Scalar fixes of environmental management in Java, Indonesia. (September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lukas, Martin C; Flitner, Michael
• Other Names: Demaria, Federico guest-editor.; Kallis Giorgos guest-editor.; Bakker Karen guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Environment and planning. Volume 2:Number 3(2019)
• Page Start: 565
• Page End: 589
• Publication Date: 2019-09
• Subjects: Scale -- watershed management -- knowledge claims -- historical political ecology -- Citanduy River; Political ecology -- Periodicals; Human ecology -- Periodicals; Environmental justice -- Periodicals; 304.2
• DOI: 10.1177/2514848619844769
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2514-8486

Abstract

This paper analyses the emergence and fixing of scales in struggles over environmental issues. Using the example of watershed and coastal management in Java, we show how political framings of environmental matters and struggles over resources are linked to scalar regimes. We conceptualise these regimes as scalar fixes in which scales of intervention and scales of knowledge production are bound by environmental narratives and social–ecological processes to produce lock-in effects for prolonged periods of time. In our empirical case, particular scales were central in providing 'problem closure' and legitimising interventions while precluding other problematisations. Sedimentation of the Segara Anakan lagoon, first desired to support conversion into a rice bowl, was later framed as threat caused by upland peasants. The lock-in of interpretive framings and scales of observation and intervention, which was linked to politics of forest control, impeded debate on the various causes of sedimentation. With our newly defined concept of scalar fixes we contribute to understanding environmental narratives and related knowledge, providing a complement to the micro-perspectives on the stabilisation of knowledge claims currently discussed in cultural and political ecology. In doing so, we offer an approach to scalar analysis of environmental conflicts linking environmental narratives with the material social–ecological processes enrolled.