480 Publications
through economic decline, is having a huge ef- fect. Regrettably, albeit understandably, there- fore, there is a large COVID-shaped hole in this book that I hope can and will be filled in a second edition. As a grizzled conservationist of 30 years, I
had in my mind a list of issues that I felt sure would not be covered. Yet each time I turned the page my list got pleasingly shorter. Open discussions about authenticity and trophyhunt- ing, and the debates around Indigenous sensi- tivities, are handled with care. Perhaps there remains room for discussions around human health and population, human–wildlife conflict, and the complementary discipline of species conservation. There are also a fewminor details that disappoint. The examples did not always fit into the relevant argument, and seemed at times a function of personal experience rather than specific relevance. The relationship between Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs) and Important Bird and BiodiversityAreas (IBAs) is a practical one, with IBAs only default KBAs until coun- tries redefine them. Geographically, Bwindi does not abut Congo Brazzaville but rather the DemocraticRepublic of
theCongo.Kilimanjaro does not rise majestically from the Serengeti plain (as the bandToto also erroneously claimed in 1982!), but is at least 350 km to the east. And themisspelling of iconic sites likeNgorongoro is a shame. But my pedantry should serve only to emphasize the general excellence of the book and my failure to find anything else wrong. There are key areas where Dudley and Stol-
ton demonstrate their appreciation of complex- ities. The observation thatwhat reallymatters is not the type of management but rather who makes the decisions, is spot on.Ultimately, con- servationis a political business, and anyonewho states that ‘too many decisions about conser- vation are made on the basis of ingrained prejudices, peer pressure, lazy thinking or on simply doing what people have done before’ (p. 4) understands this well. Leaving Space for Nature is an excellent treatise on the current state of site-based conservation. It is a realistic, reasoned and readable book. It should be read by everyone who has an interest in—or an opinion about—conservation.
TIM R.B. DAVENPORT Wildlife Conservation Society, Arusha, Tanzania E-mail
tdavenport@wcs.org
Power in Conservation: Environmental Anthropology Beyond Political Ecology by Carol Carpenter (2020) 220 pp., Routledge, Abingdon, UK. ISBN 9-780-367342500 (pbk), GBP 34.99.
In Power and Conservation: Environmental Anthropology Beyond Political Ecology, Carol
Carpenter takes the reader through theories and application of power to improve conser- vation research and practice. She provides an overview and explanation for theories of power combined with real-world application, present- ing a conservation toolbox to disrupt prevailing conservation paradigms. Carpenter encourages readers to (1) ask how power is exercised, (2) use ethnography to dig into the specific, (3) see power and economy as always working in tandem, and (4) re-centre local ecologies. Carpenter uses each chapter to reveal and
apply aspects of power as advanced by Fou- cault: discourses; governmentality, discipline, sovereignty and the triangle; subject forma- tion; and neoliberal governmentality. In the first three chapters, Carpenter examines how the rich field of nature and human–nature re- lations joins the ‘complex project of conserva- tion interventions’ (p. 23) in the developing world. She argues that these discourses are nei- ther static nor truly controlled by any state or institution, but that we have constructed them
andimbuedthemwithpower.Three seminal works in the mid 1990s, by Ferguson, Escobar, and Fairhead and Leach demonstrate the power of conservation discourses to warp policy in ways that lead to project failure. These authors have animated an anthropology of development and conservation that continues to influence modern paradigms of practice. Along the same line of the power of discourse, Carpenter uses the work of historian Cronon in chapter 4 to show how environmental historical narratives of nature have the power to ‘silence and erase but also make us care’ (p. 49). In chapters 5 and 6, Carpenter explores
Foucault’s three models (sovereignty, discipline and governmentality) which she argues all oc- cur in conservation. Sovereignty is character- ized by simple laws that divide the permitted from the prohibited and link prohibitions to punishments and a territory as the seat of the sovereign. Although sovereignty does not govern life, discipline and governmentality both do through ‘the body and the population’ (p. 72). Carpenter suggests that discipline is the governing of the body, and governmental- ity the governing of the population. Applying these concepts to conservation, she considers parks to be territorial units where sovereignty is deployed in conservation. The exclusion of local people from protected areas, and surveil- lance, regulations and enforcement, all em- body the disciplinary and governmentality of power. When governments set up protected areas, they tend towards disciplinary control because people are considered a threat to na- ture. Thus, conservation governs people with the aim of maximizing benefits for natural habitats or wildlife. These arguments lead Carpenter to ask readers ‘what would conser- vation without government look like?’ (p. 81).
This question challenges the basis of much
of conservation practice and policy. Throughout the rest of the book, Carpenter proposes that the answers can be uncovered through ethnog- raphy. She presents ethnographies that explore the articulation of processes of neocolonial and neoliberal governmentality conservation pro- jectswith local ecologies, traditional knowledge, culture and peasant
economies.Governmental- ity and capitalism stimulate identity formation that coalesce around communities to support conservation and receive benefits. Using case studies, Carpenter demonstrates how com- munities are cultivated as environmental and neoliberal subjects. She argues that the assump- tions upon which these programmes are found- ed are flawed. Although conservationists rarely question these assumptions, ethnographers do. By including select ethnographies, Carpenter also encourages readers to think about the econ- omy outside the economic discipline and to re- centre peasant economics in conservation. She reminds us that in peasant theories all econ- omies are ecologies. Thus, unveiling peasant discourse can disrupt the prevailing power of traditional economic approaches driving con- servation and development intervention. Even thoughher argumentsmay suggest that localpeo- ple have little control over their lives, Carpenter explains that the implementation phase of con- servation programmes offers a space that is ‘full of politics and power, but also full of freedom’ (p. 160) for local people to shape outcomes. Carpenter uses each theory as a building
block to explain the behaviours of conserva- tion actors, as well as their cultural beliefs, material uses and values. She weaves between the theoretical and applied, using seminal works on power in conservation to demon- strate how her four tools can improve conser- vation practice by bringing in historical and landscape perspectives and by showcasing the role of government and local people in shaping and enacting policies. In showing how conservation research and theories of power aremutually shaped, Power in Conser- vation is an important companion to any graduate level course on conservation social science or political ecology. Carpenter also offers synthesized insights to guide improved conservation practice. She not only shows new ways to understand prevailing conserva- tion paradigms, but suggests a better future for conservation practice that can free local people from the reigns of established power relations and their role as conservation subjects.
L. REDMORE Sierra Institute for Community and Environment, Taylorsville, USA E-mail
lredmore@sierrainstitute.us A. SENE-HARPER Parks and Conservation Management, Clemson University, Clemson, USA
Oryx, 2021, 55(3), 479–480 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/S0030605321000405
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