Sustainable hunting: The production of governable space through global civil society

Global governance is constituted by state and non-state actors in pursuit of the best outcomes for any particular substantive issue, and the production of global governance must evaluate many interests from diverse stakeholders. International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are particularly crucial in contributing to deliberative and participatory governance on the global stage, a necessary condition for adequately addressing conflicting civic epistemologies as well as global democratic deficits. However, often INGOs in fact help to produce governance outcomes that have not incorporated diverse civic epistemologies as they are expected. This dissertation investigates reasons why this may occur, particularly surrounding environmental issues. INGOs socially construct prescriptive governance narratives which contribute to the coproduction of knowledge-claims and political order in many contexts. The processes of narrative construction are instrumentally conditioned in formal and informal ways, particularly in the extent to which certain knowledge claims become acceptable to any given INGO. These social processes across INGOs often lead to similar prescriptive narratives that do not fully consider the complexities of particular management contexts. This dissertation argues that such outcomes are a result of the embedded instrumental rationality that informs processes of narrative construction. Understanding the embodiment and reproduction of instrumental rationality across INGOs can also help to explain why particular management systems appear so similar in many contexts, even when those management systems may not produce the best outcomes possible or adequately address conflicting civic epistemologies. This dissertation takes into consideration hunting as an illustrative environmental governance issue. Hunting is an issue of contention in the ways it may best be managed and valued, yet across environmental INGOs a relatively similar model of governance is often prescribed in various forms, that of 'sustainable hunting'. This is due to the pervasiveness of instrumentality that elucidates similar ontological and structural mechanisms for social interaction across environmental INGOs. This instrumentality also underpins the way scientific knowledge claims are accepted and the extent to which particular local stakeholders are perceived as legitimate to INGOs. These findings illustrate how INGOs contribute to and limit the deliberative and participatory space of governance within global civil society.