Critical Conservation
Assembly #1
Communities OF Practice
DECEMBER 3-4, 2026
Conservation has historically been shaped by an understanding of its task as the technical stabilization of material objects, guided by professional expertise and institutional authority. In recent decades, however, the field has increasingly moved beyond this paradigm, embracing participatory, people-centered, relational, and process-oriented approaches to conservation. Yet questions remain about how far these shifts transform the structures through which conservation knowledge, authority, and responsibility are organized—and how they account for the diverse ways in which communities sustain, transmit, and transform cultural knowledge.
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