Studying Across: Anthropology, Conflict Transformation and Cultural Violence in Environmental Conflict

Abstract

Using the example of the controversial Site C dam in British Columbia, Canada, this article describes how ethnographic research that incorporated a conflict transformation perspective and included individuals from both sides of the issue highlighted both contrasting views on human-environment relations and the inequitable conditions under which they met through the Environmental Assessment process. The article argues that an anthropological approach that incorporates a conflict transformation perspective is particularly well-suited to identify, and potentially to address, the “discourses, narratives, and worldviews” (Rodriguez and Inturias 2018: 96) that operate as “cultural violence” (Galtung, 1990) in state-Indigenous environmental conflicts, legitimating structural and environmental violence.