Layers Not Sums: Reconciling Scientific and Community Values with Nature Conservation Maps

Cal Garrett, Wake Forest University

Quantification is a powerful method for reconciling distinct sets of values because it reduces uncertain qualitative distinctions to calculable differences in amount or rank. Converting the massive damage of an oil spill to economic terms, for example, provides a common scale for assessing the coastline and the delivery of damages compensation. Such conversions of qualitative distinctions (i.e. pristine/polluted) to quantitative difference are routine because they ease decision-making and precipitate the efficient resolution of vested interests. But what about the reverse process, cases where counts and measures are transformed into something qualitatively unique and significant? Given the strengths of quantified measures, why might reversal occur? This paper theorizes such a case: rare plant conservation work where ecologists use qualitative valuation methods like local maps and surveys to capture what is important about their quantitative data for local stakeholders. Contemporary conservation work in the United States has a growing interest in city parks, vacant lots, schoolyards, and roadsides because these spaces can be crucial opportunities for the survival of imperiled plant populations. But plants are not the only concern. These sites are also patterned by social justice problems like environmental racism, the concentration of environmental threats like air pollution Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color live and work. As a result, I argue that conservation work in these spaces relies on qualitative valuation techniques because too many disparate markets with different embedded assumptions are at play for one value determination to suffice. Conservation experts must contend with real estate, labor, recreation, rare plant, and materials markets, in addition to the matter of scientific value. Maps and neighborhood surveys are employed to layer numerous qualitatively distinct measures for one place as boundary objects. This paper is based on ethnographic and interview (48) data collected in Chicago from 2019-2021.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 135. Contested Values in Fields of Expertise