Doing social science with conservation 83
FIG. 1 Schematic representation of three social science–conservation relations. (a) Social science on conservation: social science engages with conservation without aligning its interests, leading to important but confrontational critiques. (b) Social science for conservation: social science is embedded in and directly contributes to conservation practice but loses its critical potential. (c) Social science with conservation: social scientists work with conservation practitioners to investigate questions of shared interest and co-produce critique.
Conference in 2021. Through four online group meetings over 15 months and ongoing co-writing facilitated by VS and PT, we created ‘safe spaces’ that were ‘temporarily re- moved from funding obligations, media and public scrutiny, and other pressures’ (Chua et al., 2020,p. 54) to collectively reflect on the project model, read and comment on each other’s work, analyse our experiences and decide what (not) to write. Thinking from and across our different sub- ject positions as conservation practitioners (PT, BA, GC-S, CE), conservation scientists (BA, GC-S, SS) and social scien- tists (VS, PT, SF, CE) helped us to identify various chal- lenges and pitfalls of project-based conservation. Many of us have spanned multiple roles at various times, which helped us in this process. None of the co-authors originate from the countries we write about. Although we invited researchers and practitioners from these countries to par- ticipate, their inability to do so reflects the continuing in- equalities of international academia. We integrate three sources of data. The first is a set of
personal reflections by conservation practitioners on the project model’s institutional constraints. These autoethno- graphic accounts stem from research and work experiences and highlight the informal reflexive processes that already occur in conservation. Those of us who are conservation practitioners and conservation scientists have each been in- volved in project-based conservation for between 1 and 25 years. Secondly, we draw on social scientific research con- ducted by VS, PT and SF on conservation projects in Indonesia and Haiti. This ethnographic fieldwork included participant observation and interviews and spanned 37 months during 2011–2021. To avoid harming our organiza- tions and interlocutors, we have anonymized exact research locations, projects and organizations and use gender- neutral pronouns. Thirdly, we refer to the social science
literature on project-based conservation and development practice to connect and contextualize our reflections and empirical insights. We bring these different materials together in three ex-
amples (Table 1) to support two principal arguments regard- ing reflexivity. Firstly, conservation practitioners already reflect on the broader power relationships that surround them and, secondly, these reflections are bolstered and find larger meaning through cross-disciplinary collabo- ration. Beyond benefitting our analysis, our engagement helped foster an ethos of empathy and understanding to- wards conservation professionals in the social scientists amongst us. Although initially aiming to advance critiques of project-based conservation, we realized the broader value of our approach, which we conceptualized as co-reflexivity.
Case description: the project model in conservation
Similar to the development and humanitarian sectors, con- servation donors tend to fund discrete sets of predefined activities rather than supporting governmental or organiza- tional budgets. Historically, results-based financing gained prominence as a way for donors to control the use of funds in contexts where they lacked trust in public institu- tions (Sayer &Wells, 2004). In a foundational step, Robert McNamara changed the procedures of the U.S. Department of Defense to link budgeting with planning in the 1960s, which partly spread across other USA federal agencies and the World Bank (Krause, 2014). Neoliberal economic rea- soning furthered critiques of direct budgetary support as funders sought to sidestep the perceived inefficiency of recipient governments and hold grantees accountable. These principles then moved into the aid and conservation sectors and had profound impacts (Milne, 2022).
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
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