Sandra Moog (University of California, Berkeley and University of Essex) and Sonja Pieck (Bates College)
Who's Representing the Rainforest?
The Rise of the Transnational Eco-regional Biodiversity Agenda, the Waning
Influence of the Organized Indigenous Movement, and the Future of the
Amazon
Transnational civil society has often been conceptualized as a
third sector, buffered from the power-politics of nation-states and global
capital. The relative autonomy of this sector has been seen as key in
empowering the voices of marginalized peoples and in advocating new
counter-hegemonic agendas on the world stage. Recent research, however, has
begun to explore power imbalances within the transnational civic sphere,
and how different transnational NGOs' modes of articulation with political
institutions and market actors inform those power dynamics. We suggest here
that the concept of "entanglements," recently introduced within political
geography, can offer a useful spatial imagery in assessing the effects of
these varied lines of influence. The article first traces the evolution of
the Amazon Alliance, a transnational network of environmental and human
rights NGOs and Amazonian indigenous federations. It then examines a
countervailing nexus of governmental and corporate entanglements that have
been drawing conservation NGOs away from indigenous eco-political
engagement in recent years. To understand the waning salience of the
eco-indigenous conservation agenda, we argue, requires analysis of the
shifting terrain of civil society, and of the articulation of different
NGOs with institutions beyond the frontiers of the third sector.
NB. Sonja Pieck is unable to be in Cambridge to present this co-written paper at the conference with Sandra Moog.
NB. Sonja Pieck is unable to be in Cambridge to present this co-written paper at the conference with Sandra Moog.
