Creating Africas

Creating Africas is a worthwhile addition to existing literature on nature conservation, in particular for scholars interested in South Africa. The book provides an in-depth historical account of the Dukuduku Forest and its surroundings, the iSimangaliso (St Lucia) Wetland Park, and how this area has more recently become subject to land claims. This is complemented by well-documented ethnographic research and a clear overview of the different interests, activities, and ideas of the various stakeholders down the years – sugar farmers, (subsistence) hunters, conservationists, and smallholders. Nustad meticulously lays bare these different interests, and does so in an accessible style that makes the book a very pleasant read. He approaches these dynamics by building on the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology, convincingly explaining that many different realities of Dukuduku Forest and its surroundings – or ideas of what the area should be – are being constructed. The book can therefore also be read as a critique of the dominant ontology of nature conservation that draws heavily on the nature–society dichotomy.

Agriculture · Archaeology · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Geography · Nature Conservation · Ontology · Political science · Sociology · Style (visual arts) · Subject (documents) · Subsistence agriculture · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropology · Ecology

• Notes on the political ecology of time

  Open Access•K G Nustad•Geoforum•2020

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• Conservation in the Pluriverse

  Open Access•Jessica Hope•Geoforum•2021

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