Paper short abstract:

This paper explores “multi-naturism” as a philosophical concept which opens up political dispute over natural resources by tracing ontological differences within approaches to nature, focusing on Humboldt’s work on Mexico and the development of permaculture methodologies in El Salvador.

Paper long abstract:

The science of "ecology" has a long history. However practices and expertise for harmonising social practices with the more-than-human world are arguably much longer. In this paper I focus on two moments where Central American plant life became enrolled in globalising networks, one historical and one contemporary, to explore the politics which inheres to the difference between these two ecologies. To do this I draw on the concept of "multi-naturism" as it has been developed by the anthropologist Eduardo Vivieros de Castro, highlighting the specific ontology which has underpinned "modern" accounts of nature, and strategies for destabilising its monopolisation of spatial design and the language of environmental sustainability.

Both Humboldt, writing at the turn of the nineteenth century, and permaculture, a set of design techniques for "working with nature" to grow food, can be characterised by colonial tendencies in these terms. Extending their reach through globalising techniques, Humboldt's project of science and today's multiplying centres of permaculture design can be seen to appropriate "local" knowledges for distant consumption, and to over-write indigenous understandings with a specifically western account of nature. However, neither are easily reduced to this narrative. Permaculture practices in El Salvador have been adapted for the campesino a campesino movement of Meso-America primarily for developing critical responses to export-oriented agri-commerce, led by small-scale farmer practitioners. Meanwhile Humboldt was among the first to critique colonial resource extraction. In this paper I draw out key tensions in the production of ecological knowledge for sustainability and conclude by laying out a politics which ultimately addresses the broader ethos of sustainable development.