Environmental governmentality and resistance. The case of the conflict between park rangers and public officials of a provincial park in the province of Buenos Aires

Abstract

In this paper I analyze how the environmental praxis of the park rangers and the public officials who work in Pereyra Iraola Park (Buenos Aires, Argentina) is, in order to understand why the relationship between the two has become antagonistic. I analyzed public management, of Peronist identity, during the period 2019-23 in terms of environmental governmentality, mainly based on the constitution of an interministerial management committee that became the highest environmental authority in the territory. The park rangers, also identified with Peronism, enthusiastically applauded the victory of the current management, but after a series of conflictive events, the relationship with the public officials became antagonistic. Based on the ethnographic fieldwork done, I observed how the conflict between them was based on the contrasting ways of dwelling in the territory, because while the environmental praxis of the park rangers was –in terms of Ingold’s perspective of dwelling– in-habitant, the management committee’s was, instead, ex-habitant. I conclude by valuing the contributions of the ethnographic perspective to studies on environmental issues and the relevance to understand local perspectives, nowadays relegated by hegemonic analyses based on global quantitative standards.