ABSTRACT
As environmental policy matters have gained unprecedented attention at both global and local levels, where does environmental anthropology position itself? Rarely protagonists in policy-making, should anthropologists rethink ethnographies, produce more data and engage more directly in ‘policy relevant’ work? This chapter argues that anthropological engagement is, and needs to remain, ambiguous in approaching environmental policy. As environmental policy language has become omnipresent, while imploding as a self-evident master narrative, analytical ambiguity is not only a natural consequence, but also an anthropological necessity. This chapter compares different strands of anthropology and argues for a renewed engagement with environmental policy matters grounded in current methodological multiplicity. The chapter compares three different ways of approaching environmental policy. Efforts to explain environmental change and inform policy are analyzed according to their epistemological underpinnings and contrasted with political ecologies grounded in post-structural theory. Subsequently, phenomenological approaches questioning human-nature dichotomies and the modernist assumptions of policy making are debated. The question, I argue, is not whether, but how, to situate and understand the politics and policy aspects of human environment relationships. The relevance of anthropology is not merely about its ability to inform policy makers, but grounded in its capacity to critically address how policy matters intersect with human environment relationships. This entails addressing the multiple levels, effects and intersections of policy in everyday relations, an agenda requiring multiple theoretical frameworks and empirical detail. In particular, it entails the consolidation of environment as a relational category.
