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- Convenors:
-
Pauline von Hellermann
(Sussex)
Clate Korsant (University of Florida)
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- Discussant:
-
Sian Sullivan
(Bath Spa University)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 26 October, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
We are beyond 'people versus parks'. Conservation, communities and anthropology have all changed considerably, making it less clear what 'position' anthropologists should or can take. This panel invites papers exploring new challenges, opportunities and ethical dilemmas in the field and in writing.
Long Abstract:
For anthropologists doing research in conservation areas, our 'position' used to be fairly straightforward: when the creation of new National Parks (etc) involved the exclusion of local groups, our role, if not explicit, was to advocate for the rights and livelihoods of local people. By now, however, many factors have complicated this well-known 'people versus parks' scenario. 'The people' can no longer be imagined as a cohesive interest group (if indeed they ever could). Local actors have multiple and often opposing allegiances and interests between them, including armed loggers and drug traffickers as well environmental activists. And although area protection has largely remained conservation's core principle, 'the park', too, can be many different things: commanding areas and resources of vastly different scale, ranging from large, heavily militarised 'fortress conservation' operations to small community conservation projects with varying degrees of local involvement and 'success'. Radically new conservation models such as Büscher and Fletcher's (post-capitalist, post nature/culture dichotomy) 'convivial conservation' are also making headway. Meanwhile, anthropology itself has embraced explicit applied and activist engagement as well beyond-human, multi-species approaches that further complicate 'people' allegiances, all-the-while grappling both with the imperial roots it shares with conservation and the climate and ecological emergency.
In this context this panel invites papers exploring positionality: reflections on difficult fieldwork experiences, decisions and ethics, and on new ways of researching and writing anthropologically (and ethically) about conservation. We also welcome contributions by anthropologists who may themselves have become conservationists or vice versa.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 26 October, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Anthropologists can continue contributing ethnographically how people live with and navigate intensive and imposed conservations efforts. Paying attention to reciprocal relations, conservation is not only ecological and economic question but ethical, emotional and existential.
Paper long abstract:
As a result of intensive and imposed conservation efforts by transnational organisations and funders (the World Bank, IMF), environmental conservation agencies (the WWF, IUCN) and bilateral development work (e.g. German, USAID), the Marojejy National Park was established in 1998 in rural northeastern Madagascar. People, mainly the Tsimihety ethnicity with a history of fleeing away from coercive and commanding state practices, access to the park was banned and people living in the vicinities of the park were recruited in ecotourism activities while some participated in illegal logging activities in the park area.
Anthropologists can contribute ethnographically by documenting and discussing how people live with and navigate intensive and imposed conservation efforts and how people transform and are transformed by them. Focusing on the Tsimihety way of living, their concepts, practices and historical processes concerning e.g., diverse relations and possibilities with conservation efforts and resources in the park, rice and vanilla cultivation, land ownership, funeral rituals and relationships with different places, plants, animals and spirits, revealed an important crosscutting theme. Reciprocity, an expectation for giving, exchanging or making corresponding actions between selected human beings, plants, animals and spirits challenged fortress conservation activities and socioeconomic and temporal differences between park visitors and people. Paying attention to these reciprocal relations, I highlight not only ecological and economic aspects but ethical, emotional and existential dimensions related with conservation.
Paper short abstract:
This study explores the case of community attitudes to conservation and the Half-Earth vision in Nigeria. In the Half-Earth vision, conservationists, scientists, and policy-makers work together with indigenous people and local populations without compromising the interests of wildlife.
Paper long abstract:
This study explores the case of community attitudes to conservation and the Half-Earth vision in Nigeria. In the Half-Earth vision, conservationists, scientists, and policy-makers work together with indigenous people and local populations without compromising the interests of wildlife and ecosystems. Such efforts are aimed at preventing the ecological collapse and restoring the balance between local communities living in proximity to protected areas and biodiversity. The Half-Earth vision requires decolonizing nonhuman species through marshaling ecocentric philosophy, animal sentience science, and, crucially, local communities’ support. While the studies of community attitudes to the wildlife are accumulating, there is a shortage of data on attitudes to the Half-Earth vision in developing countries. This study aims to address this gap by discussing the pilot study of the attitudes to conservation and the Half-Earth vision of communities living around Yankari Game Reserve, Bauchi State in Nigeria. This study finds that community representatives stand open to dialogue with local conservationists. It appears, however, that surveyed villagers have greater understanding of particular species than of general trends in biodiversity decline, and tend to rely on the authority of the elders or officials for guidance. Other factors affecting biodiversity, such as growing human populations, climate change, and bushmeat hunting are considered as constraints to the Half-Earth vision. Educational programs targeted at empowerment of individual community members to speak against poaching, but also education targeted at development of basic literacy, numeracy and professional skills to counter poverty, as well as education in family planning is recommended.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how I found myself participating in the current effort to rescue Okomu National Park in southern Nigeria – an effort that is both quintessentially neoliberal and highly militarised. I reflect on how a number of different, conflicting ethical considerations informed my decisions
Paper long abstract:
In 2019 I returned to my first fieldwork site, Okomu National Park in Edo State, Nigeria, where I had conducted my doctoral research on forest governance in 2001-3. My visit coincided with the formation of a new Okomu National Park Steering Committee, which I was invited to join. Subsequently, with ongoing problems of large-scale illegal logging within the park regularly reported to me by one of the park rangers – my former research assistant and long term friend – I found myself actively participating in the formation of a collaborative effort to ‘rescue’ Okomu National Park – a rescue operation that is not only very much part of a neoliberal, semi-privatised takeover of parts of conservation in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa, but also highly militarised. In this paper I reflect on how I came to take on this role, and on the different ethical considerations and obligations (to friends, elephants, activists) that have informed my decisions as well as created ongoing dilemmas and conflicts. Overall I explore whether ‘Faustian Pacts’ like the one I made are a good option for anthropologists researching conservation.