nature of the rela-
tion between analysis and intervention, and (4) the
definition of political ecology. Then I will address a se-
ries of minor points.
A number of commentators have remarked upon my
treatment of the distinction between the ecological an-
thropology of the 1960s and 1970s and the nascent ‘‘en-
vironmental anthropology’’ of the present and of the na-
ture of the relation between them. I was well aware that
my brief mention of some of the differences between
the two would not be satisfactory to those familiar with
this history, but it was not my purpose to provide a
comprehensive account of it.
With respect to my portrayal of ecological anthropol-
ogy, Guha remarks that I do not sufficiently acknowl-
edge ‘‘the contributions of older traditions’’ and that I
ignore the work of key figures such as Harold Conklin.
I did not intend to disparage an earlier ecological an-
thropology or to deprecate the work of any particular
individual. Having done my first anthropological
fieldwork with a Philippine upland society (Brosius
1983, 1990), I have nothing but admiration for the work
of Conklin, whose detailed studies influenced me in nu-
merous ways and—to amplify a point made by Dove—
whose efforts to document the richness of Hanunóo
(and Ifugao) knowledge systems did much to lay the
groundwork for challenges to modernist assumptions
about indigenous subsistence systems.1 Further, as a
student of Roy Rappaport I have an abiding respect for
the ethnographic richness of his work and for the singu-
lar elegance of the ideas he developed most notably in
Pigs for the Ancestors (1968). At the same time, I find
Weil’s defense of an apparently unadulterated Stew-
ardian ecological anthropology unconvincing, and I do
not see how anyone could question the scientism of
that approach. One does not have to be a poststructura-
list to recognize that the valorization of anthropology
as a science, long a prominent element in our disciplin-
ary self-identification (recall Radcliffe-Brown’s efforts
to establish a ‘‘natural science of society’’), reached a
kind of rhetorical apogee in 1960s–1970s ecological an-
thropology as we borrowed one concept after another—
ecosystem, adaptation, niche, carrying capacity—from
ecology. I also think it uninformative to try to force the
distinction between ecological and environmental an-
thropology into the timeworn etic/emic dichotomy.
With respect to my characterization of environmen-
tal anthropology, Escobar notes that I leave ‘‘unat-
tended certain aspects of ecologically oriented anthro-
pology that do not emerge from . . . a [poststructuralist]
framework’’ and suggests that my ‘‘map needs to be
drawn with more shades and contours.’’ Hornborg, too,
suggests that I ignore much of significance in recent en-
vironmental anthropology. I can only agree with them
1. See also Brosius (1988). In writing this piece I drew extensively
on Conklin’s Ethnographic Atlas of Ifugao (1980).
here. Environmental anthropology is as yet only loosely
defined (but see Blount 1997, Biersack n.d., Kottak n.d.).
However one chooses to define it, it covers a very broad
range of topics: historical ecology, symbolic ecology,
political ecology, studies of indigenous knowledge sys-
tems, studies of conservation and community, and
more. While an interest in environmental movements
and discourses has been a key element in the develop-
ment of environmental anthropology, it is but one area
of focus among many. My purpose was merely to sketch
some of the broad outlines of this perspective as a way
of moving into a discussion of anthropological engage-
ments with environmentalism. Further, to suggest as I
did that environmental anthropology is very much in-
formed by poststructuralist social theory is not to say
that that is all there is to it. Finally, it would be mis-
guided to suggest that environmental anthropology is
somehow immune to the routinization to which eco-
logical anthropology succumbed. Part of my purpose in
describing contemporary trends in the anthropological
study of environmentalism was to suggest that we are
already faced with a degree of routinization. Dove’s call
for more attention to understanding the processes by
which ‘‘creative, paradigmatic movements are made
but then normalized’’ is of particular interest in this
connection.
