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ASQUEZ RUNK
Social and River Networks for the Trees:
Wounaans Riverine Rhizomic Cosmos
and Arboreal Conservation
ABSTRACT The effects of environmental conservation and development are of signicant anthropological interest. Recent focus on
the politics of knowledge and translation has shown the importance of cosmology in conservation encounters. I examine how Wounaan
indigenous peoples and extralocal conservation practitioners translate eastern Panama based on their own cosmologies.
1
Specically,
I explore how Wounaans social and river-networked rhizomic cosmos is overlooked in the practice of forest-focused conservation. This
results from Panamas environmental history, in which actors simplied early representations of a complex landscape to one characterized
by forests, as well as a Western bias toward forests with scant attention paid to cosmology. Finally, I note how Wounaan negotiate this
cultural disconnect by emphasizing their ties to forests. In so doing, they buttress the arboreal bias, in turn reinforcing power relations,
but also giving themselves political leverage in conservation activities. These results inform recent discussion about politics and scientic
praxis in conservation. [Keywords: politics of knowledge, conservation, Wounaan, rivers, forests]
ABSTRACT Los efectos de la conservaci on ambiental y el desarrollo son de inter es antropol ogico signicativo.
Enfasis reciente
en la poltica del conocimiento y de la traducci on ha demostrado la importancia de la cosmologa en la conservaci on. Se examina
como los indgenas Wounaan y los practicantes de conservaci on extra-locales traducen Panam a oriental basados en sus cosmologas.
Especcamente se explora como la pr actica de conservaci on enfocada en bosques ignora el cosmos de redes sociales y uviales de los
Wounaan. Esto es resultado de la historia ambiental de Panam a en la que los actores simplicaron un paisaje complejo, as como un
sesgo occidental por bosques en conservaci on con escasa atenci on a la cosmologa. Se nota como Wounaan negocian esta desconexi on
cultural enfatizando los bosques. En este proceso refuerzan el sesgo arb oreo y relaciones de poder, ayud andoles obtener reconocimiento
poltico en conservaci on. Estos resultados reportan sobre la poltica y la practica cientca en la conservaci on.
O
VER THE LAST two decades, anthropologists, ge-
ographers, and others have increasingly examined
the ideologies and practices of environmental conservation
and development. This rich political ecology literature has
turned a poststructural gaze toward conservation and devel-
opment practice, interrogating the privileging of modernist
science (Goldman 2003); the separation of culture and
nature (Tsing 2005); representations of community, land-
scapes, and participation (Brosius et al. 1998; Fairhead and
Leach 1996); the assumption of development with conser-
vation (Tiedje 2008; West 2006); and the roles of politics in
governmental and nongovernmental conservation efforts
(Sundberg 1998), among others. A number of authors have
noted how local communities articulate with, rather than
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 111, Issue 4, pp. 456467, ISSN 0002-7294 online ISSN 1548-1433. C
2009 by the American Anthropological Association.
All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01155.x
simply respond to, conservation efforts (Li 1996; Moore
2000; Tsing 2005).
Recent literature also examines the politics of knowl-
edge and translation between local peoples and conserva-
tionists. Rather than focusing on the discourse of extralocal
conservation, as does much political ecology work, these
authors demonstrate how environments are materially and
symbolically created (West 2006; Zerner 2003). Paige West
(2005) attributes the lack of attention to mutually mate-
rial and symbolic environments as the result of profession-
als perceptions of environments as resources (to be used)
or knowledges (to be acted on). For example, when con-
servation efforts have considered local peoples, they of-
ten reduce environmental relationships to resources, such
Vel asquez Runk Social and River Networks for the Trees 457
as medicinal plants or nontimber forest products, or
knowledges, such as toponyms or sacred landscapes. West
(2005:633) has cautioned that environmental anthropolo-
gists need to carefully consider how we allow fundamen-
tally Western concepts and modes of explanation to domi-
nate practices of translation. In 2006, Michael Dove noted
that the lack of critical attention to the cross-cultural trans-
lation and interpretation of the concept of conservation
was a glaring lacuna in the published work on environmen-
tal conservation and indigenous peoples.
A number of authors have begun to address this void
by examining how indigenous cosmologies are overlooked
in the translation and practice of extralocal conservation.
