Presentation short abstract

Ethnographic research over the past 30 years shows that the notion of conserving pure nature is, from a local emic perspective, schizophrenic. However, how can this be addressed when the term involves significant discursive and ontological dimensions that are central to conservation capitalism?

Presentation long abstract

The presentation will discuss the need to move beyond the term 'conservation', as requested by indigenous and local representatives, and address their view that the term includes an insane element. Exposing this aspect could strengthen radical alternatives. Drawing on long-term fieldwork experience in protected areas in Africa, such as Kafue Flats in Zambia, Lewa in Kenya and Niokolo-Koba Biosphere in Senegal, the talk will illustrate how the same idea of pure nature and conservation, in its various forms ranging from 'fortress' to 'participatory' conservancies, including zoos and cultural and biosphere heritage sites, comes with a double-bind way of thinking and strange but economically productive strategies that leave local people puzzled. It is not only that people's previous commons are seized and their resource governance institutions undermined, but also that landscapes are misread as pure nature, and local people are blamed for their very identity as creators and caretakers of the world in which they live. This is often accompanied by the criminalisation and infantilisation of local communities, which is often supported by billionaires. The presentation also shows how local actors try to react to this form of productive pathology of conservation from their view. This ranges from strategies discussed by James Scott as 'weapons of the weak' to what could be termed 'new politics machines', rephrasing James Ferguson's 'Anti-Politics Machine'.