Authors
Soenke Zehle
Publication date
2004
Institution
State University of New York at Binghamton
Description
A large number of vectors need to converge for any one issue to enter the agenda of transnational ecopolitics. In the case of biodiversity, the ‘object’itself did not exist until very recently, and attention to the modalities of its construction is part of any attempt to account for its sudden significance. A ‘cosmopolitical’account of the conflictual construction of biodiversity, this dissertation explores the agenda of indigenous peoples in the biodiversity controversy. The Introduction articulates the idea of a ‘cosmopolitics’ and positions the dissertation at the intersection between media studies and political ecology. Chapter One offers a historical survey of core concepts in the idiom of a transnational indigenism to situate ecopolitical campaigns in the horizon of a fundamental inquiry into the ‘coloniality’of Euro-American modernity. Chapter Two explores the growing interest in biodiversity and traditional environmental knowledges …