| This study explores the role that environmental conservation organizations play in the development of civil society, specifically in Panama. While civil society has been lauded by development institutions, civil society organizations and political theorists as a prime actor in the establishment of democratic norms of practice, the essence, existence and functioning of any civil society must be understood to be geo-historically dependent. Panama is an excellent example of why this is so. Panama's own history is tied to its political and economic function as a nation that services the interests of other nations, most recently characterized by relations particular to the Panama Canal, the Colón Free Trade Zone, the off-shore banking industry as well as the unofficial money laundering, drug and arms trade industries. The political and economic developments in Panama related to its history of service cannot be separated from the rhetorical and/or practical efforts now being made by international and national governmental and nongovernmental to strengthen democratic structures through the coherence of civil participatory organizations into an actual civil society. This necessities and challenges associated with this coherence of individual organizations into a wider societal web, which draws not only from a romanticized lower, rural class, but from the participation of all sectors and classes of society, is the subject of this dissertation. I draw on the rhetoric and practices centrally organized by the establishment of and functioning relationships specific to the FIDECO environmental trust fund. This fund exists through the combined efforts of the government of Panama, USAID, the Nature Conservancy and, now, Fundación NATURA. By focusing on this trust fund, the issues of traditionalized formal and informal relationships, scales of influence, economic and political disparities and power struggles, long-term international relations and so-called corruption are each foregrounded as key facets to understanding the identity and possibilities for civil society in Panama. Folklorists are specifically addressed in my efforts to expand on the already challenged notion of the folk, of context, of process, of authenticity and purity. Civil society is a prominent concept that folklorists will benefit by addressing in our desire to increase the cross-pollination between of the theories and interests our discipline and those of others. |
