Producing space(s),representing landscapes: maps and resource conflicts in Trinidad

Abstract

In the mid-1990s Trinidadians witnessed a hotly contested resource conflict in the Nariva Swamp, a wetland located on the east coast of the island. This conflict resulted in a stricter regime of environmental protection and greater influence of conservation-oriented government agencies, and demonstrates the role of representations in influencing spatial practice. Drawing on the critical landscape literature, post-structural political ecology and the work of Henri Lefebvre, this article views landscapes as visualized dimensions of space, produced in accordance with specific ideologies and material priorities. In this case, linkages between hegemonic discourses on nature and conceptualizations of local practices lent the power of ‘representation of space’ to conservationiosts fighting to evict commercial rice growers from the wetlands. These hegemonic representations were refracted and reformulated by swamp dwellers, who conceptualized their everyday practices through verbal and cartographic counter-representations.