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Famous for their geographic isolation and high proportion of endemic species, the Galápagos Islands have long been promoted as the premier destination for tourists and scientists seeking to escape humanity's impact on the world. This idyllic vision dominates the islands' conservation policy, which, despite calls for a more integrated human-environment approach, continues to emphasize restoration. It ignores the people who call the Galápagos home, who must instead partner with their plant and animal neighbours to secure a thriving future for all.
Drawing on years of fieldwork, Paolo Bocci's Viable Ecologies brings attention to the farmers and other marginalized locals who enact their own ways of caring for, and living on, the islands. Through extended observation and experimentation, they craft conservation strategies based on mutual dependence and long-term accountability. They fuse their livelihoods to the ecosystems around them and, in doing so, challenge the image of the Galápagos as a place to be studied and visited but never inhabited. As Bocci argues, the farmers' methods of remediation and recuperation broaden the scope of what conservation can – and should – be.
Connecting environmental policy and science to matters of immigration and belonging, Viable Ecologies offers strategies for crafting a future in which humans and nonhumans may thrive.
Paolo Bocci is a design researcher and cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"Offers a nuanced interpretation of conservation in the Galápagos Islands, from eradicating invasive species to challenges faced by undocumented highland farmers. It is a much-needed corrective to breathless accounts of conservation efforts, and it critiques attempts to return ecologies to imagined pristine states and the harms caused by such attempts. It calls for practical, achievable conservation, making a case for messy, cobbled-together ecologies and minor thriving in the margins."
– Daniel Tubb, author of Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia
"In a beautifully crafted ethnography filled with rich conservations and life alongside of farmers, ecologists, biologists, goats, and more, Bocci captures the spirit of human and nonhuman flourishing. Championing a practical, inclusive approach to ecological stewardship, Viable Ecologies expands the scope of multispecies ethnography, offering a fresh perspective on invasive species, novel ecosystems, green growth, human migration, resilience, in-placeness, and minor thriving. The book serves as both a guide and inspiration for a future of belonging – for both humans and nonhumans alike – and care for the unloved, unplanned, and displaced in the Galápagos Islands."
– Keri Brondo, University of Memphis
"Bocci takes readers to the Galapagos Islands to explore the question: what is viable? His engaged ethnography clearly shows how this is always a question of power, ethics, and tense possibility for the future of the islands and the earth."
– Ameila Moore, author of Destination Anthropocene: Science and Tourism in The Bahamas
