Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic.

Hensbergen, H. J. van; Fairhead, James; Leach, Melissa

doi:10.2307/2266115

Cited by 28 publications

(43 citation statements)

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“…In contrast, modernist ontology's focus on human use value and its attendant processes of privatization and economization forecloses the myriad other ways in which people interact with the world and erases long-standing relationships to place. In many societies, land is imbued with site-specific meaning, with history written onto the landscape, and place bound up with individual and collective identity (Camacho, 2013;Coggeshall, 2018;Fairhead and Leach, 1996;Heatherington, 2010;Lentz, 2006;Salm on, 2012;Sather, 1990;Shipton, 2009;Takano, 2005). Landscapes and their features can signify relationships to spirits and serve as an archive of past social relations (Di Giminiani, 2015;Fairhead and Leach, 1996;Lentz, 2006;Sather, 1990).…”

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many societies, land is imbued with site-specific meaning, with history written onto the landscape, and place bound up with individual and collective identity (Camacho, 2013;Coggeshall, 2018;Fairhead and Leach, 1996;Heatherington, 2010;Lentz, 2006;Salm on, 2012;Sather, 1990;Shipton, 2009;Takano, 2005). Landscapes and their features can signify relationships to spirits and serve as an archive of past social relations (Di Giminiani, 2015;Fairhead and Leach, 1996;Lentz, 2006;Sather, 1990). For Meratus Dayak of South Kalimantan, Indonesia, the forested landscape is "a site of memory" (Tsing, 2005: 257) and a reservoir and keeper of individual and community history (Tsing, 2005).…”

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Belonging to land is part and parcel of belonging to other people -in groups, networks and open categories." These histories and identities are often made and maintained amid considerable adversity, including colonization (Burman, 2017;Coulthard, 2010;Fairhead and Leach, 1996;Salm on, 2012;Shipton, 2009;Tuck and Yang, 2012), slavery and its aftermath (Coggeshall, 2018), and displacement (Camacho, 2013;Heatherington, 2010).…”

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For Kuranko and Kissi horticulturalists from the Republic of Guinea, land spirits have a parallel society to that of humans, including their own villages that are associated with certain landscape features (large rocks, pools, forest patches). These spirits can help or hinder human activities on the landscape, and a contractual relationship must be established by human first-comers and ritually maintained by their descendants to maintain legitimate access and ensure the land's productivity (Fairhead and Leach, 1996). Among Bajau communities of West Sulawesi, Indonesia, persons must ask permission of spirits before seaweed may grow in that spirit's land (Lowe, 2006).…”

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perceiving humans as inseparable rather than distinct from natural systems would have a further implication of enabling us to more clearly see mutualistic relationships between particular human livelihoods and landscapes-as is widely documented in the literature on anthropogenic and sacred forests (Bal ee, 1989;Fairhead and Leach, 1996;Irvine, 1989); patch modification (Stocks, 1983); and soil enrichment (Frausin et al, 2014;Hecht and Posey, 1989). Embracing such intertwined relationality would enable conservationists to see that nature is culture(d) and that people are not threats but rather a part of landscapes, and together with biodiversity, inseparable from (the reproduction of) place (Basso, 1996;Feld and Basso, 1996;Ingold, 2000; see also : Coulthard, 2010;Lindberg, 2007;Salm on, 2012).…”

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Depuy

Weger

Foster

et al. 2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This paper contributes to global debates on environmental governance by drawing on recent ontological scholarship to ask: What would it mean to ontologically engage the concept of environmental governance? By examining the ontological underpinnings of three environmental governance domains (land, water, biodiversity), we find that dominant contemporary environmental governance concepts and policy instruments are grounded in a modernist ontology which actively shapes the world, making certain aspects and relationships visible while invisibilizing others. We then survey ethnographic and other literature to highlight how such categories and their relations have been conceived otherwise and the implications of breaking out of a modernist ontology for environmental governance. Lastly, we argue that answering our opening question requires confronting the coloniality woven into the environmental governance project and consider how to instead embrace ontological pluralism in practice. In particular, we examine what taking seriously the right to self-determination enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) could mean for acknowledging Indigenous ontologies as systems of governance in their own right; what challenges and opportunities exist for recognizing and translating ontologies across socio-legal regimes; and how embracing the dynamism and hybridity of ontologies might complicate or advance struggles for material and cognitive justice.

