The ‘Park’ as Racial Practice: Constructing Whiteness on Safari in Tanzania

Abstract

Popular imaginings of Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and Ngorongoro Conservation Area are founded on the idea of wilderness preserved, but this conception of the 'park' is based in colonial-era race-thinking. Rather than simply a colonial-era manifestation of an apparently universal conservationist ideal, Serengeti and Ngorongoro are instead racial projects that embody the historical and ongoing processes of racial formation. The creation of Serengeti and Ngorongoro enabled a racialisation of nature, a process begun by the British and reinscribed via safari ever since. Recognising this racialisation of nature has larger implications for not only the treatment and perception of those in the Global South, the racialised 'other' to the Global North, but also for the realities of white privilege and constructions of whiteness.

The new green apartheid? Race, capital and logics of enclosure in South Africa’s wildlife economy

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Decolonizing Primate Conservation Practice: A Case Study from North Morocco

“…Colonialists justified their treatment of people and places by portraying local inhabitants as incapable of managing natural resources (Adams, 2003;Buscher et al, 2017;Leach & Mearns, 1996;Schauer, 2019). The colonialist narrative persists in many African countries because it facilitates the monopoly of resource management by the state and/or conservation agencies (Adams, 2003;Hays, 2019;Leach & Mearns, 1996;Schauer, 2019). Many countries also have a history of conservation being forcefully imposed by colonial powers (Garland, 2008;Redford, 2011), or of conservation being monopolized by the state, marginalizing local people (Benjaminsen et al, 2013;Dressler et al, 2010;Schauer, 2019).…”

“…These divisions are manifested in the postcolonial era by discrimination against rural and tribal people by state officials and/or wildlife conservation NGOs and urban elites often to gain control or access to natural resources. Such discrimination is ubiquitous in many countries and can have major negative consequences for conservation but is often ignored or mentioned as an aside in conservation literature (Dore, 2018;Govindrajan, 2018;Hays, 2019;Jalais, 2010). The discrimination is so entrenched and accepted in a society that it may be blatant.…”

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“…'Big data' drives towards Environmental Values 31 (2) large-scale, quantitative, but impersonal, analyses that hold the favoured position within policy circles via claims to objectivity. However, theoretically informed qualitative research can, amongst other things, highlight deeper connections to the natural world (Shaw et al, 2013;Richardson et al, 2015;Tănăsescu and Constantinescu, 2019;Thomas, 2021), and improve our understanding and integration of alternative ontologies (Winter, 2019;Hays, 2019;Murdock, 2018). These serve to develop powerful narratives which respond clearly to, and inform, policy challenges.…”