Doing social science with conservation 85
satisfy bureaucratic requirements (cf. Freeman & Schuller, 2020). This has profound effects on the subjectivities of con- servation staff, as revealed by the following shared reflec- tions of two authors, who have both been working for conservation NGOs in Indonesia for over a decade.
The administrative structures of projects create distances between the people who design projects and those who implement them. The often local project implementers have little control over project design, which is determined mainly by office-based staff, often from other regions or countries, who write proposals and manage grants. This division of labour is useful for managing international project funds, which requires specific skills, such as report writing and English language expertise. A downside, however, is that project implementers can become alienated from their work, especially when projects don’t entirely make sense in the field. Instead ofworking creatively towards a shared goal,we have observed
that some colleagues seem merely interested in hitting their given tar- gets and are quick to leave organizations for better opportunities. Retaining staff is thus a challenge for organizations. On the other hand, project implementers complain about short-term contracts, low payment, insufficient budget, unrealistic goals and strict timelines. Often, they fail to see how their labour contributes to fulfilling their ideals. This can lead to a crisis of identity, where project implementers question their role, asking questions such as ‘What is my purpose here?’. Rather than blaming our colleagues, we sought to understand their
challenges.We suspected that internal divisions of labour within con- servation organizations can undermine local staff’s sense of ownership and lead to a lack of loyalty to the organization, a lack of understanding of project aims and a lack of unity, transparency and trust between staff. Therefore, one of us has been trying to close the gap between designers and implementers, by giving the latter more skills and op- portunities to contribute to project design and thereby setting the conditions for more meaningful work. (Professional observations of two conservation practitioners)
These reflections speak to emerging social science research into the identity positions of ‘the local-national profes- sionals at conservation’s heart’ (cf. Sundberg, 2004; Kiik, 2019,p. 410), their opinions on strategic and ethical ques- tions (Sandbrook et al., 2011; Palmer, 2020) and their ideological and practical motivations for engaging in conservation (cf. Cepek, 2011). These dynamics are not unique to conservation organizations. Research on other organizations confirms that organizational structures can alienate staff (Riles, 2007) and problematizes the lack of support received by the so-called implementariat (Peters, 2020) or eco-precariat (Neimark, 2023). Given their shared interests in how project structures and
their inherent power imbalances reshape conservation iden- tities and work ethics, there are opportunities for productive dialogue between conservation practitioners and social scientists. For one, the social science critiques of organiza- tional hierarchies can help legitimize attempts by conserva- tion workers to restructure organizations from the inside out. Social science, moreover, reminds us to consider the broader political, economic, social and environmental con- ditions faced by local conservation staff. Project implemen- ters often work in challenging physical environments, sometimes with dangerous animals (Münster, 2016; Parreñas, 2018) and often on low-paying and insecure con- tracts (Sodikoff, 2009). Frequently, they occupy an awkward
mediating position between the divergent expectations of international conservation, national politics and local com- munities (Lowe, 2013; Haenn, 2016; Chua et al., 2021). As Goodman (2020) has pointed out, field staff often value and are vitally dependent on personal relationships with project beneficiaries, shaping how they relate to their work. Finally, the supposed beneficiaries of aid projects are often also expected to perform labour to receive aid. The acknowledgement, support and compensation that these beneficiary-workers (Carruth & Freeman, 2021) re- ceive are even less adequate than those received by formally employed project implementers. These insights raise pertinent questions about how best
to respond to the alienation of project implementers. In the case above, the organization trained implementers in project design, which required them to learn manage- ment skills, take ownership of activities and budgets and understand their responsibilities to various stakeholders whilst ensuring that organizational goals and donor expec- tations were met. However, is it viable to expect all conser- vation professionals to commit to the conservation mission in the same way, or is it more realistic to acknowledge that people come to conservation with heterogeneous motiva- tions and obligations? Moreover, can the project model genuinely function without implementers, or are these divi- sions of labour an unavoidable aspect of what Sodikoff (2009, p. 444) referred to as conservation’s ‘institutional dependence on cheap agrarian labor’?Wider societal conditions point to the limits of redesigning organizational structures, suggesting the additional need for bothmoremodest strategies of prop- erly rewarding and protecting conservation labourers, and more radical societal transformations, such as promoting the conservation basic income and more democratic forms of landscape governance (cf. Büscher & Fletcher, 2020).
Example 2: Disjunctures between conservation and community
Many conservation projects rely on the support of local communities. However, conservation professionals often struggle to engage with community life, as the following autoethnographic account shows. The reflection stems from one of the authors, who has worked for 10 years as a biological researcher in Indonesia. Looking back on their re- lationship with the communities where they carried out their research, the anecdote reveals how project procedures can create a sense of disconnection from communities.
Back in 2005, funders had allotted money to study the local orangutan population. Simultaneously, there was funding to implement some educational and community development programming. But the 2-year timelines did not allow time to sit, listen and build up authentic relations with local people. Instead, I felt pressure to treat villages as stopover sites, in which to arrange everything for the ‘real work’ in the forest. On one such stopover, another conservation worker, who had been in the village a bit longer, got annoyed and said that I sent everything into disarray: ‘You just come in like a tornado.’ The
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
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140