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Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Environmental Governance "Invisibilities"mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Depuy

Weger

Foster

et al. 2021

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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Seeing beyond the frames we inherit: A challenge to tenacious conservation narratives

Chignell,

Satterfield

2023

People and Nature

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Natural and social scientists everywhere are struggling to understand how to proceed in the face of continued biodiversity loss and the injustices brought upon people living in and around conservation landscapes. This has resulted in increasing calls for critical reflection on the narratives driving conservation research and practice. Narratives can be understood as part of a larger process of “framing” within an intellectual community, which includes the way studies are defined and discussed. Identifying, reflecting on and even destabilizing entrenched frames can be helpful for understanding when and where our diagnosis or understanding of a problem fails. However, we also need to understand the scholarly processes that create and reify some frames (and not others) over time. We address these needs by developing a mixed‐method approach that integrates qualitative frame analysis and quantitative science mapping to identify the origins of the dominant frame and trace its reproduction in the scientific literature over time. We demonstrate this approach using the case of the Bale Mountains, an internationally recognised centre of species endemism in Ethiopia. Our results show the enduring influence of the perceptions and values of a few early conservation scientists working with limited data. This led to erroneous assumptions and conclusions that, in some cases, were corrected by later research, but in many cases were not. This was a function of the social and intellectual structure of the scientific network, minor but consequential decisions in data interpretation and specific citational habits. Synthesizing these results, we identify several linked mechanisms that helped the dominant frame retain its tenacity and may also be at work in other contexts. We close with a discussion on how others might apply our approach and how future scientific research and conservation practice could proceed differently. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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The grassy ecosystems of Madagascar in context: Ecology, evolution, and conservation

Silander,

Bond,

Ratsirarson

2023

Plants People Planet

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Societal Impact StatementMadagascar is famous for its unique forests and their fauna. Most of the island is covered by flammable grassy ecosystems long considered to be of human origin and threatening the remaining forests. Yet new studies show that many plants and animals of the grassy systems are unique to Madagascar and restricted to these open habitats. Open grassy ecosystems have markedly different management requirements from forests and bring different contributions to society. We argue that the grassy ecosystems can benefit Madagascar if understood and managed wisely using expanded knowledge bases that also include collaboration with locals.SummaryUntil recently, nearly all research and interests in Madagascar focused on forested habitats. To help place Madagascar's grassy ecosystems in context, we provide a summary of the origin, development, and evolution of open tropical, C4 grassy ecosystems elsewhere, especially those from Africa; we summarize similarities and differences with the distribution of C3 and C4 grasses in the Malagasy landscape, their plant traits, and inferences on the evolutionary legacy of grasses. We also discuss the animal communities that use and have coevolved in these grassy systems; to help resolve controversies over the pre‐settlement extent of grassy ecosystems, we suggest a variety of complementary geochemical, palaeobotanical, and molecular genetic tools that have been effectively used elsewhere to untangle forest/grassy ecosystem mosaics and the ecological and evolutionary processes that influence them. Many of these tools can and should be employed in Madagascar to fully understand the spatio‐temporal dynamics of open, grassy, and closed forest systems across the island; as regards conservation, we discuss the ecosystem services provided by grassy systems, which are too often ignored in general, not only as a biome, vis‐à‐vis forests, but also for their global importance as a carbon sink and role they play in water management and providing goods to local villagers. We conclude by outlining the necessary research to better manage open ecosystems across Madagascar without threatening endangered forest ecosystems.

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Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic.

Cited by 28 publications

References 0 publications

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Environmental governance: Broadening ontological spaces for a more livable world

Seeing beyond the frames we inherit: A challenge to tenacious conservation narratives

The grassy ecosystems of Madagascar in context: Ecology, evolution, and conservation

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