Governing through the Market: Neoliberal Environmental Government in Belize

摘要

In this analysis, I demonstrate how two aspects of neoliberalism that are often treated separately-the devolution of responsibility for governing from states to nonstate entities and the commodification of new spheres of life-articulate with one another. If government," in the Foucauldian sense, shapes human conduct indirectly, by reconfiguring the contexts that channel human decisions, neoliberal forms of government" privilege markets as mechanisms of indirect rule. In this study from Belize, the state assigned responsibility for managing a wildlife sanctuary and nearby Maya communities to a conservation NGO. However, through ecotourism, management of both the sanctuary and surrounding villages devolved to become more fundamentally the purview of "the market": as villagers became incorporated into global ecotourism markets, they came to apply market rationalities to govern their own conduct in relation to the sanctuary. This analysis has relevance beyond environmental contexts, as the logics of devolution and commodification have oriented policies across a range of arenas.