The Politics of Visibility in Community-based Conservation: Insights from a Village Forest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

Conservation organisations play a key role in portraying rural people and places to external audiences, driven by sectoral, political, and technological developments. While aiming to improve social and ecological outcomes, these policies and practices have been criticised for oversimplifying local realities to make them legible, ultimately exacerbating social inequality. However, critiques of legibility often focus on how conservation represents places to outsiders, neglecting the local power dynamics entangled with these representations. This paper shows how conservationist representations are co-produced by and, to varying extents, become visible to local communities. Through ethnographic engagement with the Manjau Village Forest in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, I elaborate on a political understanding of visibility. The politics of visibility is not just an imposition but the product of collaboration and contestation between local and external actors. As such, critiques of visibility can help illustrate the ambivalent relationships that exist between conservation and local communities, clarifying the micro-political risks and opportunities associated with community-based conservation.