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Margulies, Wong & Duffy The imaginary ‘Asian Super Consumer’ A critique of demand reduction campaigns for the illegal wildlife trade

November 2019

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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Project: BIOSEC: Biodiversity and Security: Understanding Environmental Crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance

Authors:

Jared Margulies

University of Alabama

The University of Sheffield

Preprints and early-stage research may not have been peer reviewed yet.

There is increasing focus on altering consumer behavior within the conservation sector working to combat illegal wildlife trade (IWT). In this review we highlight how demand reduction campaigns can build on and reproduce problematic stereotypes that create and perpetuate a figure we characterize as the “Asian Super Consumer.” While there are numerous studies critiquing disturbing and racist narratives of particular actors engaged in the supply-side of IWT, the problematic ways in which racism can steer debates characterizing illegal wildlife product consumers remains generally under-explored. We focus on key examples of ivory demand reduction campaigns in China. We argue for more culturally-sensitive understandings of illegal wildlife product consumers and their motivations. Culturally-nuanced approaches in demand reduction campaigns are essential not just because they may be more effective, but because they move beyond on-going violent histories of cultural misrepresentation and racism. Keywords: IWT; Ivory trade; Wildlife trafficking; Wildlife products; Critical race theory; China

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17/10/2019, 16*46The imaginary ‘Asian Super Consumerʼ_ A critique of demand reducti…ampaigns for the illegal wildlife trade | Elsevier Enhanced Reader

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Project

BIOSEC: Biodiversity and Security: Understanding Environmental Crime, illegal wildlife trade and threat finance

The core intellectual aim of BIOSEC was to explore whether concerns about biodiversity protection and global security were becoming integrated, and if so, in what ways. It used a political ecology lens. The BIOSEC Project examined the integration of biodiversity conservation and security. It built on and further developed the field of political ecology by critically interrogating the ways in which illegal wildlife trade (IWT) has become increasingly framed as a security threat – as a wildlife crime perpetrated by organised crime and armed groups. Our research interrogated and challenged these assumptions by developing novel intellectual approaches centred on political ecology of security, geopolitical ecologies and post human ecologies. Crucially research by the BIOSEC Project cast light on the harms arising from framing IWT as a wildlife crime and as security issue for both people and wildlife; highlighted the importance of overlooked trades in European wildlife, placed the use of surveillance technology in its social context, and drew out the on-going legacies of colonialism and racism in some current conservation practices. BIOSEC was funded by a European Advanced Investigator grant of EURO 1.8 million, and will run for four years 2016-2020. It was based in the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield 2016-2020. ... [more]

Project

Global Collaboration Engine (GLOBE)

Project

Towards Convivial Conservation; Governing Human-Wildlife Interactions in the Anthropocene (CON-VIVA)

CON-VIVA is grounded in the premise that conservation is critical to transformations to sustainability but that its practices need to change radically. Conservation can be effective in protecting b iodiversity in places, but in toto has failed to halt global biodiversity loss. Continued habitat fragmentation and reduced funding during times of austerity compound this problem. Many conservationists now acknowledge this, leading to vigorous ‘Anthropocene’ discussions on how to reconfigure human-wildlife relations, protected areas and the role of economic development in conservation. CON-VIVA’s key objective is to conceptually refine and empirically test the prospects for one proposal emerging from these debates: ‘convivial conservation’. This new model responds to the T2S themes by moving beyond protected areas and faith in markets to build landscape, governance and funding pathways that integrate conservation and poverty reduction, while enhancing prosperity. CON-VIVA investigates the prospects for convivial conservation by comparing cutting-edge conservation cases that address human-wildlife conflict involving apex predators in Brazil, Finland, Tanzania and USA. Our hypothesis is that if ‘living with’ apex predators can be effectively combined with new forms of economic development, a transition to convivial conservation can be boosted significantly. ... [more]

Project

CONVIVA - Towards convivial conservation: for co-existence, (bio)diversity and justice in conservation

CONVIVA - the convivial conservation research project develops new convivial (literally: 'living with') approaches to understanding and practicing environmental conservation.

Article

Full-text available

The imaginary ‘Asian Super Consumer’: A critique of demand reduction campaigns for the illegal wildl...

October 2019 · Geoforum

There is increasing focus on altering consumer behavior within the conservation sector working to combat illegal wildlife trade (IWT). In this review we highlight how demand reduction campaigns can build on and reproduce problematic stereotypes that create and perpetuate a figure we characterize as the “Asian Super Consumer.” While there are numerous studies critiquing disturbing and racist ... [Show full abstract] narratives of particular actors engaged in the supply-side of IWT, the problematic ways in which racism can steer debates characterizing illegal wildlife product consumers remains generally under-explored. We focus on key examples of ivory demand reduction campaigns in China. We argue for more culturally-sensitive understandings of illegal wildlife product consumers and their motivations. Culturally-nuanced approaches in demand reduction campaigns are essential not just because they may be more effective, but because they move beyond on-going violent histories of cultural misrepresentation and racism.

Preprint

Full-text available

Margulies, Wong & Duffy The imaginary ‘Asian Super Consumer’ A critique of demand reduction campaign...

November 2019

There is increasing focus on altering consumer behavior within the conservation sector working to combat illegal wildlife trade (IWT). In this review we highlight how demand reduction campaigns can build on and reproduce problematic stereotypes that create and perpetuate a figure we characterize as the “Asian Super Consumer.” While there are numerous studies critiquing disturbing and racist ... [Show full abstract] narratives of particular actors engaged in the supply-side of IWT, the problematic ways in which racism can steer debates characterizing illegal wildlife product consumers remains generally under-explored. We focus on key examples of ivory demand reduction campaigns in China. We argue for more culturally-sensitive understandings of illegal wildlife product consumers and their motivations. Culturally-nuanced approaches in demand reduction campaigns are essential not just because they may be more effective, but because they move beyond on-going violent histories of cultural misrepresentation and racism. Keywords: IWT; Ivory trade; Wildlife trafficking; Wildlife products; Critical race theory; China

Article

Full-text available

Understanding drivers of demand, researching consumption of illegal wildlife products: A reply to Be...

August 2020 · Geoforum

Article

Response to “The imaginary ‘Asian Super Consumer’: A critique of demand reduction campaigns for the...

April 2020 · Geoforum

In a recent paper in Geoforum, Margulies et al. (2019) outline what they perceive as a bias toward an “Asian super consumer”. They argue that wildlife trade demand reduction campaigns are unfocused, untargeted, and therefore have a tendency to place blame on people of colour and communities in the Global South as key actors in driving illegal wildlife trade. As researchers and practitioners, we ... [Show full abstract] have been studying the demand for wildlife and wildlife products for many years. While we agree that it is vitally important to consider the cultural nuances of illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade and to operate in a manner that is respectful toward different cultures, we believe that the authors have overlooked the fact that modern wildlife trade demand reduction campaigns are already conducting in-depth research and using it to target their campaigns to specific groups.