ABSTRACT
Conservation is increasingly based on an economic perspective, which (1) does not question the existence of “the economy,” and sees it as both inevitable and valuable; which (2) assumes that local economies (especially in the rural developing world) are essentially separate from the global economy; and which (3) sees these local economies as “poverty,” and links them to environmental degradation. Conservation policy-makers informed by this perspective assume that stimulating economic growth—which typically means bringing local economies into the global economy—will solve environmental degradation. This perspective needs to be questioned. I argue that all economies are ecologies; eating and selling ultimately both depend on the earth. In this chapter I use ethnographies, by the economic anthropologist Stephen Gudeman, the political scientist Timothy Mitchell, and anthropologist Tania Li, to question the economic perspective.
