Conserving Nature, Transforming Authority: Eviction and Development at the Margins of the State The Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal
Item
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Title
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Conserving Nature, Transforming Authority: Eviction and Development at the Margins of the State The Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:6a5e8e176950:11201
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identifier
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11651
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Creator
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Ece, Melis,
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Contributor
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Talal Asad
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Date
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2012
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Cultural anthropology | Sub Saharan Africa studies | decentralization | development | displacement | national parks | Senegal | West Africa
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines two distinct but interrelated processes of displacement experienced by the evictees of the Niokolo-Koba National Park, based on fieldwork (2004--2005) in the Tambacounda region of South-Eastern Senegal. While the first process concerns centralized mass evictions of the residents of the National Park during the first decade of Independence; the second process concerns multiple decentralized displacements in resettlement areas at the buffer zone, since the implementation of decentralization reforms. Taking as a starting point that eviction is not a punctual event, but a complex process that reflects and transforms relations that lead to loss of property and authority, this project examines how the inhabitants of the National Park have been related and continue to relate to the "state" in its different manifestations since the colonial rule.;Evictions from national parks in Africa, are often understood as results of international pressures in the name of conservation of global commons. This study illustrates the equally important role of the emergence of a centralized and developmentalist postcolonial state in forced evictions. I illustrate the transformation of the national park into an "untouchable territory" where the evictions were justified by "public utility." This transformation mirrored and contributed to authoritarian and technocratic tendencies and the radical stand against "customary authorities" in this region, constructed as a backward and rebellious area.;In contrast, for many, decentralization through the transfer of centralized state powers to elected local authorities would improve democratization in Senegal. I also examine these claims by looking at the practices of the rural council of Dialakoto in resettlement areas at the northern borders of the National Park. I examine how the resettlement process, increased commodification of land and neoliberal development projects created the conditions for decentralized evictions. While centralized evictions strengthened the local image of the "state" as a coercive foreign authority, decentralized evictions extended this view to local rural councils acting as brokers of neoliberal development. Through the analysis of centralized and decentralized evictions, this dissertation unravels the contradictory effects of development, conservation and decentralization in Senegal and, complexities of claiming authority and property at the margins.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Anthropology
