Neoliberal environmentality in the land of Gross National Happiness

Bibliographic Data

ID4464845
AuthorsJesse Montes (Royal University of Bhutan, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume3
Issue2
Pages300-322
Publication date2020-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/2514848619834885
OpenAlexW2974375526
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited46

This paper explores how a growing trend towards neoliberalization throughout Bhutan manifests within environmental governance in particular. Bhutan's well-known Gross National Happiness (GNH) development strategy can be seen to represent a shift towards a variegated governmentality more generally that increasingly exhibits neoliberal tendencies as the country seeks to negotiate its further integration into the global economy. Part of this integration entails efforts to promote ecotourism as a key element of the country's future conservation strategy. Ecotourism has been described as a growing manifestation of a "neoliberal environmentality" (Fletcher, 2010) within environmental conservation policy and practice, and hence Bhutan's promotion of ecotourism can be seen as contributing to the promotion of neoliberal conservation. Yet in practice, my analysis demonstrates that environmental governance in Bhutan is a complex of external neoliberal influences filtered through local formal and informal institutions, specifically a Buddhist worldview, a history of state paternalism and the Gross National Happiness governance model, all of which express contrasting governance rationalities. This study thus contributes to governmentality studies by promoting a variegated environmentality perspective that calls for more nuanced analyses beyond "variegated" neoliberalization. This perspective also affords a holistic understanding of discrepancies between the vision and execution of neoliberal conservation that can be attributed to the articulation of alternative rationalities in policy formulation and implementation

Corporate governance · Economic growth · Economics · Ecotourism · Environmental governance · Governmentality · Happiness · Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Tourism · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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