广州鳄鱼公园野生动物旅游中的生命权力运作

自然的社会建构是近年来欧美地理学界重新审视人与自然关系的重要理论思潮之一。本文从自然的社会建构视角出发,以福柯“生命权力”的概念为理论工具,通过参与式观察、半结构化访谈和文本分析的方法,深入分析野生动物旅游活动中人与动物互动过程及其权力关系的运作,并展示在此过程中景区、野生动物、政府和NGO等组建的行动者网络。研究发现：① 通过标准化、高科技的管治与保育措施,景区中动物种群的性别、健康与数量等方面得以最大程度的调控,并由此形成了与旅游市场相适应的“生命政治”运作模式;② 景区已经能够熟练地规训野生动物参与各项旅游活动,并在此基础上巧妙地操控游客想要亲近并征服野生动物的双重渴望;③ 不同行动者在协商与制衡中组建的行动者网络,实质上为人对野生动物生命权力的施展提供了合法性与道德性的框架,使其更加紧密地嵌入到社会文化情境之中。研究丰富了野生动物旅游研究的相关理论成果,为人文地理学分析自然与社会的关系提供了新的思考和尝试。

The excise of biopower in wildlife tourism: A case study of Crocodile Park,Guangzhou

"Social construction of nature" has emerged as a new approach within recent Western human geographical agenda in re-examining the relationship between society and nature. In this article, we consider the metaphor of "construction" not only as a social constructionist approach that emphasises the role of power, discourse and text in meaning formation, but also as a network that assemblages human and non-human actors. Based on this formulation, this paper seeks to explore the human-animal relationship and in particular the power relationship in wildlife tourism with an empirical focus on Crocodile Park, Guangzhou. Wildlife tourism which shows animals in their natural habitat is an important part of human's accessibility to experience of nature in the context of late-modernity. Drawing on Foucault's scope of biopower, we investigate the way in which biopower exercises and embeds into the actor network organized by animals, park, government and NGO. We found that: First, in Crocodile Park, management practices imposing on animals have become heavily reliant on the use of disciplinary techniques and biopolitics of animal, for example the population and health control and manipulation of gender, thus to reconcile the park with the changing demands of tourism market. Second, the park not only utilizes a series of disciplinary techniques to generate the “docile bodies” of animals subjected to the tourism activities, but tactfully manipulates tourists' embodied experience towards animals. This paper argues that tourists' embodied experience is embedded into double desires that intend to closely discover animals on the one hand and conquer animals on the other. Third, the exercise of biopower is in an ongoing process of negotiation between different human and non-human actors. We point out that the re-assemblage of actor network in essence provides a legal and moral framework in which biopower is legitimatized and thus can constantly operate in wildlife tourism. In conclusion, we argue that the operation of biopower should not be understood as a representation of social construction, but an outcome of the interaction of society and nature within the actor network. This article seeks to provide a new insight in analyzing the social construction of nature for Chinese human geography.