Sexuality and the Development Industry: Reflections Six Years On

Abstract

We all live in emergent ecologies—complex assemblages of plants, animals, people, physical landscape features, and technologies—created through the habit-forming practices of connection in everyday life. We both in-habit and co-create these ecologies of home, often without being able to " see " them clearly. We live in networks of the sort defi ned by Bruno Latour (2005) as in the assemblages above, yet we are also rooted in specifi c territories and geographic locations, often several simultaneously and in series. We are both denizens and artisans of the hybrid geographies described by Sarah Whatmore (2002). Human beings are likewise entangled in several related formulations of contemporary nature/culture (Braun and Castree 1998), described variously as meshworks (Escobar 2001, 2004, 2008), rhizomes (Deleuze and Guattari 1987), the network society (Castells 2000), relational places (Massey 1994), complex ecologies (Botkin 1989; Haila and Dyke 2006), and generic models of networks and complexity (Barabasi 2002; Kauffman 2000). Using selected tools from political ecology, science and technology studies (STS), human geography, ecological science, and complexity theory, we can learn to recognize and to re-imagine these everyday ecologies of home, as seen from the multiple standpoints of complex actors. We also need a prism that refl ects the combined light and patterns of " social " and " biotic " life, in a way that helps us to get beyond the nature/culture binaries that suffuse our thinking. While we inhabit our own everyday ecologies, sometimes we can see the out-lines of structure and function more clearly in " the fi eld, " that is, someone else's home, workplace, and habitat. The experience and insights of people in the Rural People's Federation of Zambrana-Chacuey in the Dominican Republic played a major role in my own formulation of network metaphors and models applied to social movements, biodiversity, and landscapes. Along with three research col-leagues and several Federation members, I documented and analyzed the process and results of the collaboration between this representative people's organiza-tion and an NGO as they advocated sustainable farm forestry and social justice. By the end of the fi rst study, I was seeing multiple. My own vision was refocused dianne rocheleau rooted networks, webs of relation, and the power of situated science bringing the models back down to earth in zambrana 11 210 | dianne rocheleau through the everyday experience, the perspectives, and the data provided by mul-tiple Federation actors, as well as my immersion in the rich, diverse ecologies of their networked lives and landscapes. In this chapter I make the case for a model of rooted networks, to encompass the complexity of viable, mixed forest and agrarian ecologies. After an overview I summarize several network concepts and models developed in political ecol-ogy, STS, geography, and complexity theory and outline an expanded network approach. A return to the fi eld in Zambrana illustrates selected elements of this synthesis and demonstrates the practical origins and applications of rooted net-works in political ecology, STS, and conservation ecology. the challenge of zambrana In October 1992 I joined with three colleagues to conduct a four-month study on a farm forestry project in the rolling hills south of Cotuí in the center of the Domin-ican Republic. 1 The Rural People's Federation of Zambrana-Chacuey (a regional grassroots organization formed during the land struggle of the 1970s and 1980s) and ENDA-Caribe (Environment Development Alternatives Caribbean, a regional branch of an international nongovernmental organization) were collaborating on several joint efforts. 2 The Forest Enterprise Project promoted planting of Acacia mangium trees for timber as a lucrative cash crop on smallholder farms (Geilfus 1995). ENDA had negotiated with the National Forest Service, a division of the army (Dirrección General Forestal) to secure permission for legal cutting of this species with special permits from the project. National laws otherwise prohibited the felling of trees, even planted trees on private property. The Federation and ENDA were in the process of constructing a cooperative sawmill with external funding support. The Federation as a whole had embraced the project and sup-ported the formation of a spin-off subsidiary group, the Wood Producers Associa-tion, a rising economic and political force within the Federation and the region. Our agenda was to document this case as a model of community-based forestry, and to analyze the interaction of this initiative with gender and class relations in landscapes, livelihoods, and organizations across scales. We grounded our study in the region, the landscape, the Federation, its mem-bers (men and women), their households, and the connections between them. The Federation formed the base for our research on social and ecological dynam-ics of farm forestry, and was the focus of our systematic, random, and network samples for social and ecological surveys, oral histories, and participant obser-vation in 1992/93, 3 1996, 1997, 2005, and 2007. Throughout the course of these activities, we encountered braided strands of social and ecological history that