Contested Ecologies: Dialogues in the South on Nature and Knowledge

Focusing on moments in which contests over ecology become moments for rethinking the ecology of knowledge, the papers in this volume engage contests over nature in a settings ranging from urban South Africa to the Peruvian Andes; from the Benguela ecosystem fisheries to northern Australia.
Setting leading scholars from across the south in dialogue with emerging researchers, the book sets up a rich dialogue in the south on the anthropology of the knowledge, organised as three parts, each of which offers an intervention in current dialogues on ecology, nature and the idea of the environment. The first intervention explores political ontology: the idea that the world comprises 'nature' and 'culture'. The second pursues the differences in accounts of space, time and what it means to be alive.  The third considers  the complexities of the relationship between governance, science, and publics.

Contents
 Foreword - Crain Soudien
1 Contested ecologies: Nature and knowledge - Lesley Green
a first intervention: 'nature' versus 'culture'
2 Notes towards a political ontology of 'environmental' conflicts - Mario Blaser
3 Economic development and cosmopolitical re-involvement: From necessity to sufficiency - Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
4 On animism, modernity/colonialism, and the African order of knowledge: Provisional reflections - Harry Garuba
a second intervention: space, time, life
5 About 'Mariano's Archive': Ecologies of stories - Marisol de la Cadena
6 The day-world hawkri and its topologies: On Palikur alternatives to the idea of space - Lesley Green
7 Cultivating krag, refreshing gees: Ecologies of wellbeing in Namaqualand - Joshua B. Cohen
8 Are petitioners makers of rain? Rains, worlds and survival in conflict-torn Buhera, Zimbabwe - Artwell Nhemachena
9 Metaphors for climate adaptation from Zimbabwe: Zephaniah Phiri Maseko and the marriage of water and soil - Christopher Mabeza
a third intervention: sciences and publics
10 Engagements between disparate knowledge traditions: Toward doing difference generatively and in good faith - Helen Verran
11 The making of Sutherlandia as medicine - Diana Gibson and Sanjay Killian
12 Conservation conversations: Improving the dialogue between fishers and fisheries science along the Benguela Coast - Tarryn-Anne Anderson, Kelsey Draper, Greg Duggan, Lesley Green, Astrid Jarre, Jennifer Rogerson, Sven Ragaller and Marieke van Zyl
13 Cape Flats Nature: Rethinking urban ecologies - Tania Katzschner
14 Spotting the leopard: Fieldwork, science and leopard behaviour - Ian Glenn
15 Contesting ecological collapse: Rapa Nui, the island at the end of the world - David Turnbull
Closing remarks from the Contested Ecologies Workshop, September 2011 - Eduardo Viveiros de Castro