Who? From debates to actors
Showing that a knowledge claim is always an argument in a debate and a call to action is the first step. The second is to clarify how these debates are inseparable from the actors that stage them. A trivial way to understand this connection is to simply recognize that the action-agendas enabled by specific knowledge claims tend to be connected to the position of the actors who make the claims. In Thompson’s example, it is telling that arguments similar to those summarized in the first statement above were voiced during the Amboseli workshop by a local conservationist, David Western, who was at the time the director of the Kenyan Wildlife Service and, as such, in charge of conserving national biodiversity. And arguments similar to those summarized in the second statement were made by an American ethologist, Cynthia Moss, who was renowned for having studied the elephant population in Amboseli for more than 20 years. Associating knowledge claims with the actors that state them thus makes it easier to appreciate the opposition between a position centered on the conservation of the overall ecosystem and a position focused on safeguarding the elephant community. It also suggests that while defending different land management strategies, Western and Moss were also defending their respective careers.
Unveiling power struggles behind intellectual positions is a classic move in the sociology of science. Within controversy mapping, however, it is not enough to recognize that different experts can have different stakes in a debate. In practice, what this recognition often entails is that the very substance of what is being discussed has radically different meanings for the different actor positions. For instance, the disagreement between Western and Moss about how nature should be conserved at Amboseli can be traced back to the different meanings that each of them attached to the notions of “nature” and “conservation” – Thompson (2002) calls it “competing philosophies of nature.”
As an ecologist, David Western was trained to consider nature as the general balance between flora and fauna, while Cynthia Moss, as an ethologist, has built her expertise around one key species, the elephants. Beside this general disciplinary gap, the visions of nature of the two scientists were also manifested in their different observational practices and settings. Moss had a long experience observing the elephants of the park, having spent several years living with them. She had named each member of the herd and compiled the life history of many of them. The practice of naming animals is common among ethologists and extremely useful when collecting longitudinal data over extended time periods where interobserver identification must be facilitated. Yet, it is often criticized for the risk of anthropomorphizing the animals and considering them individually rather than as part of an ecosystem. On the other hand, Western’s appraisal of the situation rested on a series of experiments that he pioneered using electrical fences of different heights to selectively restrict the access of wildlife to different plots in the park. This experimental setup allowed Western and his colleagues to separate the effects of elephants, smaller mammals, invertebrates and other animals, but also encouraged the ecologists to look at animals from afar, considering only their size and their aggregated statistical effects.
Likewise, Western and Moss had radically different ideas about conservation. In the Amboseli controversy, Moss championed the older doctrine of conservation that inspired the creation of natural parks, according to which nature is best preserved when separated from local human activities and managed by national or (even better) international institutions. Western, on the other hand, advocated for the conservation of biodiversity in the whole region (not just in the park) and for the involvement of local Maasai communities. For Moss, conservation meant enforcing the boundaries of the park; for Western it meant erasing them. No wonder they ended up on opposite sides of the debate. To be sure, Western and Moss were not the only actors engaged in the controversy, just like “nature” and “conservation” were not the only issues at stake, and a proper cartography should chart this multiplicity of actors and issues to be viewed (see figure 2).
Moving from debates to actors, therefore, means accounting for the fact that, even when they discuss the same issues, actors in a controversy may well be speaking about, and acting on, very different things.
How? From actors to networks
In the same way as claims are never isolated from the actors who make them, so actors are always tangled in complex alliances with and against each other. It would be wrong, for instance, to portray the Amboseli controversy as a personal confrontation between two scientists. If anything, Western and Moss temporarily became the spokespersons for two heterogeneous coalitions, comprising not only humans, but also animals, plants, political and economic institutions, and their actions were constrained by the interests and positions of these cohorts of allies. In fact, actors are themselves coalitions that compose and decompose depending on the situation. At times, the elephants make a difference as a species; at other times, as individual, sentient beings. Sometimes, the elephant research group speaks as a whole; sometimes its individual researchers speak for themselves.
Some actors can morph and change status as the controversy evolves. The nomadic Maasai living in the area, for example, were initially opposed to the park and the way it hindered their traditional migrations. With the establishment of the park, however, some Maasai found jobs in the institution and adopted a sedentary lifestyle, thus changing sides in the controversy. As a consequence, the Maasai people cannot be considered as one unanimous actor, but need to be broken into two divergent groups – or three if you count the Maasai representatives present at the Serena Lodge, torn between the two constituencies that they needed to represent. You can begin to appreciate how this dynamic complicates the task of representing the controversy!
Figure 2 Actor/issue table of the Amboseli controversy. Actors in the columns and their reading of different issues in the rows. Shading indicates the level of commitment to “beyond-park” or “in-park” solutions (created by the authors based on the account provided by Thompson, 2002; released by the authors under CC BY-SA 4.0).
Figure 3 Network of actors in the Amboseli controversy. The alliance of actors supporting the “beyond-park” solution on the left, the alliance supporting the “in-park” solution on the right. Neutral actors are circled with dotted lines. Hesitant actors are marked with a gray halo (created by the authors based on the account provided by Thompson, 2002; released by the authors under CC BY-SA 4.0).
As illustrated in figure 3, Western’s position was backed by the local government, which saw it as a possibility for asserting closer control over land use in the region. Moss’s ideas, on the other hand, were better aligned with international sponsors and their fear that local management of the environment would be more exposed to corruption and political instability. Other groups such as the tour operators were divided between those preferring to keep working within the established