336 HUMAN ORGANIZATION
Human Organization, Vol. 72, No. 4, 2013
Copyright © 2013 by the Society for Applied Anthropology
0018-7259/13/040336-11$1.60/1
Introduction
T
erritorialization
1
has become a common strategy for
state and non-state organizations for the pursuit of
nature conservation goals (Vandergeest and Peluso
1995). By creating protected areas for conservation with
increasing dependence on external funding and involvement
of non-state organizations, this new form of state-making
is becoming prominent and widespread, particularly in the
developing world (Igoe and Brockington 2007). These initia-
tives frequently engage much lauded private enterprise busi-
ness and NGO partnerships for achieving objectives such as
sustainable conservation and ecosystem remediation.
The premise of protected areas is that the affected hu-
man communities and populations must turn into people
who agree with the value of conserving nature and becoming
sustainable resource users. In the view of the neoliberal ap-
Shio Segi is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and
Anthropology at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
He is also afiliated with the Department of Resource Management and
Geography, Melbourne School of Land and Environment, the University of
Melbourne. The research for this paper was undertaken with the support of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant # 410-2009-0234), and the
Australian National University. The author is grateful to Anthony Davis,
Angela Cincotta-Segi and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful
and constructive comments in the development of the manuscript. He also
expresses his sincere gratitude to the people of Boljoon, especially marine
harvesters and MPA guards in Granada, and the Coastal Conservation and
Education Foundation, Inc. for their kind cooperation and engagement.
The Making of Environmental
Subjectivity in Managing Marine Protected Areas:
A Case Study from Southeast Cebu
Shio Segi
This paper documents and examines the attributes, contradictions, and conlicts that arise in creating environmental subjects in
the management of protected areas. Drawing upon a case study of a marine protected area (MPA) located in the Philippines, the
paper shows that even when the protected area is coercively imposed, many local villagers may become environmental subjects
through direct and indirect participation in various activities. However, the material presented in this paper also demonstrates
that their conservationist behaviors only persist to the extent that these behaviors do not conlict with locally embedded social
values and practices. It suggests that being attentive to the development of environmental subjectivity while allowing more
lexibility in MPA design and management is an important way forward.
Key words: marine protected area, environmentality, small-scale marine harvesters
proach for protected areas, rather than individuals using the
resources in an unsustainable manner, they should realize that
utilizing resources in a non-extractive manner is more ratio-
nal for the public good, including economic and livelihood
beneits. In this process, forming what Goldman (2001) calls
“eco-rational” subjects is necessary work in order to control
the population through a disciplinary process inluenced by
globalized environmentalism. However, many people cannot
become “eco-rational” subjects, and they are often simply
displaced (Igoe and Brockington 2007). Thus in reality,
governments or NGOs must employ another disciplinary
process to include those who fail to be “eco-rational,” with
the intention of creating “nature-loving allies in conserva-
tion” (Li 2008:129) without emphasizing the maximization
of economic rationality. Agrawal (2005) frames this requisite
transformation and positioning of people’s ideology towards
the natural environment as “environmentality.” Built upon
the Foucaudian concept of governmentality, environmental-
ity is comprised of “…the knowledges, politics, institutions,
and subjectivities that come to be linked together with the
emergence of the environment as a domain that requires
regulation and protection” (Agrawal 2005:226). Agrawal
(2005:164-165) argues that through the exercise of envi-
ronmentality, there emerges environmental subjectivity that
directs people to come to care about the environment; that
is, “…[as] a conceptual category that organizes some of their
thinking” and also “…[as] a domain in conscious relation to
which they perform some of their actions.”
Protected areas in general are vulnerable because of the
unavoidable simpliication process of turning complex society