With regard to my treatment of the relation between
ecological and environmental anthropology, Dove be-
lieves the appearance I give of a ‘‘sharp discontinuity’’
between ecological and environmental anthropology to
be exaggerated, while Weil suggests that I ‘‘might have
cited additional examples of relevant recent research
that document a continuity of interests and soften the
impression of a paradigm shift.’’ Hornborg suggests that
European anthropology does not suffer from the same
clear-cut dichotomy between ‘‘ecological’’ and ‘‘envi-
ronmental’’ anthropology that he identifies as existing
in the United States. In tracing the continuities and
identifying the discontinuities between ecological and
environmental anthropology we need to balance ac-
counts focused on the work of particular individuals
(Conklin, Rappaport, McCay, Orlove), the complex and
shifting careers of certain key concepts (adaptation, car-
rying capacity), and the histories of particular contro-
versies (protein capture in the Amazon, the nature of
the potlatch). An adequate account of the relationship
between ecological and environmental anthropology
would have to achieve some synthesis of these. My in-
tent was simply to identify a degree of historical discon-
tinuity between them. However one judges the value of
ecological anthropology or positions oneself theoreti-
cally, it seems to me undeniable that while many indi-
vidual anthropologists continued to do work in this
area, ecological anthropology as a whole experienced a
decline in the late 1970s and 1980s as the theoretical
center of gravity within the discipline shifted toward
structural Marxism, political economy, interpretive an-
thropology, and, somewhat later, poststructuralism and
other perspectives. ‘‘Rather sharp discontinuity’’ was
perhaps not a good choice of words to describe this situ-

ation. We should, I agree, be cautious in allowing this
distinction to displace our sense of the continuities that
exist between the ecological anthropology of the past
and the environmental anthropology of the present. All
the same, it is important to recognize the differences be-
tween them. I think there is value in trying to articulate
what is new and what sorts of common themes are
emerging in environmental anthropology today, and I
take the comments here as a challenge to do this in a
manner that does credit to the diversity of approaches
being pursued.
At the same time, just as I am concerned about reify-
ing the distinction between ecological and environmen-
tal anthropology, I worry that there is a certain danger
in trying to provide too definitive an account of this
emerging paradigm. I think we are observing something
that usually passes unnoticed: the early stages of the es-
tablishment of a grand narrative. For all the guidance
that such efforts can provide, this is something we
should be cautious about. While one can usefully offer
an overview of certain trends to guide readers to a series
of theoretical connecting points through a very broad
transdisciplinary literature, any attempt to circum-
scribe it too definitively may contribute to the creation
of a narrative that limits the types of questions that
might be asked in the future. It is always a struggle to
negotiate the path between the desire for clarity and the
enervating effects of totalization. This is an exciting
time, with a great deal of highly original transdisciplin-
ary work in progress, and I worry about our desire to
diminish ambiguity in what counts as environmental
anthropology.
A second issue that several commentators raise
touches on my discussion of our accountability as
scholars engaged in the study of environmentalism—
what Hornborg glosses as the relationship between con-
structivism and critique. I am much in agreement with
their efforts to extend my observations, though I think
some clarification of particular points is in order.
A vigorous debate has emerged in recent years over
the question of essentialism and what Lattas (1993) has
termed the ‘‘politics of authenticity’’ in assertions of in-
digenous identity (Beckett and Mato 1996; Conklin
1997; Friedman 1992a, b, 1996; Hanson 1989, 1991;
Jackson 1989, 1995; Jolly 1992; Keesing 1989; Keesing
and Tonkinson 1982; Lattas 1993; Linnekin 1991, 1992;
Ramos 1994; Rogers 1996; Sahlins 1993). I believe this
to be one of the most pressing issues that anthropolo-
gists engaged in the study of environmental or indige-
nous rights movements face, whether the images we ex-
amine are the self-essentializations of indigenous
movements or the romantic essentialisms of Euro-
American environmentalists. Baviskar touches on the
core of this issue in noting that those ‘‘engaged in mean-
ingful action’’ have a ‘‘heuristic need for stable topolo-
gies, reference points, and boundaries.’’
