Distinguishing Institutional From Epistemological Reform in Primate Conservation Science's Decolonialization

ABSTRACT

Primate conservation science is at a formative moment in its engagement with decolonial frameworks, and the direction that engagement takes will determine whether the project's most important contributions are effectively pursued. Decolonial writing in and adjacent to primatology draws simultaneously on two analytically distinct dimensions of reform, the institutional and the epistemological, without always distinguishing between them. Institutional reform concerns who conducts research, governs conservation decisions, and benefits from outcomes. Epistemological reform concerns how traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and academic ecological knowledge (AEK) relate as forms of evidence in the production of scientific claims. These dimensions interact and often reinforce one another, but they require different interventions, evidence, and criteria of success, and maintaining clarity about which is being pursued strengthens rather than weakens the decolonial project. The empirical evidence on failures of primate conservation efforts points consistently toward governance structures, political economies, and patterns of community exclusion as primary drivers, precisely the targets the institutional dimension of the framework is best equipped to address. TEK is most valuable to conservation science when treated as a genuinely complementary but epistemically distinct tradition, not as a substitute for scientific inference. A decolonial primatology that is precise about this distinction will concentrate its reform energy where the evidence indicates it will have most traction, while protecting the integrity of both knowledge systems it seeks to bring into productive dialogue.