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C. Claus (2017)
The Social Life of Okinawan CoralsJournal for The Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 11
CONTEMPORARY JAPAN BOOK REVIEW Drawing the sea near: Satoumi and coral reef conservation in Okinawa, by C. Anne Claus, University of Minnesota Press, 2020, 256 pp. $27.00 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-5179-0662-7, $108.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1-5179-0661-0 During a conversation with an official of a conservation center on Okinawa Main Island, C. Anne Claus was told in a confessional tone that “Okinawans don’t care about their environ- ment. It’s mainlanders who are taking care of things [. . .]” (p. 38). This statement is illustrative of the key concern of the author’s intriguing book Drawing the sa near: How, in the context of transnational environmentalism, different definitions of expert knowledge, environmental stewardship, and concepts of “nature” are negotiated on Ishigaki Island, Japan. Conflicting ideologies are explored through the case of the Coral Reef Research Centre (Sango Mura, or Coral Village), World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) only field-station in Japan. The book most prominently focuses on the role of “outsider” (yosomono) director Kamimura Masahito in the transformation of WWF’s practices towards what Claus defines as “equitable, culturally attuned engagements” (p. 1). The author proposes the concepts of conservation-far and conservation-near to argue that transnational environmental projects depart from hege- monic paradigms that understand nature
Contemporary Japan – Taylor & Francis
Published: Jan 2, 2023
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