276 Reia Anquet and Fabien Girard
do, namely that they invade the political imagination and make local “subjects”
pursue “goals that they imagine as their own” (Agrawal, 2005a, p. 179).
Four scripts were identified through the corpus of BCPs studied. We
believe that they can all be related somehow to the “all-encompassing modernity” (or the naturalist ontological matrix) – and its series of foundational
and oppositional pairs: nature/culture, non-humans/humans, non-moderns/
moderns, objects/subjects, past/present (Blaser, 2013). Two of the scripts are
present-day scripts, and the “steward of biodiversity” script is relied upon in
all the BCPs under consideration. The other two scripts, those of the past,
are mostly inherited from colonial occupation. These scenarios still have a
bearing on development projects and environmental politics in several countries. Some of our case study BCPs illustrate this, though they are not used to
defend IPLCs’ claims.
In light of this, we first investigate what BCPs tell us of the kind of scripts,
relations of power, and the specific eco-governmentality that IPLCs face in the
international regime for biodiversity. Suppose scripts can “define actors” (Akrich,
1992, p. 207), allocate roles and tasks, and enrol and “enscript”. In that case, this
begs the question of the extent to which BCPs, despite all good intentions and
promises, are deployed in domestic politics or international fora as a means to
replace political negotiation with managerial efficiency (Brosius, 1999). Our second line of enquiry is that environmental policies and their scripts should not be
seen as unrelenting machinery operating seamlessly on the undifferentiated mass
of local actors. Supporting this argument is taking the risk of “ignoring the social
relations through which technologies of control are formed, exercised, contested,
and critiqued” (Cepek, 2011, pp. 544–545; also see Valdivia, 2015, p. 474; Peet
& Watts, 1996, p. 16).
This is especially true of the “steward of biodiversity” script, a dominant
script, which certainly has much to do with the “noble ecological savage” myth
(Raymond, 2007; Redford, 1991), but which also distinctively hinges upon a
new ethic capable of sustaining new representations and counter-discourses and
thereby of creating cracks in the European-centred matrix. As we are reminded
by Mario Blaser (2013, p. 558) and Sylvie Poirier (Poirier, 2008, p. 83),
12 indigenous peoples may at times outwardly indulge themselves in modern naturalist
categories and use available “symbols of alterity” (e.g. the steward and caretaker
of the environment), while making in fact great inroads into the nature-culture
divide and opening the “door to the consideration of other ontologies as plausible and alternatives to the modern” ones (Blaser, 2013, p. 556). This opens our
last line of thought, namely that as offshoots of the biocultural jurisprudence
and the concept of “biocultural diversity” (in its political articulation: Brosius &
Hitchner, 2010), and against the backdrop of ongoing legal innovations around
“natural entities” and IPLCs’ territories and heritage, BCPs have the potential
to make room for “non-modern” worlds. In particular, through a strategic partnership with academics and civil society organisations and via the support of
transnational networks, community protocols may contribute to unravelling the
do, namely that they invade the political imagination and make local “subjects”
pursue “goals that they imagine as their own” (Agrawal, 2005a, p. 179).
Four scripts were identified through the corpus of BCPs studied. We
believe that they can all be related somehow to the “all-encompassing modernity” (or the naturalist ontological matrix) – and its series of foundational
and oppositional pairs: nature/culture, non-humans/humans, non-moderns/
moderns, objects/subjects, past/present (Blaser, 2013). Two of the scripts are
present-day scripts, and the “steward of biodiversity” script is relied upon in
all the BCPs under consideration. The other two scripts, those of the past,
are mostly inherited from colonial occupation. These scenarios still have a
bearing on development projects and environmental politics in several countries. Some of our case study BCPs illustrate this, though they are not used to
defend IPLCs’ claims.
In light of this, we first investigate what BCPs tell us of the kind of scripts,
relations of power, and the specific eco-governmentality that IPLCs face in the
international regime for biodiversity. Suppose scripts can “define actors” (Akrich,
1992, p. 207), allocate roles and tasks, and enrol and “enscript”. In that case, this
begs the question of the extent to which BCPs, despite all good intentions and
promises, are deployed in domestic politics or international fora as a means to
replace political negotiation with managerial efficiency (Brosius, 1999). Our second line of enquiry is that environmental policies and their scripts should not be
seen as unrelenting machinery operating seamlessly on the undifferentiated mass
of local actors. Supporting this argument is taking the risk of “ignoring the social
relations through which technologies of control are formed, exercised, contested,
and critiqued” (Cepek, 2011, pp. 544–545; also see Valdivia, 2015, p. 474; Peet
& Watts, 1996, p. 16).
This is especially true of the “steward of biodiversity” script, a dominant
script, which certainly has much to do with the “noble ecological savage” myth
(Raymond, 2007; Redford, 1991), but which also distinctively hinges upon a
new ethic capable of sustaining new representations and counter-discourses and
thereby of creating cracks in the European-centred matrix. As we are reminded
by Mario Blaser (2013, p. 558) and Sylvie Poirier (Poirier, 2008, p. 83),
12 indigenous peoples may at times outwardly indulge themselves in modern naturalist
categories and use available “symbols of alterity” (e.g. the steward and caretaker
of the environment), while making in fact great inroads into the nature-culture
divide and opening the “door to the consideration of other ontologies as plausible and alternatives to the modern” ones (Blaser, 2013, p. 556). This opens our
last line of thought, namely that as offshoots of the biocultural jurisprudence
and the concept of “biocultural diversity” (in its political articulation: Brosius &
Hitchner, 2010), and against the backdrop of ongoing legal innovations around
“natural entities” and IPLCs’ territories and heritage, BCPs have the potential
to make room for “non-modern” worlds. In particular, through a strategic partnership with academics and civil society organisations and via the support of
transnational networks, community protocols may contribute to unravelling the