Abstract
This article explores the everyday exchanges associated with community-based natural resources management in southeastern Mexico to suggest how formal and informal social practices shape conservation and development outcomes. Discussions of social process in most policy analyses emphasize formal exchanges based in rational action but typically overlook the impact of everyday social practices, which often occur “off-stage.” First, I build on existing conceptualizations of social process in the policy sciences by exploring culturally-informed approaches focused on everyday practice, infrapolitics, and performance. Second, I present a case study detailing the emergence and decline of a timber marketing fund to reveal how informal lending among community members contributed to the decapitalization of the fund. Third, I trace flows of economic capital from the fund in order to discuss specific policy outcomes. Fourth, I present ethnographic and archival evidence showing the persistence and frequency of informal lending, the performative aspects of local social process, and the character of “off-stage” interactions. I conclude with a discussion of social process that extends analysis beyond values-based outcomes to consider how long-standing practices based in particular logics (political cultures) collide with formalized (technocratic) practices of the public sphere. I employ this conceptual approach to critically examine questions of petty corruption and local conflict, to uncover multiple dimensions of micro political interaction, and to explore how cultural perspectives on social process might inform policy responses.
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Notes
Lasswell and MacDougal (1992, p. 369) refer to this core assumption about human behavior as the “maximization postulate.” They write, “The maximization postulate appeals to commonsense (often called “intuitive”) understanding of human beings (sic). We generally take it for granted that people will try to choose the course of conduct that leaves them better off than the alternatives that they reject.”
I use the term “post-structural” to position my discussion with respect to other social theoretical domains such as “structural” or “behavioral” analyses. I do not mean to create rigid boundaries or oppositions among domains of analysis. Rather, I intend to explore how they might complement one another despite some core philosophical differences. For my purposes here, post-structuralism represents a generic label that captures a paradigmatic shift (beginning in the 1960 s) away from essentialist, deterministic categories such as “class” associated with the social sciences and linguistics. In general, post-structural analyses consider meaning and knowledge to be historically and culturally contingent. For related discussion tied to debates on rational choice in sociology see Somers (1998). Scott’s work is particularly useful in this case because it is informed by post-structuralist perspectives but does not lose sight of material power relationships; see Scott (1990, pp. xv–xvi).
Scott (1990, p. 183) writes, “The term infrapolitics … convey(s) the idea that we are dealing with an unobtrusive realm of political struggle. For a social science attuned to the relatively open politics of liberal democracies and to loud, headline-grabbing protests, demonstrations, and rebellions, the circumspect struggle waged by subordinate groups is, like infrared rays, beyond the visible end of the spectrum.”
Guha’s (1989) account of peasant resistance in the forests of the Indian Himalaya—particularly his discussion on “resistance as custom”—nicely illustrates practice-based enactments of “traditional” repertoires of resistance. Focusing on the princely state of Tehri Garwal in the first half of the 20th century, Guha identifies the dhandak as a form of ritualized rebellion that is strongly entrenched in custom. It serves to bring rulers back within the bounds of their traditional authority in cases where they exceed those limits but does not seek to overthrow the existing social order.
The connection to Geertz’s interpretive approach emerges clearly in Scott’s (1985, p. 45) discussion of “the experience and consciousness of human agents” in the context of his study on peasant resistance in Malaysia. “…[T]he study of class relations in Sedaka, as elsewhere, must of necessity be as much a study of meaning and experience as it is of behavior considered narrowly. No other procedure is possible inasmuch as behavior is never self-explanatory. … Only a knowledge of the culture, the shared understandings, of the actor and his or her observers and confederates can begin to tell us [about the meanings associated with behavior].” Wuthnow (1987) provides an excellent discussion on different approaches to cultural analysis.
Smith’s (1995) analysis on the unintended impacts of development aid funding in the context of traditional gift economies among Amazonian indigenous groups illustrates how logics of action collide in practice. Whereas traditional gift exchanges promote reciprocity and distribution of material assets (non-accumulation of wealth), development aid grants are presented as charitable gifts requiring no significant reciprocity. Smith thus terms charitable giving “the gift that wounds” because it contributes to the deterioration of the moral order of things in indigenous societies.
My point resembles Scott’s (1998) discussion in Seeing Like a State in which he argues that state projects fail, in part, because technocrats denigrate and ignore locally-derived practical knowledge (mētis).
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Acknowledgements
Different pieces of this work were presented at the annual meetings of the Society for Policy Sciences in 2001, 2003, and 2005. A later version was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology on June 25, 2006 in San Jose, CA. Thanks to session participants for comments and discussion. Thanks also to Rich Wallace, Susan Clark, David Mattson, Murray Rutherford, Jesse Ribot, Joel Wainwright, Charlie Benjamin, Michael Hathaway, Steve Brechin, Tom Perreault, Tony Bebbington, Arun Agrawal, David Bray, Raúl Murguia, Hugo Galletti, Natalia Armijo, René Förster, Alfonso Argüelles, and the journal’s anonymous reviewer. I also extend my sincere appreciation to numerous community and government representatives in Quintana Roo, who remain anonymous given the article’s subject matter. The project from which this work draws was financed by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, a Fulbright-Garcia Robles grant, an Inter-American Foundation fellowship as well as subsequent travel grants from Bucknell University.
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Wilshusen, P.R. Social process as everyday practice: the micro politics of community-based conservation and development in southeastern Mexico. Policy Sci 42, 137–162 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-008-9067-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-008-9067-x