*2.1. Governmentality*

Top-down governmentality is a traditional strategy for governing a nation state, focusing on the techniques and relationalities of the rules of the government [4,5]. Therefore, the procedure of the implementation and dissemination of policy by the bureaucratic administration is key [6]. Hence, the government usually imagines the local place based on a simple classification and quantification methodology to govern the natural resources without local knowledge [7]. In other words, the local environmental knowledge system has usually been regarded as nonrational for managing and exploiting natural resources such that the local knowledge holders are considered as non-specialists or non-technical experts in local natural-resource management systems [8].

Secondly, bureaucracy, in one way, distracts from local historical meanings and the cultural context of local natural resources and, in another sense, relocates them into a different context, which is usually defined by the urban experience of managing the natural resources [9]. Furthermore, the bureaucracy often relies on a certain expert system as the bridge between the state and locality to produce professional knowledge, which usually does not match local understandings of ecosystems [9].

From another perspective, governmentality cannot be regarded merely by the government but also by the local actors. Actor-network theory (ANT) implies that governance should be regarded in terms of the interaction between the government and the local actors [10]. The local actors would also represent the agency to interpret the guidance from the state and redefine it for the locality [11].

In short, the government usually neglects the local knowledge of a place, adopting a "rational" methodology to manage and exploit natural resources. Local actors do not readily accept one-way governance from the government; rather, they try to negotiate it. It is important to present the local knowledge as a "rational" system for managing local natural resources. There needs to be a discussion of what constitutes "rational", as there is a disconnect between government policy and local knowledge systems. Therefore, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) becomes the way to negotiate with the government.
