This paper focuses on local constructions of 'nature' in governance processes, and the importance of historical and institutional contexts for their genesis and functioning. Through extensive field study in the Romanian Danube Delta, it is demonstrated that the origin and distribution of certain concepts can be credited to a history of conflicts over land and resource use. Considering the implications for participatory natural resource governance, we argue that this capacity of the governance context to produce and transform concepts of nature, (...) poses real challenges. To these challenges can be added legacies of disempowerment and marginalisation, evident in local inhabitants' images and concepts of nature, which we seek to understand by developing a theory of traumatic nature. (shrink)

Americanization in Two Immigrant Theravada Buddhist Temples. Paul David Numrich. University of Tennessee, Knoxville 1996. xxiv, 181 pp. Illustrations. $25. ISBN 0-87049-905-X.

Local perceptions of protected areas are important for conservation and the sustainability of protected areas. We undertook qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork to explore relationships between people and protected areas in the Blouberg mountain range, South Africa. The history of land use and current relationships with protected areas reveal legacies of marginalisation and immiseration, giving credence to a theory of traumatic nature. The impacts of traumatic nature manifest themselves in local discourses and narratives of nature, protected areas and conservation.