Postnormal Conservation

Katja Grötzner Neves

Description

2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

Since their inception in the sixteenth century, botanic gardens have been embroiled with matters of governance. In Postnormal Conservation, Katja Grötzner Neves reveals that, throughout its long history, the botanical garden institution has been both a product and an enabler of modernity and the Westphalian nation-state. Initially intertwined with projects of colonialism and empire building, contemporary botanic gardens have reinvented themselves as environmental governance actors. They are now at the forefront of emerging forms of networked transnational governance. Building on social studies of science that reveal the politicization of science as the producer of contingent, high-stakes, and uncertain knowledge, and the concomitant politicization of previously taken-for-granted science-policy interfaces, Neves contends that institutions like botanic gardens have discursively deployed postnormal science and posthuman precepts to justify their growing involvement with biodiversity conservation governance within the Anthropocene.
Foreword
Peter Stoett and Owen Temby

Acknowledgments

Introduction 1
I.1 Botanic Gardens and the Reordering of Biodiversity Conservation
I.2 Trouble in the Garden: Facing the Anthropocene’s Onto-Epistemological Challenges
I.3 “Ontopolitics,” Postnormal Science, and Governance in the Anthropocene
I.4 The Transnational Embededness of Botanical Garden Biodiversity Governance
I.5 Chapter Overview 32

1. Botanical Garden Histories of Governance
1.1 Opening Vignette: Writing Postnormal Conservation
1.2 Botanic Gardens, Modernity, and Governance
1.3 The Reinvention of Botanic Gardens as Agents of Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene
1.4 Life-Governing Rationalities and Coexisting Environmentalities: Botanic Gardens as Institutions of Governance
1.5 Chapter Conclusions

2. Botanical Knowledge, Power, and Governance: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the Longue Durée
2.1 Opening Vignette: From Economic Botany to the Botany of Conservation
2.2 Planting Empires, Growing Economies: The Gilded Age of Botanic Gardens
2.3 Risen from the Ashes? Kew’s Rebirth as Center of Calculation in the Anthropocene
2.4 People and Plants at Kew: Challenges and Adaptations
2.5 Chapter Conclusions

3. Postnormal Conservation at Espace Pour la Vie
3.1 Opening Vignette: Challenges and Paradoxes of Twenty-First-Century Governance
3.2 Coproducing the Monarch Butterfly as a Hyperboundary Object
3.3 A “First Point of Contact with Nature”: Relational Monarch Ontologies of Conservation
3.4 Butterflies, Public Engagement, and Postnormal Conservation
3.5 Chapter Conclusions

4. Communities in Nature: Multispecies Care at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Bristol Zoo Gardens
4.1 Opening Vignette: “Communities in Nature”
4.2 Doing “Conservation ‘Stuff’ in Place, around the Planet”: The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s Edible Gardening Project
4.3 Creating Champions for the Future: “Once You Think about It, the Possibilities Are Unlimited . . .”
4.4 Lessons Learned from Communities in Nature
4.5 Chapter Conclusions

5. Concluding Remarks

Notes
References
Index

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 21 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438474571
• Langue: English

Extrait

POSTNORMAL CONSERVATION
SUNY series in Environmental Governance: Local-Regional-Global Interactions

