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Hybridity
In southwest Madagascar a conflict emerges between conservationists trying to protect a coral reef ecosystem and fishery, and local fishing people who subsist on selling octopus, fish and sea cucumber for export. Vezo fishers adapt to environmental changes by targeting fast-growing marine species and by migrating to distant resource frontiers. At the same time, they also participate in conservation initiatives such as periodic closures of designated coral reefs aiming to manage local octopus populations. This chapter asks why the perceptual evidence of ecological processes, which is in principle shared by fishers and conservationists, does not suffice to produce moral agreement or consensus on what one should do about environmental changes. As objects of joint attention, ecological processes and conservation efforts are both subject to divergent interpretations depending on which "worldviews" or "conceptual frameworks" the parties bring to bear on the issues. This chapter argues that while distinguishing between, on the one hand, perceptions of the environment (also referred to as "ecological facts", or "environmental affordances"), and on the other, ethical stances (also referred to as "moral appraisals", or "conceptions of well-being"), makes sense within any particular worldview, it is misleading to equate this distinction with the exclusively modern, science-based, nature-culture dichotomy.KeywordsCoral reefsEnactivismEnvironmental AffordanceMoral relativismNature-culture dualismSmall-scale fisheriesTheories of perceptionVezo people
Rethinking questions of identity, social agency and national affiliation, Bhabha provides a working, if controversial, theory of cultural hybridity - one that goes far beyond previous attempts by others. In The Location of Culture, he uses concepts such as mimicry, interstice, hybridity, and liminality to argue that cultural production is always most productive where it is most ambivalent. Speaking in a voice that combines intellectual ease with the belief that theory itself can contribute to practical political change, Bhabha has become one of the leading post-colonial theorists of this era.