Contested Ecologies Contested Ecologies.indd 2 2013/04/01 6:46 AM Contested Ecologies Dialogues in the South on Nature and Knowledge Edited by Lesley Green Published by HSRC Press Private Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa www.hsrcpress.ac.za First published 2013 ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2428-5 ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2429-2 ISBN (epub) 978-0-7969-2430-8 © 2013 Human Sciences Research Council This book has undergone a double-blind independent peer review process overseen by the HSRC Press Editorial Board. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council. Copyedited by Karen Press Typeset by Charlene Bate Cover image by Craig Foster Cover design by Eugene Badenhorst (PumpHaus design) Printed by CapitilPress, Cape Town Distributed in Africa by Blue Weaver Tel: +27 (0) 21 701 4477; Fax: +27 (0) 21 701 7302 www.oneworldbooks.com Distributed in Europe and the United Kingdom by Eurospan Distribution Services (EDS) Tel: +44 (0) 17 6760 4972; Fax: +44 (0) 17 6760 1640 www.eurospanbookstore.com Distributed in North America by River North Editions, from IPG Call toll-free: (800) 888 4741; Fax: +1 (312) 337 5985 www.ipgbook.com Contested Ecologies.indd 4 2013/04/03 9:15 AM Contents List of figures vii Abbreviations and acronyms viii Foreword xi Crain Soudien Acknowledgements xvii 1 Contested Ecologies: Nature and knowledge 1 Lesley Green a first intervention: Nature versus Culture 2 Notes towards a political ontology of ‘environmental’ conflicts 13 Mario Blaser 3 Economic development and cosmopolitical re-involvement: From necessity to sufficiency 28 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro 4 On animism, modernity/colonialism, and the African order of knowledge: Provisional reflections 42 Harry Garuba a second intervention: space, time, life 5 About ‘Mariano’s Archive’: Ecologies of stories 55 Marisol de la Cadena 6 The day-world hawkri and its topologies: On Palikur alternatives to the idea of space 69 Lesley Green Contested Ecologies.indd 5 2013/04/01 6:46 AM 7 Cultivating krag, refreshing gees: Ecologies of wellbeing in Namaqualand 90 Joshua B. Cohen 8 Are petitioners makers of rain? Rains, worlds and survival in conflict-torn Buhera, Zimbabwe 110 Artwell Nhemachena 9 Metaphors for climate adaptation from Zimbabwe: Zephaniah Phiri Maseko and the marriage of water and soil 126 Christopher Mabeza a third intervention: sciences and publics 10 Engagements between disparate knowledge traditions: Toward doing difference generatively and in good faith 141 Helen Verran 11 The making of Sutherlandia as medicine 162 Diana Gibson and Sanja Kilian 12 Conservation conversations: Improving the dialogue between fishers and fisheries science along the Benguela Coast 187 Tarryn-Anne Anderson, Kelsey Draper, Greg Duggan, Lesley Green, Astrid Jarre, Jennifer Rogerson, Sven Ragaller and Marieke van Zyl 13 Cape Flats Nature: Rethinking urban ecologies 202 Tania Katzschner 14 Spotting the leopard: Fieldwork, science and leopard behaviour 227 Ian Glenn 15 Contesting ecological collapse: Rapa Nui, the island at the end of the world 243 David Turnbull 16 Closing remarks from the conclusion of the Contested Ecologies Writing Workshop, September 2011 271 Eduardo Viveiros de Castro About the contributors 276 Index 279 Contested Ecologies.indd 6 2013/04/01 6:46 AM List of figures Unnumbered figures Anthropo Scene for the Anthropocene: Land art on a beach at Cape Hangklip x Planet UCT 10 Theological debate in nine frames 39–40 Mr and Mrs Phiri Maseko with their National Geographic Atlas 52 Knowledge objects: An Amerindian woodcaring of the kingfisher constellation 138 Numbered figures Figure 2.1 Modern and relational ontologies compared 20 Figure 2.2 Four ontological armatures 22 Figure 5.1 Mariano Turpo, 2004 56 Figure 7.1 An intermingling of lines of life, near Paulshoek. Also known as a dry river bed. 99 Figure 9.1 Mr Phiri Maseko’s stone structures that trap water 128 Figure 9.2 Map of Mr Phiri Maseko’s farm, 1999 129 Figure 9.3 The cropping system on Mr Phiri Maseko’s farm, 1999 130 Figure 12.1 Fishermen and their catch 188 Figure 13.1 Cape Flats Nature project 203 Figure 13.2 Cape Flats Nature pilot sites in the context of the Biodiversity Network 207 Figure 14.1 Male leopard from the interior of Africa 232 Figure 14.2 Natasha de Woronin tracking leopards using telemetry 237 Figure 15.1 Rapa Nui (Easter Island) one of the most isolated islands in the world 244 Figure 15.2 Rapa Nui farmer with potato 252 Figure 15.3 Moai with restored eyes 256 Figure 15.4 Map showing distribution of statues on Rapa Nui 257 vii Contested Ecologies.indd 7 2013/04/01 6:46 AM Abbreviations and acronyms ANT Actor-Network-Theory ARV antiretroviral BLC basic locative construction