Baviskar and Guha take my expression of uneasiness
as an assertion that such essentialisms should be ex-
empt from analysis, but this is not at all what I am ar-
guing. My intention here is simply to raise what I con-
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 301
sider to be a troubling issue and ask whether there is
any way out of this dilemma. Hvalkof suggests that in
raising the matter of our accountability I am simply re-
stating a long-standing concern. To be sure, anthropolo-
gists have attempted to articulate their concerns about
the ‘‘unintended consequences’’ of their work and their
complicity in structures of domination for some time
now (Asad 1973; Berreman 1968; Gough 1968a, b;
Huizer and Mannheim 1979; Hymes 1969; Scheper-
Hughes 1995). But it would be wrong to conclude that
there is nothing new in our concerns about the critique
of essentialisms or other discursive practices in our en-
gagements with environmentalism. This in fact is
something that I and others consider in great detail a
forthcoming special issue of Identities: Global Studies
in Culture and Power addressing these and broader
questions concerning the implications of our efforts to
provide ethnographic accounts of contemporary envi-
ronmental and indigenous rights movements. Some of
the broad outlines of my argument in that volume
(Brosius n.d. b) may be sketched as follows:
Traditional conceptions of ethnographic practice are
premised on what might be termed a topology of ‘‘sim-
ple locality’’—a topology which defines the task of the
ethnographer as one of representing for an anthropologi-
cal audience some actually existing place. The conve-
nience of such a topology lies in the fact that the in-
tended or unintended consequences of the act of
representation can be measured by the degree of actual
or potential impact on a particular place and on those
who live there. Where we are concerned about the po-
tentially harmful effects of our attempts at representa-
tion, our tendency has been to avoid negative conse-
quences through disguise: change the name of the
community, change the names of informants, or per-
haps delete any mention of what we might know about
the occurrence of illegal activities. The topology of sim-
ple locality, then, is a strategy for discursively consti-
tuting a focalized ‘‘there,’’ and like the ‘‘ethnographic
present’’ (Fabian 1983) it is nothing more than a conve-
nient fiction—our construction of the political spaces
in which and about which we write rather than any ac-
tually existing configuration of space or place. If our to-
pologies for imagining the consequences of our work are
problematic in traditional ethnographic research con-
texts, those problems multiply exponentially in the
convergence between our interest in the study of subal-
tern social movements and other forms of mobilization
and the multisitedness of contemporary research con-
texts.
Social movements are in essence dedicated to chal-
lenging traditional configurations of power, and what
we disclose about them in reporting our findings—in-
house conversations, strategy meetings, anxieties ex-
pressed—provides a map for these who seek to suppress
them. In short, we undercut resistance when we show
how it works (Said 1989:220). The disguise that may be
effective in the context of traditional ethnographic re-
search is utterly ineffectual in the study of social move-
ments. While we can perhaps change the names of par-
302 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
ticular activists and therefore possibly insulate them
from arrest or other explicit forms of repression, we lay
the groundwork for forms of counterresistance that may
be much more consequential. The threat to social
movements is not simply that they may face repression
but that their efforts may prove ineffective because of
the effectiveness of efforts to counter them, and our eth-
nographic presence may contribute to that. What most
determines the outcome of their efforts is whether they
are able to communicate a set of moral/political imper-
atives in the face of efforts to deploy counterimages
which displace them. To the extent that we reveal the
inner workings of such movements we provide the raw
material for opponents to construct counterimages,
thereby increasing the likelihood that they will be un-
able to effect change.
The multisitedness of contemporary ethnographic re-
search projects focusing on social movements is of
equal consequence for imagining the consequences of
our work. According to Marcus (1995:96), multisited
ethnography ‘‘moves out from the single sites and local
situations of conventional ethnographic research de-
signs to examine the circulation of cultural meanings,
objects, and identities in diffuse time-space.’’ However,
the growing effectiveness of various forms of capitalist
penetration, the increasing ubiquity and effectiveness
of technologies of state power, and continually globaliz-
ing processes of cultural production all contribute to a
proliferation of ‘‘chains, paths, threads, conjunctions, or
juxtapositions of locations’’ (1995:105) that constitutes
a condition of multisitedness.2 Acknowledging this
condition suggests that we must also acknowledge that
our topologies for describing any situation and identi-
fying the threats that may arise from our attempts at
representation of that situation are always incomplete.
