ABSTRACT
Thus far, this book has examined approaches to conservation based on the seminal ideas of Foucault. Other ideas, more or less outside of political ecology, have also been important in this field. In this chapter I examine the ideas of James C. Scott, Bruno Latour, and Anna Tsing. The set of ideas considered here all concern simplifying. In Scott, states simplify in order to render rural practices legible to state extraction and intervention. In Latour, technologies contribute to the ability of centers to make ever-simplified calculations about peripheries, and to alter peripheries to accept interventions. Scott and Latour’s ideas contribute two new tools to our tool-box. Tsing’s piece explores the complexity of Dayak honey hunting and decries the economic and ecological simplifications that make it invisible. She argues that it provides an alternative for thinking about conservation in forests inhabited by people.
