George Barrett on Peace Parks

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Richard Pithouse

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Feb 11, 2012, 3:58:18 AM2/11/12

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The 2012 Critical Studies Seminar Series Hosted by the Departments of Politics and International Studies & Sociology at Rhodes University

Speaker: George Barrett, Department of Politics & International Relations, Rhodes University

Topic: Markets of Routine Exceptionalism: Peace Parks in Southern Africa

Venue: Department of Politics & International Relations Seminar Room

Date & Time: Friday 17 February 2012: 1:00 p.m - 2:30 p.m

Format: Ms Barrett will speak to her paper, which is attached to this email, for twenty minutes following which questions will be taken. It will be assumed that all participants have read the attached paper.

This paper and the full programme for the first term will soon be loaded up at: http://www.ru.ac.za/politics/events/seminarseries/

Please not that the seminars are now being held in the Politics Department, on Fridays, and at lunchtime.

Abstract

Advocates of southern African peace parks- transfrontier conservation areas- present a vision of a ‘boundless’ natural landscape transcendent of the violent cartography of sovereign statism in the region. Moreover, peace parks are constructed as vast biodiversity rich wildernesses inhabited by rare and precious fauna and flora and harmonious albeit scattered communities of ‘traditional’ African peoples. As such, the region’s frontiers symbolise exceptional spaces of opportunity; for ecosystem scale conservation, and emancipation through peace, community, and wealth for the region’s states and people. However, the economic imperative underpinning this exceptionalism- that of attracting large numbers of primarily foreign but also local wealthy tourists, cultural voyeurs and game hunters- means that peace parks are sites of continued reinvention, exploration, and adventure to meet the transient desires of the market. When viewed through the optic offered by international political sociology, the distinction between the peace parks ‘vision’ and the tangible reality is blurred. The former has become a powerful- albeit illusionary- space of exception where a select group of elite actors are able to dictate the means required to maintain the market imperative of the parks in the name of conservation and development. The maintenance of the vision however, necessitates increased control and management of the lived life of the place, which itself gives life to the vision. The exception is thus sustained through the routinisation of illiberal practices of inclusion and exclusion, control and surveillance in the management of the parks. Legitimated by global concerns about the security of the world’s ecological integrity and the survival of the neoliberal economic order, these practices are uncritically accepted as both necessary and desirable to sustain peace parks as an environmental and cultural commodity.