The agents that may impinge on the sites we are study-
ing may be completely outside our field of vision, either
by virtue of the inherent complexity of contemporary
multisitedness or by their conscious design. These are
powerful actors who are vitally interested in what we are
doing precisely because they are charged with counter-
ing the efforts of the kinds of movements we study.3
Taking all this into consideration, Guha’s dismissal
of my concerns on the grounds that anthropologists
seem to have an ‘‘exaggerated respect for activists’’ and
that succumbing to this leads to bad science seems to
me unsupportable. A central tenet of anthropological
practice is that we should do no harm to those we
study. Obviously in the study of social movements,
where we may be engaged both with movement mem-
bers and with those who would oppose them, adhering
to such an injunction is not always easy, but we must
2. See also Gupta and Ferguson (1997), an important recent inter-
vention into traditional anthropological understandings of ‘‘the
field’’ and the practice of ‘‘fieldwork.’’
3. See Herman and Chomsky (1988) and Stauber and Rampton
(1995). An example of the power and strategic invisibility of these
firms can be seen in the central role that Hill & Knowlton played
in shaping American public opinion during the Gulf War (Stauber
and Rampton 1995:167–75).
avoid making poor choices about what we reveal. While
Guha argues that ‘‘commissars and policemen . . . have
their own sources,’’ the fact that they might should be
enough to give us pause. In any event, it may be delegi-
timization or displacement rather than explicit repres-
sion that is of the greatest consequence for the move-
ments we study. One need only read the dismissive
news bulletins in the Malaysian Timber Bulletin, dis-
tributed to municipal governments throughout Europe
and North America, to recognize that somebody is fol-
lowing Malaysian rain-forest politics very closely. To
suggest that ‘‘fear should not inhibit the pursuit of
truth’’ is equally dangerous. Rising above fear for one’s
own welfare is one thing, but disregarding the fate of
those we study in pursuit of ‘‘the truth’’ is quite an-
other. Inconvenient as it may be, we must forever ask
what the impact of our analyses might be.
Another point raised by a number of commentators
is the nature of the relationship between analysis and
intervention. Orlove seems willing to accept that cer-
tain forms of analysis can be viewed as interventions
but asks whether analyses can also be something else.
Stonich appears to view these as different orders of phe-
nomena when she mentions the need to ‘‘integrate the
political . . . and the material into our studies of envi-
ronmentalism’’ and says that ‘‘environmentalisms and
movements are concerned not with discourse per se but
with advocacy, practice, and political action.’’ The im-
plication is that an emphasis on discourse overlooks the
‘‘real stakes’’ for actors. To this I can only say that the
entire point of a great deal of poststructuralist theory is
that discourse does matter—that it plays a key role in
creating the grounds on which ‘‘real stakes’’ are defined.
Whether analyses necessarily constitute intervention
depends on the type of analysis. In traditional ethno-
graphic studies this may not be the case, but in the
study of social movements analyses can influence
events, thereby reconfiguring the very context being ob-
served.4 Thus, to the extent that our analyses impinge
upon the streams of rhetoric, policies, actions, and con-
structions of reality that are the stuff of environmental
discourses and debates, they do constitute interven-
tions of a very substantial sort. The modernist scien-
tism that reached its apogee in 1960s–1970s ecological
anthropology and continues to dominate some sectors
of the discipline provides anthropologists with the con-
venient fiction that analysis and intervention are dis-
tinct orders of practice and that the latter belongs to ap-
plied anthropology, action anthropology, consultancy,
or the like. However, as Orlove trenchantly reminds us,
‘‘Once anthropology confronted the grounding of claims
of realism within strategies of representation, it became
difficult to oppose thought and action, to separate word
and deed.’’ We must simply accept that this is one out-
come of our decision to turn our attention to the study
of social movements.
