Book review: The commons in an age of uncertainty: decolonizing nature, economy, and society by Franklin Obeng-Odoom

In The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society, Franklin Obeng-Odoom explores scholarship on the commons, showing the weaknesses of existing conceptions and pushing for a more radical vision of commoning land that is bound up in transforming our wider social, political, economic and environmental systems. This book opens an avenue for imagining the possibilities of a new world anchored on the commons, writes Maano Ramutsindela. The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society. Franklin Obeng-Odoom. University of Toronto Press, 2021

Book review: The commons in an age of uncertainty: decolonizing nature, economy, and society by Franklin Obeng-Odoom

In The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society, Franklin Obeng-Odoom explores scholarship on the commons, showing the weaknesses of existing conceptions and pushing for a more radical vision of commoning land that is bound up in transforming our wider social, political, economic and environmental systems. This book opens an avenue for imagining the possibilities of a new world anchored on the commons, writes Maano Ramutsindela. The Commons in an Age of Uncertainty: Decolonizing Nature, Economy, and Society. Franklin Obeng-Odoom. University of Toronto Press, 2021

Why we must question the militarisation of conservation

Concerns about poaching and trafficking have led conservationists to seek urgent responses to tackle the impact on wildlife. One possible solution is the militarisation of conservation, which holds potentially far-reaching consequences. It is important to engage critically with the militarisation of conservation, including identifying and reflecting on the problems it produces for wildlife, for people living with wildlife and for those tasked with implementing militarised strategies. This Perspectives piece is a first step towards synthesising the main themes in emerging critiques of militarised conservation. We identify five major themes: first, the importance of understanding how poaching is defined; second, understanding the ways that local communities experience militarised conservation; third, the experiences of rangers; fourth, how the militarisation of conservation can contribute to violence where conservation operates in the context of armed conflict; and finally how it fits in with and reflects wider political economic dynamics. Ultimately, we suggest that failure to engage more critically with militarisation risks making things worse for the people involved and lead to poor conservation outcomes in the long run

Geographical Knowledge, Case Studies and the Division of Labour

Though a case study is commonly viewed as a unit of analysis with some form of bounded territory, the abstraction that it represents goes beyond a specific place. After all, case studies are conventionally used to provide the empirical evidence of, or test ideas that are, by nature mobile. This methodological view of case studies masks the division of the world into different knowledge production sites and the processes by which the authenticity of knowledge is approved or disapproved. This is evident in geographical scholarships in the global North and South, and within each of these 'regions'. The South has theoretically been constructed as a 'case study' through which theories, coming mainly from the North, can be tested or verified. These practices raise the question of the place of case study research in human geography and the contribution of case studies to theory. This paper uses experiences from South Africa to argue that local researchers play an equally important role in the conceptions and use of the South as a case study lacking in theoretical contributions. Conceptually, the hegemony of Anglo-American geography and the marginalisation of geographic knowledge from the South find expression in both the North and the South, with the South participating in its own marginalisation. It concludes that South Africa, as a part of the South, offers opportunities for rethinking the artificial gap between theory and case studies at various scales. However, local geographers have not yet fully exploited these opportunities

Regionalisms and the ‘exceptionality’ of security regions

Work on regions and regionalisms highlights the complex processes through which regions emerge or disappear, or are remade often with unpredictable outcomes. This well-established knowledge of regions is however not fully appreciated by proponents of Regional Security Complex Theory, who are pre-occupied with security as a central element in region-formation. In security context the intersection between regions and security is expressed through a pluralistic security community in which the security of the regional group is a focal point for member states and their activities. In this paper I draw on insights from research on regionalism and from the emergence of southern Africa as a region to suggest that there is no need to treat regional security complexes as ‘special regions’ of some sort as Regional Security Complex Theory suggests. Security should be understood as an integral part rather than an exceptional feature of region-formation processes. I further suggest that analyses of regional security complexes are still trapped in the concept of bounded territoriality

The survival of apartheid's last town council in Groblersdal, South Africa

The reconfiguration of South Africa's internal territorial spaces after 1990 was a logical outcome of the need to undo the effects of decades of territorial dismemberment under apartheid. In spite of the spatial reordering of areas which were controlled and administered by town councils established during apartheid, the Town Council of Groblersdal and its area of jurisdiction have remained unchanged up to the time of writing. This article attempts to explain and analyse the survival of the town council of Groblersdal in the Northern Province. It argues that the town council used the vacuum created by the provincial boundary dispute between Mpumalanga and the Northern Province to maintain the status quo in spite of legal struggles to determine its political future.

