Rough Waters explores one of the most crucial problems of the contemporary era--struggles over access to, and
use of, the environment. It combines insights from anthropology, history, and environmental studies, mounting an
interdisciplinary challenge to contemporary accounts of "globalization." The book focuses on The Mafia
Island Marine Park, a national park in Tanzania that became the center of political conflict during its creation
in the mid-1990s. The park, reflecting a new generation of internationally sponsored projects, was designed to
encourage environmental conservation as well as development. Rather than excluding residents, as had been common
in East Africa's mainland wildlife parks, Mafia Island was intended to represent a new type of national park that
would encourage the participation of area residents and incorporate their ideas.
While the park had been described in the project's general management plan as "for the people and by the people,"
residents remained excluded from the most basic decisions made about the park. The book details the day-to-day
tensions and alliances that arose among Mafia residents, Tanzanian government officials, and representatives of
international organizations, as each group attempted to control and define the park. Walley's analysis argues that
a technocentric approach to conservation and development can work to the detriment of both poorer people and the
environment. It further suggests that the concept of the global may be inadequate for understanding this and other
social dramas in the contemporary world.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Glossary of KiSwahili Terms
Preface
Introduction
Conservation and Development in the Age of the Global
Part One
Chapter One
Battling for the Marine Park
Part Two
Chapter Two
"When People Were as Worthless as Insects": History, Popular Memory, and Tourism on Chole
Chapter Three
The Making and Unmaking of "Community"
Chapter Four
Where There Is No Nature
Part Three
Chapter Five
Establishing Experts: Conservation and Development from Colonialism to Independence
Chapter Six
Pushing Paper and Power: Bureaucracy and Knowledge within a National Marine Park
Chapter Seven
Tourist Encounters: Alternate Readings of Nature and "Development"
Epilogue
Participating in the Twenty-first Century
