Description
Book SynopsisTells the story of biodiversity conservation in Indonesia in the decade culminating in the great fires of 1997-98 - a time when the country's environment became a point of concern for environmental activists, and the fishermen and farmers nationwide who suffered from degraded environments and faced accusations that they were destroying nature.
Trade Review"
Wild Profusion is a beautifully crafted ethnography of natures in the making in the Togean Islands of Indonesia. Through lively prose and a brilliantly executed analytics of power, Lowe takes the reader into the complex world of biodiversity conservation in action. Along the way, we meet Indonesian scientists who promote national development projects and negotiate their relations to Euro-American conservation experts, Togean subjects who struggle to assert their own place in the landscape of biodiversity knowledge, and all of the flora and fauna brought to stunning visibility in the dream world of a national park. Lowe also provides us with a bold philosophical meditation on questions of universalism and the particular, the natural and the social, the nation and the colony. Wild Profusion will quickly emerge as a classic text in the new ethnography of conservation science and contested environmentalisms."
—Ralph Litzinger, Duke University"This is an extraordinary book: both eloquent and elegantly argued. It presents a clear and compelling argument about 'reason' at the boundaries of the West, and striking portraits of scientists and lay people working at this boundary."
—Anna L. Tsing, University of California, Santa Cruz, author of Friction and In the Realm of the Diamond QueenTable of ContentsPreface vii Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations xvii INTRODUCTION: Between the Human and the Wild Profusion 1 PART ONE: Diversity as Milieu 27 CHAPTER ONE: Making the Monkey 33 CHAPTER TWO: The Social Turn 53 PART TWO: Togean Cosmopolitics 75 CHAPTER THREE: Extraterrestrial Others 81 CHAPTER FOUR: On the (Bio)logics of Species and Bodies 106 PART THREE: Integrating Conservation and Development 129 CHAPTER FIVE: Fishing with Cyanide 135 CHAPTER SIX: The Sleep of Reason 154 Appendix: Scientific, Military, and Commercial Explorations in the Togean Islands and Vicinity: 1680-1999 167 Notes 171 References 181 Index 193