Glocalisation and Nature Conservation Strategies in 21-super-st-Century Southern Africa

This paper refers to the establishment of the Great Limpopo on the South Africa-Mozambique-Zimbabwe border and the Kgalagadi on the South Africa-Botswana border to illuminate the involvement of actors under conditions that cannot more appropriately be captured by analyses that place emphasis on particular scales. It reaffirms the view that the global-local infusion involves actors at multiple levels. To that end, the paper uses the debate about global-local connections as an interpretative framework for understanding various actors involved in the creation of transfrontier parks in southern Africa. Drawing from case study material in the Great Limpopo and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Parks, the paper shows that changing conservation philosophies, the socio-political environment, economic imperatives and conditions in and around national parks combined to make the region favourable to the new nature conservation schemes. Copyright (c) 2004 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa

This book brings together recent and ongoing empirical studies to examine two relational kinds of politics, namely, the politics of nature, i.e. how nature conservation projects are sites on which power relations play out, and the politics of the scientific study of nature. These are discussed in their historical and present contexts, and at specific sites on which particular human-environment relations are forged or contested. This spatio-temporal juxtaposition is lacking in current research on political ecology while the politics of science appears marginal to critical scholarship on social nature. Specifically, the book examines power relations in nature-related activities, demonstrates conditions under which nature and science are politicised, and also accounts for political interests and struggles over nature in its various forms. The ecological, socio-political and economic dimensions of nature cannot be ignored when dealing with present-day environmental issues. Nature conservation regulations are concerned with the management of flora and fauna as much as with humans. Various chapters in the book pay attention to the ways in which nature, science and politics are interrelated and also co-constitutive of each other. They highlight that power relations are naturalised through science and science-related institutions and projects such as museums, botanical gardens, wetlands, parks and nature reserves

Green violence : Rhino poaching and thewar to save southern africa's peace parks

Over a thousand rhinos were killed in 2013 and 2014 as the poaching crisis in Southern Africa reached massive proportions, with major consequences for conservation and other political dynamics in the region. The article documents these dynamics in the context of the ongoing development and establishment of "peace parks": large conservation areas that cross international state boundaries. The rhino-poaching crisis has affected peace parks in the region, especially the flagship Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park between South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. In order to save both peace parks and rhinos, key actors such as the South African government, the Peace Parks Foundation, and the general public responded to the poaching crisis with increasingly desperate measures, including the deployment of a variety of violent tactics and instruments. The article critically examines these methods of 'green violence' and places them within the broader historical and contemporary contexts of violence in the region and in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park. It concludes that attempting to save peace parks through 'green violence' represents a contradiction, but that this contradiction is no longer recognized as such, given the historical positioning of peace parks in the region and popular discourses of placing poachers in a 'space of exception'

South African Goegraphers and the Spatial Division of Labour

The role and status of geographical traditions that exist outside of the Anglo-American heartland of the discipline has generated considerable debate in the last decade. The context for these debates is a growing recognition of the dominance of Anglo-American geographical scholarship and the relative marginality of geographies of and from the periphery. Research and writing on the limited international scope of so-called 'international' geography journals, the exclusionary practices of editors and referees of the discipline's flagship journals involved in assessing papers produced from the margins, and the challenges faced by geographers attempting to contribute to broader geographical scholarship from non-Anglophone speaking contexts point to the specific practices that underpin the marginal position of geographical traditions outside the discipline's heartland