ECOLOGIES WITHOUT BORDERS? Remapping & Remaking Conservation in the Okavango-Zambezi Basin
ECOLOGIES WITHOUT BORDERS? Remapping & Remaking Conservation in the Okavango-Zambezi Basin Undergraduate Research Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Graduation with Honors Research Distinction in History in the Undergraduate Colleges of The Ohio State University by Matt Schneider The Ohio State University May 2018 Project Advisors: Professor Thomas F. McDow, Department of History Professor Becky Mansfield, Department of Geography CONTENTS 1. Introduction 1 2. Unnatural History 11 Rethinking Colonization & Conservation in the Zambezi Basin 3. On the Origins of a Transfrontier Conservation Area 34 or, Hidden Fences 4. Elephant Sovereignty 40 Multispecies Politics in Multinational Places 5. Conclusion 52 Acknowledgements 56 Bibliography 57 1 1. INTRODUCTION “Oh, you’re the visiting student from America?” It was July, 2016. I was in Botswana, at the headquarters of the Secretariat of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (a mouthful and a half; henceforth, KAZA TFCA), and I had apparently made myself known. Yes, I was a visitor and a student. A visitor to the basins of the Okavango and Zambezi rivers in the southern African interior, to the sovereign nation-states of Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. A visitor to offices, to farms, to sites of World Heritage, to habitats, and to homes. A student of the KAZA TFCA that those nations had established—along with Angola, a country I did not visit—and of the many relationships such an institution requires, affects, effects, and constrains. A student of history and of geography, trained to study patterns and processes across time and space. A student of multiple modes and methods of social analysis, from close reading against the grain to ethnography in its multicultural and multispecies varieties.
[Show full text]