Governmentality as Epistemology

History, scale and the political ecology of ethical diamonds in Kugluktuk, Nunavut

“…Some have argued that focusing too much on scale potentially reifies hierarchies of power that such an analysis is meant to critique (Marston et al 2005;Pain 2009). Ettlinger (2011) argues, however, that a scalar analysis does not necessarily reify a top-down organization of scale, and because power operates at multiple scales simultaneously (as demonstrated by Foucault 2003), it can help highlight the sources and the targets of power. It can, for example, help connect the long term change lamented by Samantha, James and Dustin in Kugluktuk with the signification of the ethical self through consumption (of the diamonds) in distant markets.…”

“…I believe that a more persuasive argument is provided by Bridge (2008), who contends that most analyses of resource-related social struggles or uneven development should be situated within a Global Production Network (GPN) and not at the level of the nation state. Relating the background of the relationship between the global diamond industry and state power can help illuminate the matrices of power through which the risks, benefits and cultural change come to be in the first place (Ettlinger 2011). It is these to which Ben and Katrina offer their assessments.…”

Oral histories as a baseline of landscape restoration – Co-management and watershed knowledge in Jukajoki River

“…In another narrative a male subsistence fisherman in his 60s linked governance (Ettlinger 2011) to the responsibility that both society and the local communities have: "Around the lake there are several villages and joint management would presuppose good and clear cooperation between these communities… perhaps if there was a joint cooperative body to which representatives of different villages would be chosen to…I do not know what such governance would mean to us if it became…but at least it would mean that this [cooperative body] would collect information and observations about the lake and would see a range of uses and values for the lake…A joint land ownership…what would be the economic building blocks for such a thing or to a governance…It is a process we ought to consider and think about. But all in all the future of the lake depends on funds from society at large to repair this lake, because those that have caused all of this remain active in the watershed and society has received funds through their activities, such as through forestry…A joint responsibility should be clear in the sense that the impacts are taken care of too, all of what they have caused.…”

“…They are constantly changing and they are multidimensional, cross-scale social-political units. In terms of investigations of time-space, they may contain and produce non-Euclidean narratives of a place (Massey 2005(Massey , 2009Luotonen 2006;Mustonen 2009;Ettlinger 2011). Carlsson and Berkes (2005: 66−67) interpret comanagement as a continuum from the simple exchange of information to formal partnership.…”

“…( From this set of definitions we can say that comanagement is therefore an approach to governance. It is a form of governance that, if properly designed, addresses the concerns identified by Ettlinger (2011) andFoucault (2005) with the notions of governance, governmentality and (ab)uses 9 of power. Carlsson and Berkes (2005: 65) identify that "communities" and "the State" have many faces.…”