Environmental Communication and Community: Constructive and Destructive Dynamics of Social Transformation by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780815359210
Google: zh04tAEACAAJ
Goodreads: 39965523
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusions

Efforts to increase the sense of community and social identification with wildlife conservation require the communication of messages that are relevant to a broad swathe of society. This could start with a de-emphasis on the ownership of wildlife that is more in line with an accurate representation of the PTD. Especially when considered within the context of contemporary liberal democracies that are emerging throughout Earth, the citizenry that frequently live in close proximity with wildlife require meaningful input and access to wildlife management decision-making. We recognize that including diverse viewpoints in policy decisions increases complexity and introduces new tensions. Wildlife management will undoubtedly struggle with the task of representing such divergent viewpoints, but this contestation of wills is at the least necessary, and perhaps desirable in functioning democracies. Mouffe (2000) argued that, “instead of trying to erase the traces of power and exclusion, democratic politics requires us to bring them to the fore, to make them visible so that they can enter the terrain of contestation” (pp. 33–34). She goes on to state that conflict should not be viewed as problematic, but instead as confirmation that democracy “is alive and inhabited by pluralism” (p. 34). Without opposition, dominant discourses prevent the incorporation of new ideas, despite widespread calls for change. For a more complete treatment of this dynamic, see Hallgren’s discussion of pluralistic agonism in Chapter 2.

It is through this contestation of ideas that society is able to enact changes in democratic practice in response to contemporary needs, in this case as they relate to wildlife management. Proponents of the NAMWC use it as a demonstration of their dedication to pluralistic and democratic protection of the commons. However the dominance of a single community limits the model’s value as a means of building alliances between conservation communities that enable collaboration when their values coincide, as in the case of wildlife conservation. Instead of multiple communities sharing an interest in protecting a commonly held resource and valuing it in their diverse ways, dominant interpretations of the NAMWC as an embodiment of the PTD focus on a community of practice devoted to the recreational and consumptive use of wildlife. Rather than a unifying influence in wildlife conservation, these interpretations actively exclude large swathes of the people necessary for future conservation success.

Peterson et al. (2005) argued that, public policy and practice are “not producing anything remotely sustainable, from an ecological perspective, and will not unless the current power structure can be challenged to incorporate new information on the consequences of human action” (p. 765). We would add that current sanctification of the NAMWC unnecessarily limits the open thinking that may enable the emergence of new ideas about wildlife conservation through practices of agonistic democracy. Current discursive framing of the NAMWC and the PTD presents wildlife conservation as the exclusive domain of a single community of practice, which threatens to alienate other communities that also care deeply about wildlife conservation.

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