Unsustainability in action: An ethnographic examination

• Main Authors: RANDLE, Sayd, BAKER, Lauren, CLAUS, C. Anne, HEBDON, Chris, KELEMAN, Alder, DOVE, Michael R.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: unsustainability; power relations; political economies; indigenous peoples; extractive industries; development model; corporate interests; local ownership; territories; conservationists; coral festival; Okinawa; mainland Japan; environmental awareness; subvert; reinforce; extra-local power dynamics; assumed temporality; swidden agriculture; German renewable energy policy; childhood malnutrition; Bolivia; environmental futures; economic futures; Anthropology; Environmental Policy
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/100; https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315768946-14
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This chapter presents a pair of case studies that illustrate ways in which claims about unsustainability function to either challenge or reproduce current power relations and political economies. In Peru, indigenous peoples point to the unsustainability of extractive industries and other state-sponsored projects in order to reinforce indigenous claims to resources and territories and to confront a development model that favors corporate interests over local ownership. In Okinawa, conservationists from mainland Japan criticize a coral festival as an unsustainable ritual, citing it as evidence of the lack of Okinawan environmental awareness—despite the fact that mainland Japanese are the main festival participants. In these cases, the charge of "unsustainability" is leveled to either subvert or reinforce local/extra-local power dynamics. The chapter develops an account of unsustainability's assumed temporality. The examinations of swidden agriculture, German renewable energy policy, and childhood malnutrition in Bolivia trace the diversity of environmental and economic futures that can fit within rhetorics of "unsustainability".