Scientific-technological knowledge maintains the anthropocentric power-pattern and exploitive attitude with regard to nature, but sustainability science asks for an integration of territorial and decontextualized knowledge systems. Visual participatory methodologies involving diverse local stakeholder facilitate dialogue on environmental and sustainability issues. Inspired by visual ethnography and mediated discourse analysis, the present article uses semiological analysis to reconstruct the depicted narratives on the nature-society system in drawings representing “regional development”. The drawings were elaborated in a series of participatory workshops involving university faculty and students, regional government and non-governmental organizations and farmers from local communities in the northern Amazonian region of Peru. The analysis reveals a prevailing anthropo and technology centered, “colonial” conception of the nature-society system, and a marginalization of alternative narratives. Beyond confirming the potential for visual participatory methods to enhance multi-stakeholder dialogue, it demonstrates how semiological analysis can be used to deepen an understanding of the cultural, organizational and technological constraints facing critical, trans-disciplinary efforts to decolonize the technology-centered, anthropocentric mainstream worldview of nature and society.

科技知识保持着人类对自然的权力模式和对自然的剥削态度，但可持续性科学要求整合领域和去上下文化的知识系统。涉及不同地方利益相关者的视觉参与方法促进了有关环境和可持续性问题的对话。受视觉人种志和介导话语分析的启发，本文使用符号学分析来重构代表“区域发展”的自然社会系统中所描绘的叙述。在一系列参与性讲习班中详细阐述了这些图纸，这些讲习班的成员包括大学教师和学生，区域政府和非政府组织以及秘鲁北部亚马逊地区的当地社区的农民。分析揭示了以人类和技术为中心的流行，自然-社会系统的“殖民”概念以及替代性叙述的边缘化。