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nexus that forms around socio-ecological relations. Peluso and Vandergeest (2001,
p. 764), for example, identify in the colonial government's creation of 'political
forests' in Indonesia a critical shift in the relationship between people and forest
products. Defi ned by science as 'natural' land-cover and by law as 'state' territory,
forests were a key site for the development of governmental institutions for security
and disciplining. Geographers have been integral to this project of producing knowl-
edge about the territorial qualities of the state, playing one of their longest-standing
professional roles as an 'aid to statecraft' (Mackinder, 1904). Hannah's (2002) work
on the US Census highlights the central role of data collection, mapping and the
manipulation of 'spatial data' as a mechanism of social control. Mitchell (2002, p.
9) notes how colonial mapping projects in Egypt provided functions which far
exceeded that of representing reality to administrators: national maps provided 'a
means of recording complex statistical information in a centralized, miniaturized,
and visual form . . . a mechanism for collecting, storing and manipulating multiple
levels of information.' For Mitchell, the great national map - a 'technology of
power' characterised by a combination of abstraction and the possibility of calcula-
tion - represented a prototype for the model of the 'national economy' which would
emerge in the early 20th century. Like Braun's work on the role of earth sciences
in the evolution of political rationality in Canada (Braun, 2000), Mitchell's study
is testament to how - both historically and theoretically - the 'problem of govern-
ment' and modern power is tied fundamentally to the problem of 'eco-governmen-
tality' - that is, the governance of socio-ecological relations.
Conclusion: Strengthening Research on Governance
Environmental governance is a concept more popular than precise. It has been
deployed in a variety of ways both critical and conservative, to describe and to occa-
sionally critique the institutional arrangements of state, market and civil society
through which decisions about environments and resources are made. It is worth
asking, then, whether the concept of environmental governance is in danger of
becoming - indeed whether it has already become - infi nitely malleable, drained
of analytical precision much like 'sustainable development' or 'social capital' before
it. We hope that this brief review serves to stiffen the concept against the risk that
popularity and widespread application render it overly malleable. We have argued
that environmental governance specifi cally articulates the economic with the politi-
cal, drawing attention to the relationships between institutional capacities and social
action. In so doing, the term calls into question state-centric understandings of power
and highlights the role of non-state actors - NGOs, supra-national agencies, social
movements, or private fi rms - in allocating, administering and regulating environ-
ments and resources. Governance occurs at multiple sites and scales, which extend
beyond those of formal institutions to include practices and norms through which
key categories - nature, environment, citizens and resources - are contested, affi rmed
and reproduced. As an analytical framework, then, environmental governance
provides a tool for examining the complex and multi-scalar institutional arrange-
ments, social practices and actors engaged in environmental decision making.
But just as the language of governance highlights coherence and articulation in
political and economic processes, so can it conceal dynamics of power, divergence
and confl ict that inhere in the process of managing resources and environments.
Analyses of environmental governance can, therefore, lapse into a shallow institu-
