Primitive Ideas: Protected Area Buffer Zones and the Politics of Land in Africa

Abstract

This article critically evaluates participatory, integrated conservation and development programmes in Africa, focusing on protected area buer zones. I argue that, despite the emphasis on participation and bene®t-sharing, many of the new projects replicate more coercive forms of conservation practice and often constitute an expansion of state authority into remote rural areas. I suggest that the reasons for this state of aairs can be traced in part to the persistence in conservation interventions of Western ideas and images of the Other. These stereotypes result in misguided assumptions in conservation programmes which have important implications for the politics of land in buer zone communities.

If community conservation is the answer in Africa, what is the question?

“…The attack comes from two very different positions. Some critics come from a tradition that is highly suspicious of the principles and practices of conservation, and detect in 'community conservation' a shallow and perhaps even deceitful facade designed to hide old-style preservation, with its harsh colonial legacy of policing, eviction and misanthropy (MacKenzie, 1987(MacKenzie, , 1989Neumann, 1997). This view holds that, at best, community conservation is but a shallow imitation of a genuinely democratic conservation strategy, which would centre on (and be driven by) local peoples' ideas about and uses of nature.…”

Marine Protected Areas: Territorializing Objects and Subjectivities

“…Nietschmann's presentation suggests that the issues of conservation areas on the Miskito Coast are in many ways similar to the arguments against park creation on the land (Neumann, 1997(Neumann, , 1998Robbins, 2004). Nietschmann's case is included in a volume that argues for indigenous homelands as "…often the last remaining places of rich wildness and biological diversity" (Stevens, 1997, 1, emphasis mine).…”

“…However, the category of Indigenous itself presents a problem in that it homogenizes both the questions of who is local and what other categories exist to describe community composition (age, gender, class, ethnicity, etc. ) in a problematic fashion (Neumann, 1997;Agrawal, 2000) that glosses over competing claims to resources. suggests that the perhaps community property is a problematic concept that fails to account for the wide uses and extraction patterns in the ocean that could lead to broader use claims.…”

An Exceptional Strike: A Micro-history of 'People versus Park' in Madagascar

“…The moral authority of conservation typically overrides residents' land use rights and political opposition (Brosius 1999). As a matter of course, the implementation of conservation plans marks geographical boundaries and frequently reinforces social divisions with greater success than persuading horticulturalists to adopt conservationism (Marcus and Kull 1999;Moore 1993;Neumann 1997).…”