There is an opportunity for an MSc researcher to contribute to the Convivial Conservation (CONVIVA: governing human-wildlife relations in the Anthropocene) project by undertaking an organisational ethnography in a wildlife conservation organisation/department (e.g. NGO, donor organisation) in the lead up to the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2020. There may also be the potential to get involved in the collaborative event ethnography that the CONVIVA team will conduct at the congress (June 2020). Understanding the dynamics of wildlife conservation, and its relationship to human development, is central to the CONVIVA project, more information on which can be found here: https://convivialconservation.com/.
There has been an increasing emphasis on the need for critical research into the dynamics of global environmental politics in order to broaden understanding, better understand embedded cycles of inequality and unintended consequences caused by conservation, and thus benefit policy and practice (Death, 2013, Sandbrook et al., 2013, West, 2006). Central to this is the exploration of the various ‘actors, narratives, technologies, forms of knowledge and bureaucratic formations’ involved (Li, 2018). Investigation of relationship dynamics, the unpredictable trajectories of policies and the complex messiness of environmental ‘problems’ is also required (O'Neill et al., 2013, Corson et al., 2014). Wildlife conservation and management provides an excellent case study for this type of enquiry, due to the complex politics, contested narratives and diverse range of actors involved in it. Ethnography is highlighted as a core method for understanding the dynamics of global environmental politics (Corson et al., 2014), and increasing attention has been given to the need to ‘study up’ and to conduct ethnographies of organisations and decision-makers.
The organisational ethnographies would involve basing yourself within an organisation and using ethnographic methods, such as observations, interviews and document analysis to study processes, practices, assemblages, knowledge development etc, following species, issues, policies of the students’ choice. The NGO would be chosen at
