| Summary: | This thesis applies mixed ethnographic methods at field sites in British Columbia and the United Nations to explore the spread and uptake of the "ecosystem services" idea in different institutions of environmental governance. I explore intensifying efforts by ecosystem services proponents to rearticualte living nature in various ways and with various objectives around the concept. As the idea manifests in a wide array of different policies and practices, I attempt to characterize a process of 'discursive refraction,' and argue ecosystem services represents a kind of chimera, appearing differently to the disparate practitioners interpreting, responding to, and beginning to use it. Consequently, the idea takes on diverse forms and functions in those institutional settings where it appears. I conclude that the discourse of ecosystem services remains a locus of ongoing contestation, which significantly complicates the relationship between what its proponents intend for it, and its ideological, institutional, and ecological consequences.
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