What, then, should we do? Certainly it is not enough
just to address our strategies of representation and re-
4. See Hymes (1969) and Turner (1991).

treat to a ‘‘politics of textuality’’ (Said 1989:209). As Fa-
bian argues, ‘‘Hanging the walls full with reflexive mir-
rors may brighten the place but offers no way out’’
(1991:260). Nor, as some have suggested, should we
simply cease all efforts at representation.5 Rather, we
need first to locate ourselves (both for ourselves and for
our research subjects) within the ‘‘concrete contexts of
power’’ (Fabian 1991:256) we are attempting to repre-
sent. This task is far from simple, but it is critical for
an anthropology aware of its complicity in structures of
domination and alert to the power of its visualizing
practices.
We can, of course, take steps of one sort or another
to support emancipatory projects. Dove describes how
ecological anthropology provided ‘‘politically empow-
ering counterdiscourses’’ against the ‘‘deprecation of in-
digenous societies under the aegis of high-modernist de-
velopment theory,’’ and Escobar notes the contribution
of anthropologists to ‘‘alternative views of conservation
and sustainability.’’ Orlove, through an insightful ren-
dering of the ideas of ‘‘audience’’ and ‘‘site,’’ argues for
the value of ‘‘concrete’’ interventions. Describing how
we write for different audiences and how we might do
so at many different sites, he reminds us of the ‘‘ways
in which our writings can influence broader debates in
many social contexts.’’
Baviskar raises the important point that ‘‘interroga-
tion need not necessarily be a move away from prac-
tice’’ and concludes hopefully that ‘‘it is possible to res-
cue a dialogical relationship between anthropologist
and subject.’’ Similarly, Escobar asks whether anthro-
pologists ‘‘have a role to play in this intellectual and po-
litical project’’ in which social movements are engaged,
and Stonich envisions a role for anthropologists as ‘‘true
collaborators.’’ Rocheleau and Radel urge us to ask
whether we are writing with, for, or about environmen-
tal social movements. Adopting a strategy of dialogism
may work in certain contexts, but to the extent that our
projects are multisited, it becomes difficult to discern
what a dialogic relationship is and with or for whom we
are writing. Further, while I would never discount the
possibility that much good can come of various forms
of articulation between anthropologists and the forms
of environmentalism they study and while we know of
many cases in which anthropologists have been sought
out by indigenous communities or subaltern social
movements, it is still usually we who seek articulation,
perhaps out of a real sense of commitment or perhaps
merely as a way to persuade ourselves that our work has
something other than academic value. Although there
are many domains in which we have had a positive in-
fluence on public policy, in our efforts to articulate with
environmental social movements I think we suffer from
a kind of naive optimism. We need to face up to the fact
that this may be a domain in which our analyses/inter-
ventions are not needed.
Hvalkof, Rocheleau and Radel, Stonich, and Escobar
suggest that ‘‘political ecology’’ might provide us with
5. See Enslin (1994), Fabian (1990, 1991), and Fox (1991).
b r o s i u s Engagements with Environmentalism 303
the conceptual tools for addressing these issues. While
I have great admiration for much of the work being done
under this rubric (Durham 1995; Schroeder 1993; Gorz
1993; Sheridan 1988; Stonich 1993; Greenberg and Park
1994; Bryant 1992; Escobar 1996, 1999; Moore 1996;
Neumann 1992; Rocheleau, Thomas-Slayter, and
Wangari 1996; Schmink and Wood 1987), at times I find
myself questioning the rubric itself. As I have noted
(Brosius 1999:17), there are at least two approaches in
anthropology for which the label ‘‘political ecology’’ is
claimed, one representing a fusion of human ecology
with political economy and the other informed by
poststructuralist social theory. However valuable these
studies are, the fact that different writers mean very dif-
ferent things by ‘‘political ecology’’ raises the question
how coherent or helpful the rubric really is.
