Beyond coupling and entanglement
Institution–culture–ecology co-constitution in community co-management at Wuyishan National Park
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24218608 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Qingyuan Li (0000-0001-9871-7576), Yan Ma (0000-0001-9735-5868) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2026-09-29 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Anthropology and Ethnology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2366-1003 • E-ISSN: 2366-1003 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1186/s41257-026-00166-w |
| OpenAlex | W7214791915 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 49 |
National-park co-management is often evaluated through institutional design or social–ecological outcomes, leaving underexamined how formal authority, culturally embedded practice, and ecological change become mutually consequential. This article investigates that relationship in Wuyishan National Park, an inhabited protected landscape shaped by Taoist sacred geography, Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucian legacy, centuries of tea production and trade, and successive conservation regimes. Drawing on a qualitative case study based on field visits, household visits and oral-history interviews, observation, and policy and administrative documents, the study develops an institution–culture–ecology co-constitution framework and traces three linked movements. First, national-park institutions reconfigure resource rights, incentives, and cultivation practices while opening channels through which local forest–tea knowledge enters governance. Second, cultural forms including the place-based category of shanchang , cultivation idioms, and mountain-calling ritual translate conservation requirements into terms grounded in cultivation, livelihood, and moral relations with the mountain, and these meanings in turn shape implementation and public communication. Third, administrative monitoring and residents’ observations turn ecological change into evidence used in evaluation, compensation, patrol, and livelihood decisions. The cases show that these relations form a recursive process rather than three separate effects. Reciprocity nevertheless remains asymmetric: public agencies retain legal and spatial authority, while communities influence how rules operate and how ecological outcomes are interpreted. Situating these relations within Wuyishan’s cultural, commercial, and conservation history, the article explains how place-based knowledge becomes constitutive of protected-area governance and specifies conditions for comparison elsewhere.
conservation governance · ecological change · Neo-Confucianism · place-based knowledge · protected area governance · tea cultivation · Wuyishan National Park · Zhu Xi · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies
Parks and Peoples
Adaptive Comanagement for Building Resilience in Social?Ecological Systems
Co-Managing Human–Wildlife Conflicts
Adaptive co‐management for social–ecological complexity
Using gross ecosystem product (GEP) to value nature in decision making
A global assessment of the social and conservation outcomes of protected areas
Co-management
The Role of Protected Areas in Conserving Biodiversity and Sustaining Local Livelihoods
Community-based conservation in a globalized world
Rethinking Community‐Based Conservation
A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems
Evolution of co-management
Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems
Stakeholder participation for environmental management
Tea in China
The Dutch East India Company's Tea Trade with China, 1757-1781
The cult of the Wuyi mountains and its cultivation of the past
The Beyond Within
The Logic of Practice
A resilience-based framework for evaluating adaptive co-management
Cultivating the Nation in Fujian's Forests
Reinventing Institutions
The Great Tea Road and the Belt and Road Initiative
Nature–society and development
An Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance
Enchantment and Disenchantment
Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice
Social-ecological systems, social diversity, and power
Community-Based Conservation and Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Scale and Cross-Scale Dynamics
After Nature
Contractual National Parks and the Makuleke Community
| Highly cited | No |
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