Drawing near: Conservation by proximity in Okinawa's coral reef

This dissertation is an examination of a form of environmentalism arising in Okinawa's coral reefs, where conservation projects seek to entwine nature and culture by increasing human-environment interactions. I refer to this as conservation by proximity. This conservation approach acknowledges the bodily, sensorial, and cultural dimensions of knowing nature. I find this conservation approach in Okinawa in various projects, some locally based and others run by an international conservation organization at its field station, Sango Mura. I ask how and why this form of conservation arose in Okinawa's coral reefs. How is this conservation by proximity realized? And how did international conservation become emplaced in Japan? This dissertation is based on ethnographic and archival research conducted in Japan over eighteen months of fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2012.;In chapter one, I draw a contrast between environmentalisms that seek to create more distance between people and their environments, and those that seek to draw them near. Conservation by proximity cultivates nearness via multisensory engagement, emplacement, and in its targeting of local, mundane natures. In this conservation ideology the senses, the body, and history become tools that collapse the distance between people and their surroundings. I describe a Japanese cultivated nature ideal in the nearshore sea, satoumi, that many of these projects draw from. Finally, I examine the material and spiritual reasons that the nearshore sea is a site of stewardship to begin with.;Chapter two analyzes marine conservation projects in western Okinawa that use the senses of gustation and tactility to create environmental awareness. I primarily address Sango Mura projects that cultivate community interest in the marine realm via giant clam seeding and tidal weir restoration. In these projects, insight comes from touching and tasting the environment. This sensory engagement links the community and conservation. I illustrate how Sango Mura's conservation has become more emplaced over time, and these projects are representative of the direction in which their work has shifted since it was established in 2000.;In chapter three I analyze one prominent coral restoration project on Okinawa island. This project involves participants in the planting of coral fragments that are later transplanted with messages to an undersea reef. Participants possess their corals for an hour or less, but along the way they layer meanings on their coral restoration experiences. I analyze the messages they leave alongside the corals in light of religious and cultural practices, examining how participants entwine coral in social relationships and in so doing, make the undersea realm resonate with sociality.;In chapter four I address how this conservation of proximity arose in Okinawan coral reefs. Once described in Japan as the final development frontier, the sea is now a fragile space that needs protection. I trace the rise of interest in living corals since the time of reversion to japan in 1972 by looking at how the sea appears in events like the Ocean Expo '75 and Sango Week 2012. I compare and contrast these events with dispatches from a marine science expedition that appeared in an Ishigaki newspaper in the 1930s. Each of these events concentrate information in space and time in attempts to make people care about the sea. Each event in its own way strives to make the familiar sea strange as a way to create interest and affect for the marine realm.;In chapter five I return to the nature ideal satoumi, analyzing it as an agent of change in international conservation networks. Failures to circulate certain natures within the network challenge the notion of this global community. I describe Japanese discourses of exceptionalism with respect to nature, and the kinds of marine interventions that conservationists argue emerge from these 'Asian natures." International organizations like the one analyzed in this dissertation are embroiled in diverse types of work, some tied to wilderness ideals and some not. Even within this organization, Japanese conservationists associated their overarching work with nature ideals that emerged in the West even as they worked under different philosophies in their projects. I illustrate how Japanese staff police the boundaries of Western nature, failing to circulate their own nature ideal of satoumi around the international network.;In the conclusion I return to the idea of conservation by proximity, exploring the limits of this conservation approach in other places.