This paper proposes the notion of ‘ontological strategies’ to argue that deforestation is far from being a singular phenomenon whose constitution as an environmental crime is an unproblematic, straightforward bureaucratic operation involving the direct representation of the world “out there”. In line with debates in (post-)actor-network theory (Annemarie Mol, 2002), the paper highlights how deforestation is at the same time more than one (since it manifests itself differently across settings and practices) but less than many (since it is still linked to a specific territory). Thus the paper highlights the role of ontological strategies: local practices aiming at ontological singularity/multiplicity by establishing/questioning the location, perpetrator and intention behind deforestation. Furthermore, I show how the target of ontological strategies is usually the ethos behind a given statement, and how the production of singularity via particular technologies, such as satellite imaging and geographic information systems, is closely related to the adoption of scientific rhetoric by Amazonian rangers. From this examination the article concludes that deforestation is ontologically multiple, political, rhetorical and instrumental rather than constant across time and space.

Raoni Rajão is a senior lecturer in social studies of science & technology in the Department of Production Engineering and a researcher with the Institute of Advanced Transdisciplinary Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil. He also teaches in the graduate programmes in Production Engineering and Environmental Analysis at UFMG and in Social and Political Sciences of the Environment at Radboud University in the Netherlands. His research crosses postcolonial studies, environmental politics and science studies. He has collaborated with different agencies of the United Nations and the German Technical Cooperation (GIZ), and has advised senior officials from the State Government of Minas Gerais and the Brazilian Federal Government in the creation of environmental policy. He has published in Global Environmental Politics, Theory, Culture & Society, edited a special issue of Science, Technology & Human Values, and has published in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).