Paper short abstract:

This paper ethnographically engages with technologies and practices of governing wildlife in a region of Kerala, India, renowned for its severe human-wildlife conflicts. It explores how human-elephant relations are co-produced in the process of managing nature and humans at the forest frontier.

Paper long abstract:

In times of rapid species extinction, ensuring the survival of the world's remaining mega-fauna is the source of much anxiety for contemporary conservationists. In India, charismatic mammals such as the tiger and the elephant have special conservation priority. The Indian Forest Department, conservation organizations, urban wildlife activists, celebrities and private companies work together in saving the nation's iconic animals. However, conservation is a contested issue in India, whose population has reached 1,2 billion. This paper ethnographically engages with wildlife conservation in a densely populated region of Kerala, South India, which is renowned for its severe human-wildlife conflicts. By exploring technologies and practices of governing people and wildlife in the region, the aim is to understand how these disharmonious human-animal interrelationships between have been co-produced over time. The paper argues that a critical political ecology of conservation needs to go beyond its present human-centered focus and take non-humans and interspecies relationships into account.