Imaginaries, transformations, and resistances in Patagonian territories from a socio-ecological perspective

Abstract

Socially shared expectations about people's behavior and worldviews, both in terms of how they work and how they should work, are part of the concept of social imaginaries. Beyond representing the idiosyncrasy of a society, imaginaries can play cohesive, critical, or transformative roles over societies and their supporting systems. Therefore, we postulate that by modulating nature-society relationships, social imaginaries can represent transformative or resistance forces affecting the provision, capture, and distribution of ecosystem services (ES). We analyze nature-society social imaginaries (NSI) based on previously published information, with particular attention to their influences on the provision, capture and social distribution of ES in Patagonian landscapes of Argentina and Chile. Firstly, we built and used a conceptual NSI framework that integrates the concepts of ES, social imaginaries, and the governance of natural capital. Secondly, we applied the NSI framework to selected case studies addressing four main drivers of change in Patagonian socio-ecological systems (SES): (i) land dispossession, (ii) industrial forestry expansion, (iii) touristification, and (iv) damming of rivers for hydroelectric uses. According to our analyses, Patagonian SES are being affected by typical transforming forces of the modern imaginary (e.g. short-term, productivity, reductionist-mechanistic vision, individualism) as well as forces of resistance that characterize postmodern (e.g. intergenerational concern, ecocentrism, holism) and indigenous (e.g. territorial ancestral rights, living-well in harmony with nature) imaginaries. These three main NSI underlie controversies around public policies and governance of ES, by influencing the shared perception of nature contributions to well-being, the shared expectations about human behaviors (governance institutions), and/or the final decisions affecting natural capital. We discuss the variation of the relative importance of these three mechanisms across NSI types.