DAFF Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries DEAT Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism DST Department of Science and Technology EAF Ecosystems Approach to Fisheries GIS geographical information systems HPLC high performance liquid chromatography ICTs information and communication technologies IK indigenous knowledge IKS indigenous knowledge systems MCC Medicines Control Council MCM Marine and Coastal Management MLRA Marine Living Resources Act (No. 18 of 1998) NGO non-governmental organisation NIH National Institutes of Health RCT randomised placebo-controlled clinical trial SAHSMI South African Herbal Science and Medicines Institute SANBI South African National Biodiversity Institute TEK traditional environmental knowledge TICIPS The International Centre for Indigenous Phytotherapy Studies ZWP Zvishavane Water Project viii Contested Ecologies.indd 8 2013/04/01 6:46 AM Contested Ecologies.indd 9 2013/04/01 6:46 AM Anthropo Scene for the Anthropocene: Land art on a beach at Cape Hangklip, near Cape Town, South Africa. (Sculpted kelp on beach with waves, 3 000 m x 600 m.) Source: Courtesy of Craig Foster and reproduced with permission. x Contested Ecologies.indd 10 2013/04/01 6:46 AM Foreword Transforming scholarship: Conversations across the global South An importAnt, if not dominant, way of understanding the world in which we live is to see it, following Manuel Castells, as an Information Society. We are, in these terms, surrounded by data, facts, ideas, insight, opinion and analysis in ways that were not quite conceivable even 20 years ago. The significance of this development is profound. Castells himself, in works such as The Rise of the Network Society (2000), has made the argument that it has driven contemporary economic and social development and come to give modernity its character. Few would take issue with the substance of Castell’s characterisation of the world in which we live. Few would deny how much we have gained in terms of our understanding of social and natural phenomena. The sophistication of our knowledge of the human body, our capacity to decipher the genetic codes of a wide variety of forms of life, our understanding of the geomorphology of the planet and of its weather systems, our grasp of the cosmos – how old it is, its make-up and its evolution – all of this is truly exciting. But we actually still know so little. Celebrate as we should how our learning is constantly being enriched, there are reasons to be concerned about the information turn of the modernity that we now see. It has stimulated a kind of hubris amongst us about how learning works in our lives. Characteristic of this hubris is its explanation that we simply need more of particular kinds of knowing and less of others. To come to understand our world and ourselves better, all that we lack is more of some kinds of information and less of very particular kinds of others that keep us back. The point about this hubris is that it is decidedly not, in the final analysis, informed by an objective approach to knowing. It understands knowing in very limited terms. Its discursive generosity, which kinds of ideas it authorises and valorises and which not, what it deems to be politically, economically and culturally acceptable and what not, is configured in very particular ways. This book, Contested ecologies, is part of a wider discussion initiated by Dr Lesley Green of the University of Cape Town about the role of the university in this new phase of modernity. The discussion seeks to open up the xi Contested Ecologies.indd 11 2013/04/01 6:46 AM question of intellectual democracy, and particularly that of how the university becomes a space for the mediation of different forms of knowing instead of the sacralisation of only one way of understanding. I began this Foreword with a focus on the Information Society in order to emphasise how much this new information order is framed by discursive conditionality and how central the university has become in the reproduction of this conditionality. What is this discursive conditionality? It is essentially the agreement that has been reached by governments and development agencies, almost everywhere, that development is only and fundamentally about economic growth. Unfortunate about this agreement is the implicit capitulation of almost the entire globe to the model of development offered by nations such as the United States, the so-called Asian Tigers and the economically prosperous countries of Europe. In terms of this approach, essentially modelled on the 1960s thinking of WW Rostow (see for example his 1964 work, The Stages of Economic Growth), certain conditions are essential for a country to progress from its traditional beginnings to the stage of ‘take-off’ and, finally, the age of high mass consumption.