The Relationship between People and Parks

In Amazonian thought, the theory goes, culture is seen as the common property of all beings, human and nonhuman alike, who differ only in their nature. [...]it is not culture, defined as spirit and meaning, that distinguishes humans and non-humans, but nature, defined as a difference of body and substance. The Tamang have historically inhabited an uneasy space in relation to the Nepali state, marginalised through systems of land tenure, the taxation of labour, religious dialogue, and ethnic status ascription. "Perspectives", as he argues, "are generated out of relationships situationally" (p 310). [...]to think of perspectivism as all encompassing cosmology would be to ignore the power-laden contexts within which it is lived. For those interested in the question of the relationship between people and parks, Campbell's careful and thoughtful examination of how marginalised groups who live on the boundaries of state power, now enshrined in protected areas, have to reconfigure their situated, perspectival ontologies in the light of neo-liberal definitions of the environment will be illuminating and provocative.