• Login
    View Item 
    •   Maryland Shared Open Access Repository Home
    • ScholarWorks@UMBC
    • UMBC Interdepartmental Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Maryland Shared Open Access Repository Home
    • ScholarWorks@UMBC
    • UMBC Interdepartmental Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Unruly Animals: multispecies politics and the governing of wildlife state space

    Thumbnail
    Files
    Margulies_umbc_0434D_11688.pdf (7.031Mb)
    Permanent Link
    http://hdl.handle.net/11603/15552
    Collections
    • UMBC Theses and Dissertations
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Author/Creator
    Unknown author
    Date
    2017-01-01
    Type of Work
    Text
    dissertation
    Department
    Geography and Environmental Systems
    Program
    Geography and Environmental Systems
    Rights
    This item may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. It is made available by UMBC for non-commercial research and education. For permission to publish or reproduce, please see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/specoll/repro.php or contact Special Collections at speccoll(at)umbc.edu
    Distribution Rights granted to UMBC by the author.
    Subjects
    Animal Geography
    Conservation
    Human-Wildlife Conflict
    India
    Political Ecology
    Abstract
    My dissertation asks, why is tolerance for living with large wildlife in decline in South India? In addressing this question, I approach conservation as a process of territorialization, a practice mirrored in the spatial representation of geographic knowledge in scientific research. I first present the results of two case studies investigating the social dimensions of human-wildlife relations in one of the most critical conservation landscapes in South Asia. Second, while local case study research remains the gold standard for investigating complex causal mechanisms in human-environment interactions, there is increasing interest across a diverse suite of social-environmental research for ?scaling-up? case study research for global-scale knowledge generation. My dissertation therefore also considers the possibilities and persistent difficulties in doing so through a meta-study approach. In reflecting on my own case study research, I also suggest ways in which individual case studies of the political ecology of conservation can direct future research questions on human-wildlife relations within other geographic contexts. The first case study of my dissertation considers the role of conservation as ideology in the functioning of the state in violent environments. I reflect on a series of events in which a state forest department in South India attempted to recast violent conflicts between themselves and local communities over access to natural resources and a protected area as a debate over human-wildlife conflicts. I show how Louis Althusser?s theory of the ideological state apparatuses helps articulate the functioning of conservation as ideology within the state apparatus. Building on my engagement with conservation as ideology, my next case study analyzes conservation discourses of tolerance by communities to living with large carnivores alongside Bandipur National Park in India. The results show that declining tolerances of farmers experiencing damage and destruction of cattle by carnivores represents the cumulative impacts of a transformation of regional economy of South India, the local livestock economy, and more aggressive protected area management strategies. I discuss the implications of these findings for other locations in the global tropics where livestock rearing practices may conflict with protected area management goals. While Chapters 2 and 3 present individual case studies of the politics of human-wildlife relations in South India, Chapter 4 presents a meta-study of case studies to demonstrate the persistent geographic challenges researchers face in scaling up local and regional-scale case studies, such as those presented here, in global synthesis research. Here I assess the degree to which the quality of geographic description in 437 published land change case studies limits their effective reuse in spatially explicit global and regional syntheses. The quality of case geography reporting showed no statistically significant improvement over the past 50 years. And yet, by following a few simple and readily implemented guidelines, case geographic context reporting could be radically improved, enabling more effective case-study reuse in regional to global synthesis research, thereby yielding substantial benefits to both case study and synthesis researchers.


    Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
    University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    1000 Hilltop Circle
    Baltimore, MD 21250
    www.umbc.edu/scholarworks

    Contact information:
    Email: scholarworks-group@umbc.edu
    Phone: 410-455-3544


    If you wish to submit a copyright complaint or withdrawal request, please email mdsoar-help@umd.edu.

     

     

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Browse

    This CollectionBy Issue DateTitlesAuthorsSubjectsType

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics


    Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery
    University of Maryland, Baltimore County
    1000 Hilltop Circle
    Baltimore, MD 21250
    www.umbc.edu/scholarworks

    Contact information:
    Email: scholarworks-group@umbc.edu
    Phone: 410-455-3544


    If you wish to submit a copyright complaint or withdrawal request, please email mdsoar-help@umd.edu.