看得見與看不見的地景：台灣高山農業的政治生態學

Abstract

政府官員、非政府組織、專家和一般大眾，常將現今高山農業視為主要環境問題的導因，如土壤侵蝕和生物多樣性的喪失。因此高山農業已然象徵了一個環境退化的地景。然而，高山農業對於高山人民而言，同樣是重要的生計來源和改善他們經濟處境的方式，尤其是農民和原住民群體，使得高山農業位處在一個環境保護和經濟發展之間的張力之中。本論文將以台灣的溫帶水果生產作為案例，意欲研究張力的浮現和影響。我的分析取徑來自地理學家的將地景作為一種「觀看方式」的理解，以及政治生態學中的「廣泛的政治經濟」和「邊緣性」的概念。透過分析環山部落所收集的民族誌資料，我認為近來的主流論述已經創造了一個過於簡單化的外界之「觀看方式」，然而，卻忽略了歷史的和人們如何去實踐高山農業的過程。這樣的忽視因而加深了台灣的人與環境之間的分離。

People, including government officials and NGO professionals, now often regard mountain agriculture as one major cause of environmental problems, such as soil erosion and loss of biodiversity. As a result, mountain agriculture has symbolized a landscape of environmental degradation. However, mountain agriculture is also a critical source of livelihood support for mountain people, especially peasants and indigenous groups. Mountain people, therefore, have also practiced mountain agriculture as a way to improve their economic conditions. In consequence, mountain agriculture is situated within a tension between environmental conservation and economic development. This paper, by taking the temperate fruit production in Taiwan as an example, intends to investigate the emergence and effects of the tension. My analytic approach is from geographers’ understandings of landscape as a “way of seeing”, “broadly defined political economy” and “marginality” concept of political ecology. Through analyzing the ethnographic data collected in an indigenous community called Huanshan, I argue that current mainstream discourse has created an oversimplified “way of seeing” to denounce the mountain agriculture. This oversimplified “way of seeing” from the outside, however, has ignored the historical processes and people’s practices in developing mountain agriculture. This ignorance has then furthered the chasm between people and environment in Taiwan.