“Objects of Inquiry?”: Everyday Conservation, Positivist Science, and the Social Dynamics of Power

This article reflects on ethnographic encounters and vignettes through the lens of lived experience to explore the intersections of everyday conservation and the social dynamics of power in India. Based on long-term community-centred engagement with the depth and breadth of the field I observe that the discipline’s foundational legacies in positivist framings of scientific objectivity and neutrality remain deeply entrenched in everyday practice. This language is either adopted uncritically or strategically by various conservation actors to legitimise their authority. Building on critical scholarship, I ask; if conservation practice is acknowledged as subjective and objectivity is recognised as historically contingent, why does a seemingly timeless notion of scientific objectivity remain hegemonic, not only at the macro- but also micro-levels of practice? Rather than delegitimising the role of the sciences I propose a rebalancing act to foreground the social embeddedness of everyday conservation. I suggest that overlooking the depth of our entanglements with broader social-political structures heightens the vulnerabilities of conservation actors on-ground. In so doing, the article contributes to debates on structural entanglements of everyday conservation, challenges overly simplistic understandings and contributes methodologically by bringing together narratives from the everyday worlds of practice, research and teaching as a longitudinal study.