Weil appears to interpret my argument as disparaging
quality research in favor of gratuitous, self-indulgent
theorizing, asking whether the current conceptual appa-
ratus will still be employed for environmental analysis
20 years from now. My position is anything but that im-
plied by Weil. I very much doubt that in 20 years we
will be employing the same theoretical apparatus that
we employ today; I have already raised the specter of
routinization, and one can sense other theoretical shifts
in the making. Unquestionably, though, whatever we
are doing in 20 years will at least be informed by the
questions we are posing today. It is quite certain that
we will never again return to the sort of cultural ecology
that Weil appears to have such nostalgia for.
Guha also seems to think that I am suggesting that
sound scholarship does not matter, but that was not my
intent at all. I merely meant to say that we are produc-
ing very good accounts of environmental movements
today and are likely to continue doing so—that instead
of worrying about this we should be concerned about
our role in the study of environmental movements.
Guha further believes my argument vulnerable in that
environmental movements almost always have com-
peting factions offering competing interpretations:
‘‘Which one of these does the anthropologist then defer
to?’’ This is a good question but one which I believe my
argument and a good deal of contemporary theory ad-
dress. What lies behind our interest in contestation is
the idea of regarding no perspective or account as au-
thoritative but viewing each in the context of a much
larger set of engagements, conversations, discourses,
and other forms of negotiation. For those of us engaged
in anthropological studies of contemporary environ-
mentalism, it is the very diversity of perspectives
among and between various kinds of actors and the
shifts that we continually see occurring in their per-
spectives and positionings that makes this such a com-
pelling topic of research.
Hvalkof, who characterizes the article as a ‘‘cata-
logue,’’ asks whether, ‘‘beyond its utilitarian aspect,’’
the approach I take here would have been valid for do-
mains other than environmentalism. In a period when
many anthropologists are engaged in studies of environ-
mentalism, it seems quite reasonable to examine some
304 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
of the sources of our interest, to try to discern present
trends, and to try to identify a series of issues that might
be examined in future research. Whether the perspec-
tive I bring to bear on environmentalism is valid for ad-
dressing other domains—development, medicine, tech-
nology—is beside the point. Hvalkof seems annoyed
that I take my ‘‘theoretical inspiration and ballast’’
from other fields, but I cannot imagine that an anthro-
pologist whose theoretical direction came exclusively
from within the discipline would have very much new
or interesting to say. The transparency of disciplinary
boundaries that characterizes a great deal of recent
work may not be healthy for us institutionally, but it
makes eminent sense intellectually and is well worth
the risk.
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310 c ur r e n t an t hr o p o l o g y Volume 40, Number 3, June 1999
Wanted
For a documentary series in preparation by two journal-
ists on ‘‘other-gendered’’ people in cultures around the
world, referrals to relevant books, articles, journals, pa-
pers, films or videos, archival footage, personal con-
tacts, and other sources on Native American ‘‘two-
spirit people,’’ the Balkan hommasse or tobelija,
the Indian hijras, the xanith in Oman, the acault in
Burma/Myanmar, the basaja in Indonesia, the Tahitian
mahu, and the sererr of the Pokot in Kenya, among oth-
ers. Although our approach throughout the series will
be character-driven and contemporary, based on a few
individuals in each place, we hope to learn as much as
possible about the history and context of people living
outside of binary ‘‘male’’ and ‘‘female’’ classifications in
different cultures. By portraying people whose gender
identities do not fit that dichotomy, whether through
institutionalized alternatives or through intermediate
roles which allow a broader range of gender identities
in their societies, we intend to raise questions about
definitions and conceptions of gender. Please write us
at aRTwORKS, Democratiestraat 30/2, 1070 Brussels,
Belgium, or contact us by e-mail: Leslie Asako Gladsjo
(LGladsjo@compuserve.com) and/or Estelle Slegers (es-
telle@euronet.be).