This book makes current issues in political ecology and the question of globalization accessible to undergraduate
students, as well as to non-academic readers. It is also empirically and theoretically rigorous enough to appeal
to an academic audience. Conservation and Globalization opens with a discussion of these two broad issues as they
relate to the author's fieldwork with Maasai herding communities on the margins of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania.
It explores different theoretical perspectives (Neo-Marxist and Foucauldian) on globalization and why both are
relevant to the case studies presented. Students are introduced to the practice of multi-sited ethnography and
its centrality to the anthropological study of globalization. While drawing on examples from specific Maasai communities,
the book is more broadly concerned with the historical and contemporary links between these communities and a global
system of institutions, ideas, and money. The ecological incompatibility of Western national park-style conservation
with East African savanna ecosystems and Maasai resource management practices, are highlighted. The concept of
national parks is traced temporally and geographically from Maasai communities to the enclosure movement in 18th
century England and westward expansion in 19th century North America. The relationships of parks to Judeo-Christian
assumptions about "man's place in nature," colonial ideologies like Manifest Destiny and the Civilizing
Mission, and capitalist notions of private property and "The Tragedy of the Commons," are explored. The
book also looks at the latest conservation paradigm of "Community-Based Conservation," and explores its
connections to the Soviet Collapse, economic and political liberalization, and the global proliferation of NGOs.
Benefits:
The case study challenges students to critically think about popular notions of conservation, wilderness, and
"traditional" indigenous peoples.
Rather than focusing on other cultures and what makes them seem strange to us, the book emphasizes Western
assumptions about nature and our place in the universe, and why these might seem strange to other cultures. It
also addresses the ways in which this particular Western worldview has been imposed on other cultures through international
conservation and development programs.
Globalization as a system of discourses and material processes that have impacted peoples' lives in every part
of the world--from indigenous communities in Alaska to Zimbabwe--are examined.
The methodology of multi-sited ethnography allows students to see how distant global processes like the Soviet
Collapse, are able to influence something as seemingly unrelated as conservation initiatives in rural African communities.
Table of Contents
1. Seeing Conservation through the Global Lens.
2. A Clash of Two Conservation Models.
3. Fortress Conservation: A Social History of National Parks.
4. The Maasai NGO Movement and Tanzania's Transition from Fortress Conservation to Community-Based Conservation.
5. National Parks and Indigenous Communities: A Global Perspective.
Bibliography.
