Abstract
The issue of classification plays a central role in Wiersum’s work on biocultural diversity. The design of classification systems has enabled Wiersum to classify landscapes into natural, cultural and various intermediate categories. These classification systems do not merely mirror the world, but can only be understood in the light of the social and political values and desires they highlight and seek recognition for. In this chapter we employ a performative perspective of classification by analysing the social work that classification systems do in practice: how they influence not only how the world is known, but also how it is acted upon, and how social and material relationships are remade in the process. We conclude that by performing a world that consists of various natural, cultural and mixed categories, Wiersum’s work (1) privileges local/indigenous communities to manage the nature-culture mixtures; (2) creates a nature-culture continuum to allow for coordination across the nature-human divide; and (3) creates a network of scientists and practitioners from diverse disciplines who can arrive at a division of labour in the research into and management of the biological, human and cultural categories that are distinguished.
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van Bommel, S., Turnhout, E. (2012). The (onto)politics of classifying biocultural diversity: a tale of chaos, order and control. In: Arts, B., van Bommel, S., Ros-Tonen, M., Verschoor, G. (eds) Forest-people interfaces. Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen. https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-749-3_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-749-3_14
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