Ethnoprimatology without Conservation: The Political Ecology of Farmer–Green Monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) Relations in St. Kitts, West Indies

The driving force behind the mixed-methods ethnoprimatological endeavor is to effectively conserve nonhuman primates. In this article, I argue that ethnoprimatological research can meet this goal only by discarding the purely science views of conservation that dominate the current literature. By considering more than local ecological perceptions, their ideological agendas, and their levels of power via a political ecology framework, ethnoprimatologists can simultaneously socialize the ecosystems we study and contribute our ethological skills to advance traditionally humanist disciplines’ increased attention to a wider field of agents and structures that matter. I support these arguments through an examination of farmer–green monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) relations in St. Kitts. Kittitian farmers’ narrative revealed three scales that collectively construct what is locally known as “the monkey problem:” increased rates of local contact between farmers and monkeys on farms, contestations over the future of St. Kitts’ land, and global debates over appropriate strategies to manage the monkey population. I show that although “the monkey problem” in St. Kitts does not involve an endangered or threatened species, my analysis of this construct has implications for primate populations that are threatened. This is because the root cause of this “problem”—the globalized discourse of nature conservation overpowering and problematizing local views about people–animal interactions—characterizes so many of the locales home to primates of conservation concern.