Doing social science with conservation: co-reflexivity on the project model in conservation VIO LA SCHREER * † 1 ,PAUL THUNG † 1 ,SCOTT FREEMAN2
NAMRAT A B ILIGERI ANIRUDH3 ,GAIL CAMPBELL -S MI T H 4 CRISTINA EGHENTER5 and S TEPHANIE S PEHAR 6
Abstract The conservation sector increasingly values re- flexivity, in which professionals critically reflect on the so- cial, institutional and political aspects of their work. Reflexivity offers diverse benefits, from enhancing individ- ual performance to driving institutional transformation. However, integrating reflexivity into conservation practice remains challenging and is often confined to informal re- flections with limited impact. To overcome this challenge, we introduce co-reflexivity, offering an alternative to the binary distinction between social science on or for conserva- tion, which respectively produce critical outsider accounts of conservation or provide social science instruments for achieving conservation objectives. Instead, co-reflexivity is a form of social science with conservation, in which conser- vation professionals and social scientists jointly develop critical yet constructive perspectives on and approaches to conservation. We demonstrate the value of co-reflexivity by presenting a set of reflections on the project model, the dominant framework for conservation funding, which orga- nizes conservation activity into distinct, target-oriented and temporally bounded units that can be funded, implemented and evaluated separately. Co-reflexivity helps reveal the di- verse challenges that the project model creates for conserva- tion practice, including for the adoption of reflexivity itself. Putting insights from social science research in dialogue with reflections from conservation professionals, we co-pro- duce a critique of project-based conservation with both the- oretical and practical implications. These cross-disciplinary conversations provide a case study of how co-reflexivity can enhance the conservation–social science relationship.
Keywords Alienation, biodiversity conservation, co-reflex- ivity, conservation social science, NGOs, project, project- based conservation, reflexivity
*Corresponding author,
viola.schreer@
brunel.ac.uk †Contributed equally 1Department of Social and Political Sciences (Anthropology), Brunel University
London, London, UK 2School of International Service, American University,Washington, DC, USA 3Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Universitas Indonesia, Depok,
Indonesia 4Yayasan Inisiasi AlamRehabilitasi (IAR) Indonesia, Bogor,West Java, Indonesia 5WWF International, Gland, Switzerland 6University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA
Received 2 November 2023. Revision requested 24 January 2024. Accepted 16 April 2024. First published online 15 October 2024.
Introduction
‘The problem is that the international directors write the proposals, but they don’t know [the field]. They never involve any of the [local] man- agers. And then the donors come and the directors are not here. .. . The directors have crazy ideas and dreams, and I have to solve it on the ground.’ (Deni, an Indonesian conservation project manager, 8 April 2019)
tivated practice of critical reflection by conservation professionals on the social, institutional and political condi- tions of their work (Montana et al., 2020; Wyborn et al., 2021; Pienkowski et al., 2023). The anticipated benefits of re- flexivity aremanifold, such as enabling conservation profes- sionals, both scientists and practitioners, ‘to cope with complexities in the field, facilitate institutional change, drive innovation, work effectively in teams, learn from past events, or benefit from the experiences of other scien- tists’ (Beck et al., 2021,p. 2). Reflexivity can help conserva- tion professionals improve impact through more innovative and inclusive approaches (Boyce et al., 2022) and lead pro- fessionals to challenge existing objectives, especially where they conflict with social justice concerns (Borie et al., 2020). In response to the increasing calls for incorporating re-
T
flexivity in conservation (Swart et al., 2018; Kelley & Dietl, 2022; Koot et al., 2023), scholars have been trying to map out its different forms. For example, Beck et al. (2021) iden- tified four tenets for reflexivity in conservation science that are also relevant for practitioners: looking inward to the scientist’s personal values, looking outward to collaborative partnerships, looking back to the history of conservation science and looking forward to the discipline’s desired im- pact. Similarly, Pienkowski et al. (2023,p. 1) identified six different themes that practitioners typically address in pro- cesses of reflexivity: ‘values, emotional struggles, social iden- tities, training, cultural backgrounds, and experiences of success and failure’. Although qualitative conservation social scientists have
already started to reflect in their writings on how their positionality, values and perspectives have impacted their research design and relationships (Bennett et al., 2017; Moon et al., 2019; Montana et al., 2020; Beck et al., 2021; Staddon et al., 2021), in conservation practice it has re- mained challenging to institutionalize reflexivity (Boyce et al., 2022; Pienkowski et al., 2023). Amongst practitioners, there are many examples of informal reflexivity, as
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. Oryx, 2025, 59(1), 81–90 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605324000747
he biodiversity conservation sector increasingly em- braces the concept of reflexivity, which involves a cul-
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