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Drawing on a year of ethnographic fieldwork on the Galapagos Islands, conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021), this article argues that the multiple geographical imaginaries of the archipelago as a 'laboratory' or 'pristine nature' that are imposed on inhabitants by external institutions and powerful elites have a twofold impact on farmers, fishers, and those who do not benefit from these top-down conceptualizations. First, Galapagueños view their life in the archipelago as that of a prison because of the bureaucratic restrictions placed on them as part of a broader ideology of fortress conservation. Second, despite the pernicious impacts that external geographical imaginaries have on the politics and economics of the islands, farmers yearn for a deeper sense of coexistence with the community and the environment. Accordingly, Ingold's concept of a lifeworld can be used to describe the everyday dwelling of the archipelago's inhabitants and their complex social and environmental relations.
Keywords: Galapagos Islands, neoliberal respatialization, conservationist paradigm, political ecology, bureaucracy, fortress conservation, lifeworld
How to Cite: Stimson, J. R. (2026) “The geographical imaginaries of Galapagos: Scientific laboratory, tourist paradise, bureaucratic prison, or lifeworld? ”, Journal of Political Ecology. 33(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.10402