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- Convenors:
-
Michael Bollig
(University of Cologne)
Romie Nghitevelekwa (University of Namibia)
Thomas Widlok (University of Cologne)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- Climate change
- Location:
- Room 1199
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The panel traces travelling models of nature and nature conservation . While many European conservationists derive their ideas on wilderness from their experiences in Africa, conservation measures in Africa are often developed along European or North American models of nature protection.
Long Abstract:
Although the area under nature protection is much larger in Africa than in Europe, many of the models of nature and for nature conservation involved have been imported into Africa from elsewhere. Models range widely from fortress protection to concepts of community-based approaches and "working landscapes". In this panel, we invite contributions that investigate the exchange between Africa and Europe with regard to models of nature, of natural and human-induced environmental change and nature conservation. We are particularly interested in how models that travelled between continents were locally adapted and changed in the process. Of special interest here are the reciprocal effects of the exchange: Many Europeans derive their current ideas of nature as wilderness from experiences in Africa. Similarly, many administrators and conservation agents in Africa have received training abroad. Finally, many local people in various parts of Africa have a very varied experience with nature conservation measures. We will seek to establish, how much of that local knowledge finds its way to Europe and what could facilitate a more symmetrical flow of models.
With environmental change at a global scale, there is a growing need for orchestrated action and the pooling of knowledge. This applies not only to effective measures to protect nature as a cross-continental living environment for humans but also to the affective involvement of humans who participate in "the nature that they are themselves" as living bodies. This session therefore seeks to not only compare management strategies but also the underlying cultural models of nature, the existing expectations and sentiments that may hamper or facilitate mutual exchange and trans-continental dialogue.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Although the Ethiopian exceptionalism as a country without colonial history asserts that it was not influenced by colonial history, a critical analysis of the discourses and practices of nature conservation in the country reveals that Ethiopia shares much in common with other African countries.
Paper long abstract:
The paper sheds some light on epistemological conversation and contestation or what could be termed as cross-fertilisation of forms of knowledge about human-nature relations with reference to conservation practices and discourses in Africa. In contrast to the binary division between the "West" and the "Rest" in areas of knowledge production (ontologies and epistemologies), this paper argues that our knowledges about human-nature relations both in Africa are constantly in conversation and contestation with Western environmental knowledge, practices and discourses. In the case of Ethiopia, for example, despite the absence of colonial experience in the country's political history, nature conservation practices have been similar with other African countries - protectionist fortress conservation approaches were put in place under successive regimes. Based on fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia over the period of six years (2012-2018) at different intervals, I argue that indigenous epistemological orientations about human-nature relations are often in contestation with Western dualist perspectives that dichotomises the relationship as inherently incompatible. On the other hand, notions of valuing wild animals for tourism, forests for climate change protection and the entire biodiversity for different ecosystem services are where both epistemologies converge though specific cases require cultural understandings.
Paper short abstract:
Based on ethnographic research in a Namibian conservancy, I reflect on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) as attempted temporal fix to the 'nature crisis' opposed to the attempted spatial fix in fortress conservation.
Paper long abstract:
Based on ethnographic research in the Namibian Salambala conservancy, I argue that community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a temporalized fix for the 'nature crisis' after the spatial fix ('fortress conservation') failed. CBNRM can thus be conceived as a 'timescape' aimed at synchronising people and their environment. In doing so, CBNRM provides the logic for this synchronisation, namely answering 'Why is synchronisation necessary?', 'What should be synchronised?' and 'How should synchronisation be achieved?'.
Temporalized nature conservation should be understood as right step towards convivial nature conservation, as it is aimed at synchronization instead of spatially separating 'nature' and 'culture' and thereby externalising the 'nature crisis'. At least two points remain problematic, however.
First, synchronisation is a political issue. Conservancy members have little power over deciding on the three fundamental questions of synchronisation. Instead of enabling developing their own vision how to synchronize with their environment, Salambala members are nudged towards perceiving wildlife as capitalist resource to be made legible and governable through methods of modern bureaucratic statecraft. Here as elsewhere, Western hegemonic logics are reproduced in the process.
Secondly, synchronisation does not usually proceed without friction, and unintended consequences remain. In the case of Salambala, I encountered much frustration among members who contradicted the official representations as success story. Many were frustrated by a lack of 'development projects', late and insufficient compensation payments and unequal access to conservation benefits. This contributed to a general feeling of being in a state of waiting to catch up with the 'developed' global North.
Paper short abstract:
"Nature" and "wilderness", whatever their cultural conceptualization across Africa and Europe, have been discussed first and foremost as places, localized in personal or global space. In this paper I investigate the temporal aspect of constructions of nature and wilderness.
Paper long abstract:
"Nature" and "wilderness", whatever their cultural conceptualization across Africa and Europe, have been discussed first and foremost as places, localized in personal or global space. In this paper I investigate the temporal aspect of constructions of nature and wilderness.
The temporal dimension of nature and wilderness is less easy to pinpoint than its spatial dimension, which is often associated with remoteness and distance. Consequently, the first part of this paper is an attempt to take stock of various time frames that we find in conceptualizations of nature and wilderness. For both, Africa and Europe, these time frames can be highly variable. In the European context the link between nature and eternity has been highlighted (Cronon) but also as a-an idealized homeostatsis in sustainability concepts (Radkau). In the African context the relation between nature and culture, bush and town is often one of seasonality, of a rhythmic to and fro as it has been described for agriculturalists (Jackson). African hunter-gatherers, by contrast, seem to grant every non-human species its own time rhythm and life cycle which is reflected in non-homogenized time frames. The second part of this paper looks at examples of what happens when there are clashes of different time frames. How much coordination and standardization of time frames are necessary for coordinated human environmental action? And what is the role of non-human agents in this?
Paper short abstract:
This paper sheds new light on travelling concepts of the (built) environment between Africa and Europe by first concentrating on a case study of such transcontinental exchange, before then discussing a case study of conceptual South-South relationships to overcome center and periphery concepts.
Paper long abstract:
This paper sheds new light on the question of travelling concepts of the (built) environment between Africa and Europe by first concentrating on a case study of such transcontinental exchange including notions of physical and epistemic violence, and the legacies of colonialism, before then discussing a second case study of conceptual South-South relationships. Caribbean scholars such as Édouard Glissant have long drawn on the image of the mangrove to conceptualize transcultural entanglements, interactions, and exchange. Focusing on coastal East Africa, a region physically covered by mangrove trees, whose built environment, however, is no less characterized by wide-ranging networks, connectivity, and liminality than these forests growing at the threshold of land and sea, while both are also frequently entangled - in the case of overgrown ruins, for example, and their representation in photography etc. - this paper investigates complex intersections between the natural and built environment, connectivity, resistance, and entanglements between the local and the global. A discussion of the productivity of the concept of mangrove aesthetics between the Caribbean and coastal East Africa will thereby allow to test this case of a possible conceptual South-South relationship to overcome traditional notions of center and periphery and to provide a counter example to the conceptual exchange between Africa and Europe, before making finally clear, how also analyses of the liminal spaces along the Swahili coast can make pointed contributions to current debates in transcultural art history today - also far beyond East Africa.