On November 1, 2019 I received a doctorate degree from Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. The thesis that was successfully defended can be accessed at the following link: Environmental Governance in Bhutan

This research is a culmination of a multi-scale analysis of environmental governance in Bhutan which starts globally by positioning GNH as a “Revolutionary Imaginary” (Gibson & Graham 2008), then moves to examine national conservation policy, highlights local impacts of the ecotourism industry, and investigates subject formation at the individual level. This work examines ecotourism as a discursive cultural process, departing from traditional analyses that focus on economic and environmental outcomes, to provide a nuanced investigation of how communities/individuals adopt novel perspectives and behaviour patterns as they enrol in the ecotourism sector. While the work is critical of the neoliberal nature of the sector, even in how it operates within Bhutan that is often characterized as anti-capitalist, I offer hopeful recommendations that seek to change current trajectories in order to find synergies with the intent of the GNH agenda.


Gibson- Graham, J.K. (2008). “Place-Based Globalism”: A new Imaginary of Revolution. Rethinking Marxism 20(4), 559-664.

Montes, J. (2019). Environmental Governance in Bhutan: Ecotourism, Environmentality and Cosmological Subjectivities (Doctoral dissertation). Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands.