Paper short abstract:

This contribution will build a symmetrical history of conservationism, integrating both human and non-human actors. In so doing, it will excavate expressions of opposition to coercive conservation and contribute towards an approach that goes beyond colonially-entrenched conservationist categories.

Paper long abstract:

Academic social sciences narratives on conservation policies tend to oppose the interests of humans and animals. This is especially the case concerning the study of the colonially-implemented African national parks. Political science and historical studies have rightly focused on expropriation policies involving the exclusion of thousands of African rural people from the parks and on human-wildlife conflicts in border areas. However, such studies have neglected the environmental and animal aspects of conservationism.

This contribution, which interweaves social history, environmental history, and animal studies insights, will rely on micro-historical studies of conservationist (post)colonial laboratories in the DRCongo in order to build a symmetrical history from below of conservationism integrating the human and non-human actors involved in conservation networks. In so doing, it will 1) shed light on the neglected animal aspects of coercive conservationism, such as taming practices and mass culling programmes aiming to confine animals within the park borders; 2) address the historically intimate relationship between coercive conservation and exploitation, by examining the parallel development of state-imposed national parks and mining and agro-industrial schemes; 3) shed light on expressions of opposition to coercive conservationist practices on the grounds of their impact on both rural communities and animals, and excavate alternative historical options, which have been veiled by the hegemony of (post)colonial, state-controlled conservationism. By combining empirical and methodological insights, this paper hopes to contribute towards thinking beyond, rather than within, colonially-entrenched epistemological categories, such as the protection of species and enclosures, rather than of animals and socio-environmental landscapes.

Paper short abstract:

Foodways are felt to be increasingly unhealthy and unnatural in West Tanzania. I argue that human and non-human health is understood to be threatened as plants and animals lose their 'nature' by being prevented from growing, eating and healing according to their own paths.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates concerns about the health of plants, humans and animals in relation to conservation conflicts and changing foodways in West Tanzania. The shift away from ‘natural’ foodways and towards food systems pervaded by (agro)chemicals, sugar and imported palm oil is felt to cause a surge in new diseases and a general loss of vitality. Foods that are considered ‘kiasili’ (natural in Kiswahili) such as honey, bushmeat or ‘indigenous’ chicken are gaining popularity in reaction to the anxiety around unhealthy diets. The way West Tanzanians often value natural food by virtue of its distance from human pollution echoes conservation discourses of pristine nature. This resemblance, however, belies what is actually at stake for my interlocutors living near conserved forests in Katavi. I argue that humans and non-humans are understood to be implicated in each other’s health, and that agricultural and conservation pressures are making it increasingly difficult for humans and non-humans to ‘maintain life together’. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with beekeepers, farmers and herbal healers, I show how the relevant logic here is about how to coexist rather than protect non-humans from human presence. For instance, not only kept animals such as broiler chicken, but also animals living in highly protected areas, are said to be weakened by being forcefully fed and treated with toxic medicines. Instead, the nature of non-human organisms is seen to be taken away when forced to ‘grow before their time’ through agrochemicals, and prevented from following their own diets and ways of self-medicating.

Paper short abstract:

Based on research of a rainforest restoration project of oil palm elimination in Aceh and Northern Sumatra, this research contributes to the literature in anthropology on the inter-imbrication of care, conservation, and ruination in the context of ecological crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Since mid-2000, the expansion of oil palm (elaeis guineensis) has been depicted as the major contributor of deforestation. In Gunung Leuser National Park, Aceh and Northern Sumatra, Indonesia, environmental agents have been dismantling oil palm grown within forest area as an act of caring for the rainforest, under the banner of forest restoration and conservation. Based on 1,5 years of ethnographic fieldwork, archival research and follow-up interviews, my research unsettles the binary between care and ruination. For some environmental agents, caring for the rainforest necessarily means destroying not only oil palm, but also the soil and the rainforest itself. From the vernacular knowledge of smallholders whose oil palm were being demolished, the act of bulldozing oil palm and leaving the ruined landscape abandoned - in the hope of achieving a natural forest regeneration-would instead ignite uncontrollable forest fire. The first vegetation to grow would be grassland (including imperata cylindrica) easily flammable when this grass, especially in an emptied landscape, got blown away by the wind that creates friction between itself and lead to fire that reach a wide range of forest area. Meanwhile, the weight of the bulldozer will harden the soil itself. Thus for the smallholder, caring for rainforest necessarily means cultivating it, sometimes with oil palm but always intercropped with other crops, which entails meticulous and intergenerational care for the soil and its complex organisms. This research contributes to the literature in anthropology on the inter-imbrication of care, conservation, and ruination in the context of ecological crisis.

Paper short abstract:

This talk will explore how Australian Buddhists see their relationships with local ecologies as marked by continuous interactions and ongoing work. Part of this approach involves listening to and noticing native animals who can signal mundane and supra-mundane aspects of ecological health.

Paper long abstract:

This talk will explore animals as companions and co-communicators in contemporary Australian Buddhism. It will elucidate certain practices that attempt to develop respect and awareness of other creatures, including the occasional tiger snake that seeks a warm spot under the blanket of an advanced meditator. Labour at an eclectic Buddhist center in southwestern Australia aims to rehabilitate Jarrah forests and is carried out daily by volunteers. Buddhist practice is responsive to this engagement with ecologies. Land care, I am told, is one of the Green Tara’s (a Buddhist Bodhisattva) most active qualities. She is believed to instantiate, and invoked to heighten, the power of environmental movements. Part of this approach involves listening to and noticing the movements of native animals who can signal mundane and supra-mundane aspects of ecological health.

This talk will explore how, in contrast to some Euro-American conservation traditions which embrace the idea of leaving things alone, my Buddhist interlocutors see their relationships with the ecologies of the southwest as marked by continuous interactions and ongoing work. Disturbed ecologies are not left to auto-rewild, nor does such an approach make sense in a place where colonial mismanagement has led to voracious weeds choking rivers and invasive species outcompeting native marsupials. It challenges the assumption that conservation movements are necessarily about ‘letting nature takes its course’, an idea which is saturated in colonial notions of the ‘state-of-nature’, or the case of the enduring myth that Australia was a terra-nullius before European settlement.