Assembling an Ecosystem The Making of State Páramos in Colombia

• Published in: Conservation and society Vol. 19; no. 2; pp. 119 - 129
• Main Author: Ungar, Paula
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bangalore Wolters Kluwer India Pvt. Ltd 01.04.2021; Medknow Publications and Media Pvt. Ltd; Medknow Publications & Media Pvt. Ltd; Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications
• Subjects: Alpine environments; assemblage; Authoritarianism; Conservation; Conservation areas; Ecosystems; Environmental aspects; extractivism; Laws, regulations and rules; Mountain ecology; Mountain ecosystems; Mountains; Nature conservation; Paramos; Protection and preservation; páramos; science; state making; State power; Colombia; United Kingdom; Latin America; páramos; state making; conservation; assemblage; extractivism; science
• ISSN: 0972-4923; 0975-3133
• DOI: 10.4103/cs.cs_19_103

In Colombia in 2016, extraordinary upper mountain ecosystems known as páramos were legally delimited by the central state as strict conservation areas, based exclusively on maps produced with biophysical information. Inside their boundaries, most human activities were forbidden, although most páramos have been inhabited and used for centuries. I interrogate the making of these exclusionary state páramos using the analytic of assemblage. This framework allows me to go beyond the understanding of fields of state control as merely the product of a process of top-down authoritarian territorialisation, and make the practices of heterogeneous subjects around the production of delimited páramos visible. It also helps me investigate what happened to these subjects in the process, and contribute to a critical understanding of their roles in the establishment of conservation areas. I argue that this process had three interrelated outcomes: the state was pushed away from a liberal government of upper mountains, and towards a centralised, authoritarian scheme; scientific practices resisted state power around conservation; and some social organisations became instrumental to a simplifying grand scheme. I propose that the threat of mining extractivism in the 2010s influenced the practices of these three subjects, and catalysed the assemblage of coercively delimited páramos and their exclusion from the productive grid.