IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v41y2009i2p407-424.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Commercializing Conservation in South Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Brian King

    (Department of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University, 302 Walker Building, University Park, PA 16802, USA)

Abstract

The field of development studies has produced a number of institutional ethnographies in recent years that evaluate the internal workings of development agencies such as the World Bank or grassroots social organizations. Although within the social sciences research on conservation often emphasizes the power of international conservation institutions, there have been few comparable studies assessing the internal workings of these organizations. In addition, less is known about the specific activities of national and provincial conservation agencies operating in the Global South. Ethnographies of these institutions are also needed in order to examine how conservation is variously understood and executed by organizations within different contexts. This paper presents an institutional ethnography of the Mpumalanga Parks Board, which is the chief conservation agency operating in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Following the 1994 democratic elections, the Mpumalanga Parks Board pursued a neoliberal commercialized conservation mandate that reflected the position of natural resource management in relation to other national priorities. This paper traces out the construction of the commercialization discourse in order to understand the internal and external factors that produced it while assessing its implications for nature preservation. Although the commercialization drive emulated a general trend towards neoliberal decentralization in the Global South, I argue that its particular manifestations were deeply embedded in South Africa's particular spatial economy and history of racial segregation. In tracing out the commercialization discourse from within the conservation agency itself, this paper assists in an understanding of how neoliberalism shapes natural resource management and can become hegemonic at the expense of other possibilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian King, 2009. "Commercializing Conservation in South Africa," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 41(2), pages 407-424, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:41:y:2009:i:2:p:407-424
    DOI: 10.1068/a4016
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a4016
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a4016?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kanbur Ravi, 2001. "Economic Policy, Distribution and Poverty: The Nature of Disagreements," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 122-145, April.
    2. Christian M. Rogerson, 2001. "Spatial development initiatives in Southern Africa: The Maputo Development Corridor," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 92(3), pages 324-346, August.
    3. Woolcock, Michael & Narayan, Deepa, 2000. "Social Capital: Implications for Development Theory, Research, and Policy," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 15(2), pages 225-249, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mogues, Tewodaj & Carter, Michael R., 2003. "Social Capital and Incentive Compatibility: Modelling the Accumulation and Use of Social Collateral," Staff Paper Series 460, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    2. Dufhues, Thomas & Buchenrieder, Gertrud & Quoc, Hoang Dinh & Munkung, Nuchanata, 2011. "Social capital and loan repayment performance in Southeast Asia," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 679-691.
    3. Athukorala, Prema-chandra & Narayanan, Suresh, 2018. "Economic corridors and regional development: The Malaysian experience," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 1-14.
    4. Mahto, Raj V. & Belousova, Olga & Ahluwalia, Saurabh, 2020. "Abundance – A new window on how disruptive innovation occurs," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    5. Pilar Useche, 2016. "Who Contributes to the Provision of Public Goods at the Community Level? The Case of Potable Water in Ghana," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 34(6), pages 869-888, November.
    6. Fox, Jonathan A, 2000. "The World Bank and social capital: Lessons from ten rural development projects in the Philippines and Mexico," Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, Working Paper Series qt1vj8v86j, Center for Global, International and Regional Studies, UC Santa Cruz.
    7. A. Arrighetti & G. Seravalli & G. Wolleb, 2001. "Social Capital, Institutions and Collective Action Between Firms," Economics Department Working Papers 2001-EP08, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    8. Giuseppina Guagnano & Elisabetta Santarelli & Isabella Santini, 2016. "Can Social Capital Affect Subjective Poverty in Europe? An Empirical Analysis Based on a Generalized Ordered Logit Model," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(2), pages 881-907, September.
    9. Hansen, Benjamin & Sabia, Joseph J. & Rees, Daniel I., 2011. "Cigarette Taxes and the Social Market," IZA Discussion Papers 5580, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Martin Gächter & David A. Savage & Benno Torgler, 2009. "Retaining the Thin Blue Line: What Shapes Workers' Intentions not to Quit the Current Work Environment," Working Papers 2010-05, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck, revised Mar 2010.
    11. Kłoczko-Gajewska Anna, 2020. "Long-Term Impact of Closing Rural Schools on Local Social Capital: A Multiple-Case Study from Poland," European Countryside, Sciendo, vol. 12(4), pages 598-617, December.
    12. Utteeyo Dasgupta & Arjun Menon, 2011. "Trust and Trustworthiness among Economics Majors," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(4), pages 2799-2815.
    13. Dowling, Michael & O’Gorman, Colm & Puncheva, Petya & Vanwalleghem, Dieter, 2019. "Trust and SME attitudes towards equity financing across Europe," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 54(6), pages 1-1.
    14. Hong Sun & Valentina Hartarska & Lezhu Zhang & Denis Nadolnyak, 2018. "The Influence of Social Capital on Farm Household’s Borrowing Behavior in Rural China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-20, November.
    15. Blocker, Christopher P. & Ruth, Julie A. & Sridharan, Srinivas & Beckwith, Colin & Ekici, Ahmet & Goudie-Hutton, Martina & Rosa, José Antonio & Saatcioglu, Bige & Talukdar, Debabrata & Trujillo, Carlo, 2013. "Understanding poverty and promoting poverty alleviation through transformative consumer research," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1195-1202.
    16. Grootaert, Christiaan, 1999. "Social capital, houshold welfare, and poverty in Indonesia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2148, The World Bank.
    17. Dufhues, Thomas & Buchenrieder, Gertrud & Munkung, Nuchanata, 2012. "Individual social capital and access to formal credit in Thailand," 2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil 123401, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    18. Cécile Perret, 2014. "Social capital and viable territorial development in Kabylian communityThe central role of the regional identity," Working Papers halshs-01094761, HAL.
    19. Chau-kiu Cheung & Stephen Ma, 2011. "Coupling Social Solidarity and Social Harmony in Hong Kong," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 103(1), pages 145-167, August.
    20. Heather M Watkins, 2017. "Beyond sweat equity: Community organising beyond the Third Way," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2139-2154, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:41:y:2009:i:2:p:407-424. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.