Peter Stoett and Owen Temby, editors
POSTNORMAL CONSERVATION
Botanic Gardens and the Reordering of Biodiversity Governance
Katja Grötzner Neves
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Neves, Katja Grötzner, author.
Title: Postnormal conservation : botanic gardens and the reordering of biodiversity governance / Katja Grötzner Neves.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in environmental governance : local-regional-global interactions | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018033269| ISBN 9781438474557 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438474571 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Botanical gardens.
Classification: LCC QK71 .N49 2019 | DDC 582.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033269
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I dedicate this book to my family. To my parents for instilling and nurturing in me a passion for all things scholarly and ecological. To my sister for helping me discover the sacred world of plants, animals, and landscapes during our childhood and continuing to share in these discoveries in our adult years. And to my husband for his unwavering support of my pursuit of these passions.
Contents
F OREWORD
Peter Stoett and Owen Temby
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
I.1 Botanic Gardens and the Reordering of Biodiversity Conservation
I.2 Trouble in the Garden: Facing the Anthropocene’s Onto-Epistemological Challenges
I.3 “Ontopolitics,” Postnormal Science, and Governance in the Anthropocene
I.4 The Transnational Embededness of Botanical Garden Biodiversity Governance
I.5 Chapter Overview
C HAPTER 1 Botanical Garden Histories of Governance
1.1 Opening Vignette: Writing Postnormal Conservation
1.2 Botanic Gardens, Modernity, and Governance
1.3 The Reinvention of Botanic Gardens as Agents of Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene
1.4 Life-Governing Rationalities and Coexisting Environmentalities: Botanic Gardens as Institutions of Governance
1.5 Chapter Conclusions
C HAPTER 2 Botanical Knowledge, Power, and Governance: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the Longue Durée
2.1 Opening Vignette: From Economic Botany to the Botany of Conservation
2.2 Planting Empires, Growing Economies: The Gilded Age of Botanic Gardens
2.3 Risen from the Ashes? Kew’s Rebirth as Center of Calculation in the Anthropocene
2.4 People and Plants at Kew: Challenges and Adaptations
2.5 Chapter Conclusions
C HAPTER 3 Postnormal Conservation at Espace Pour la Vie
3.1 Opening Vignette: Challenges and Paradoxes of Twenty-First-Century Governance
3.2 Coproducing the Monarch Butterfly as a Hyperboundary Object
3.3 A “First Point of Contact with Nature”: Relational Monarch Ontologies of Conservation
3.4 Butterflies, Public Engagement, and Postnormal Conservation
3.5 Chapter Conclusions
C HAPTER 4 Communities in Nature: Multispecies Care at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and Bristol Zoo Gardens
4.1 Opening Vignette: “Communities in Nature”
4.2 Doing “Conservation ‘Stuff’ in Place, around the Planet”: The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s Edible Gardening Project
4.3 Creating Champions for the Future: “Once You Think about It, the Possibilities Are Unlimited …”
4.4 Lessons Learned from Communities in Nature
4.5 Chapter Conclusions
C HAPTER 5 Concluding Remarks
N OTES
R EFERENCES
I NDEX
Foreword
P ETER S TOETT AND O WEN T EMBY
The SUNY series in Environmental Governance: Local-Regional-Global Interactions is pleased to include this groundbreaking volume written by Katja Grötzner Neves. This series was launched last year to showcase excellent research underscoring contemporary transformations in environmental governance. Its name, Local-Regional-Global Interactions, reflects the common view among specialists that environmental governance has downscaled to include local actors, while concurrently linking them across (and often in spite of) national borders. We view this transformation as a welcome development. Successful responses to the remarkably complex challenges we face are those that include a diversity of actors, integrate and diffuse different forms of knowledge, and are appropriate for the scale of the challenge. At its most consequential, new research resonates with these trends, yet offers surprises about how they have unfolded—for example, who has become relevant in the process, and how? This is why a book on botanic gardens and biodiversity governance is a timely and welcome contribution.
Although it may seem counterintuitive to botanic garden visitors seeking a recreational experience, today few public spaces better encapsulate the links between local and global environmental governance. While their origins as showcases for imperial conquest are well known, and their commercial utility in “harnessing the economic potential of plant materials like coffee, quinine, or rubber” only enhanced their role in the colonial usurpation of wealth from the periphery, the political space occupied by botanic gardens has shifted remarkably over the past century. In defining their role and establishing their contemporary relevance, Neves shows that botanic gardens have, since their creation, been institutions of governance. Like other institutions that have been shaped by contemporary imperatives and practices, botanic gardens have transformed to perform the important functions for which they are uniquely positioned. They have become depositories of valuable seed DNA, and rare, medicinal, culturally significant plants, often presented in stunning artistic form. Botanic gardens are leading scientific institutions today—the trajectory of Kew Gardens is especially emblematic. But they are even more than this, since they have become sites of education, exposing the local public to the conservation issues that we grapple with at the global level, and informing them about the interconnected nature of climate change, habitat destruction, and other global problems, all the while promising a nice day in the sun enjoying the cultivated beauty of plants, trees, living and inanimate sculptures, and minirepresentations of ecosystems, some enclosed in greenhouses.
The symbolism is striking, but Neves takes us much further in the pages that follow, using “postnormal conservation” as a framework for understanding botanical garden’s “discursive appropriations of the Anthropocene, computational analytics, and posthuman precepts to justify their renewed existence as agents of biodiversity governance.” Based on painstaking site research and much reflection, she has given us a unique view on these increasingly important institutions and the complex roles they are playing—and that we are playing in our interactions with them—as we struggle to understand the links between local and global political spaces in an age when, sadly, the diminishment of natural space continues. Thanks to Neves’s valuable contribution, scholars of biodiversity governance have a long-overdue account of this important actor.
Acknowledgments
I owe an immense debt of gratitude to more people and institutions than I could possibly mention in an acceptably sized acknowledgments section. While I hope to be able to eventually thank all of those who, in one way or another, helped produce this book, I take the present opportunity to thank those who most directly facilitated its completion.
First and foremost, I would like to thank Peter Soett and Owen Temby, editors of SUNY Press’s series on Environmental Governance: Local-Regional-Global Interactions, of which Postnormal Conservation is now part. Their generous support provided me with the perfect context to write this book enthusiastically, exploring ideas and data with the knowledge that I could always count on them for words of encouragement as I tried to balance my teaching, research, and service commitments, as well as weekly commutes home across two Canadian provinces, with the book’s scheduled completion plan. I extend my gratitude here to Michael Rinella, SUNY acquisitions editor, who made sure that the processes of book proposal approval, anonymous reviewing, and final preparation were done swiftly, efficiently, and without cumbersome obstacles. Working with SUNY’s production team at the end stages of this book’s preparation was a true pleasure. I am particularly grateful to Ryan Morris, senior production editor; Kate Seburyamo, marketing manager; and Laura Glenn, copy editor.
My gratitude to Peter Stoett goes far beyond the context of this book’s publication. I will never be able to fully thank Peter for the generous ways in which he supported the development of my career over the years as an