2
Batak (Novellino 2003) and Manobo (Gatmaytan 2005)
peoples in the Philippines, Gimi in Papua New Guinea
(West 2005), Meratu in Indonesia (Tsing 2005), Nayaka in
India (Bird-David and Naveh 2008), Huastec Nahua in Mex-
ico (Tiedje 2008), and Sherpas in Nepal (Obadia 2008) all
conceptualize the environment and cosmos in terms of di-
alectical social relationships among humans, nonhumans,
and the physical environment. However, in each of these
cases, extralocal conservation efforts overlook the role of
these social relationships in the practice of conservation
that is oriented toward external economic markets (Tiedje
2008; West 2005), ideas of property and land titling (Gat-
maytan2005; Novellino 2003), conceptions of material pol-
lution and ecological transformation (Obadia 2008), and
biodiversity (Bird-David and Naveh 2008; Tsing 2005; West
2006). Dario Novellino (2003) and West (2005) argue that,
by not studying cosmologies, conservationists make generic
cultural issues as they relate to conservation, which, as Nov-
ellino further warns, eases a global conservation discourse.
Kristina Tiedje (2008) and Lionel Obadia (2008) also note,
as I also do below, that while conservationists may not ac-
knowledge the worldview of local communities, local com-
munities may indeed acknowledge the cosmology of con-
servationists by incorporating these extralocal ideas into
discourse and myths.
My interest in conservation and cosmology began
when I was working in eastern Panama on a conservation
and development project in late 1996. Charged with study-
ing the ecology and socioeconomics of three nontimber
forest products that Wounaan and Ember a indigenous peo-
ple use to make art, I inquired a bit about cosmology of
the two groups. I was told by other practitioners and social
scientists that it was based on a tree of life and that this
was the reason that the groups were forest conservators.
Several years later, when I was beginning ethnographic re-
search with Wounaan, I learned that there is indeed a tree
prominent in their origin myth. However, that mythol-
ogy is much more complex, with Wounaan felling the tree
to create rivers, as well as establishing their connections
with people, plants, animals, and the greater cosmos in the
process.
In this article, I examine how Wounaan indigenous
peoples and extralocal conservation practitioners translate
the same landscape of eastern Panama based on their own
cosmologies. To do this, I draw on Gilles Deleuze and F elix
Guattaris (2007) work contrasting the linear bifurcations
of decontextualizing arborescent imagery, as exemplied in
this case by forests, with that of interconnecting, dynamic
rhizomes, as exemplied by social relationships and rivers.
Based on 13 years of work in eastern Panama, over half of
which is ethnographic research, I rst describe Wounaans
riverine cosmos.
3
Although Wounaan, like the aforemen-
tioned groups, also perceive the cosmos as a dynamic world
of social relationships with humans, animals, plants, spirits,
and bestial inhabitants, they view rivers as important and
dynamic organizing features of the cosmos. Rivers are rhi-
zomic networking elements of their worldview, connecting
forests, oceans, and other environments, as well as differen-
tial distributions of human and nonhuman beings that are
mapped onto them. Next I illustrate how the environmen-
tal history of eastern Panama has changed the representa-
tion of the region over timefrom one in which landscape
complexity was embraced to one simplied to the dichoto-
mous representation of forested versus nonforested areas.
I then indicate how conservation practitioners build on
this representation, as well as on their own tree-centric cos-
mology, to characterize the same material environment in
terms of trees and forests and suggest how this affects con-
servation praxis in eastern Panama. Finally, I conclude by
noting how Wounaan have emphasized their ties to trees
and forests, thereby further marginalizing rivers and rhi-
zomic ideals of landscape. This perpetuates conservation-
ists emphasis on trees and yet also garners Wounaan lever-
age in the regions conservation.
PANAMA AND WOUNAAN
Much of eastern Panamas lowland moist tropical environ-
ment is considered part of the Dari enChoc o biogeographic
region that extends to northern Ecuador and is character-
ized by oral and faunal assemblages of North and South
American origin (Brooks et al. 2002; Gentry 1986). Lowland
eastern Panama has a distinct dry season from December to
April with annual rainfall at 2,0003,500 millimeters and
temperatures averaging 27