WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:00:02.200 --> 00:00:11.550 I also included an article that I wrote not too long ago to give you some kind of idea about 00:00:11.550 --> 00:00:19.500 new discussions in environmental anthropology as they relate to conservation, so just let me take you 00:00:19.500 --> 00:00:23.000 quickly through that. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:00:27.300 --> 00:00:35.400 This is based on field work that I did over a number of years and which ended up in this 00:00:35.400 --> 00:00:45.900 Publication in 2015 this one's built on many of the same kind of concerns that we have already 00:00:45.900 --> 00:00:55.100 seen in discussing conservation's but here I wanted to go a step further and look more carefully at 00:00:55.100 --> 00:00:57.650 the kind of landscapes and histories behind NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 69% (MEDIUM) 00:00:57.650 --> 00:01:05.000 a conservation area and I was also inspired by new perspectives such as science and technology 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:12.800 studies when I wrote this book so let me first take you through some of the story of this area and 00:01:12.800 --> 00:01:24.050 then what the article is a reflection on so this South Africa's first UNESCO world heritage site 00:01:24.050 --> 00:01:27.550 that stretches from the area NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:01:27.550 --> 00:01:36.700 about two hours north of Durban all the way up to the border with Mozambique and it is hailed as one 00:01:36.700 --> 00:01:44.100 of the most important Wetland areas in South Africa as an area under threat as you would imagine as 00:01:44.100 --> 00:01:52.950 a pristine area that needs to be protected but it has a long history of human use and 00:01:52.950 --> 00:01:55.600 Industrial use actually as well NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:06.800 this is a hunting map of the same area from the late 1880s and at that time this area was an 00:02:06.800 --> 00:02:15.400 important supplier of wild animals and especially ivory from the British colony of natal to the 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:25.000 rest of the world so it was heavily used and heavily hunted, if you stop this 00:02:25.000 --> 00:02:25.100 the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:02:25.100 --> 00:02:33.400 video you can have a look at this quote it describes one of the expedition's of the great white hunters 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:42.700 in inverted commas from the 1850s so it was quite a tough environment they traveled in but people 00:02:42.700 --> 00:02:52.100 made a fortune doing this they traveled in North into the area shot a lot of animals often with 00:02:52.100 --> 00:02:55.000 a collaboration of local chiefs NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:04.500 and helpers and brought Ivory and skins out of natal to the rest of the British Empire with the 00:03:04.500 --> 00:03:13.500 result then that towards the end of the 1890s there was hardly any animals left at all, at that same 00:03:13.500 --> 00:03:23.400 time the colony wanted to try to use this area for productive purposes so after South Africa was 00:03:23.400 --> 00:03:24.850 United in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:03:24.850 --> 00:03:37.300 1910 this area became a center of massive forestry operations what you see here is a collector's 00:03:37.300 --> 00:03:45.700 Plantation in the area now and today most of the area has been covered by eucalyptus so both in 00:03:45.700 --> 00:03:53.700 terms of hunting when almost all animals were destroyed then eucalyptus and a thirdly NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:03:55.500 --> 00:04:02.800 commercial agriculture of sugar cane where the main industries in this area so what I'm trying to 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:10.900 get across this that far from being a pristine nature area this is a heavily used landscape and the 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:19.399 landscape that has been marked by Colonial exploitation throughout, and in all these stories 00:04:19.399 --> 00:04:25.000 in all these uses the population that used to live in this area have been displaced NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:04:25.000 --> 00:04:33.750 and moved if you read documents from 1840s and onwards colonial 00:04:33.750 --> 00:04:40.000 Authorities tell about how they replaced what they call squatters from the forest and likewise when 00:04:40.000 --> 00:04:46.750 they tried to establish sugar cane plantations, black people were moved out of the area. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:04:46.750 --> 00:04:53.800 So this is how it is presented today as a nature conservation area and you can sort of go on these 00:04:53.800 --> 00:05:03.000 boats up and down the history and look at look at the hippos in what appears to be in wilderness what 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:08.800 you don't really know when you stand on a boat like this is that only a couple of hundred meters in 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:17.100 the back here you have settlements like these and this is seen as highly problematic as NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:05:17.100 --> 00:05:27.200 destroying what used to be a massive forest stretching all over the area so in order to do something 00:05:27.200 --> 00:05:29.200 about that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:05:29.600 --> 00:05:40.000 the park authorities and the local conservation body has tried to clean out the 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:47.400 forestry operations like this they cut down all the alien trees and trying to restore the landscape 00:05:47.400 --> 00:05:58.350 as you see here, this is from the first time I visited the park in 2010 and 00:05:58.350 --> 00:06:00.299 today there is no NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:06:00.299 --> 00:06:04.400 Trace at all of this use of the of the forest. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:06:04.500 --> 00:06:15.400 so the only places we do find some original Forest now is around some of the settlements 00:06:15.400 --> 00:06:23.700 next to the river and it's been a huge huge outcry in the media from the 1990s onwards about 00:06:23.700 --> 00:06:30.600 foreigners or black people squatters moving in and destroying what are the last remains of an 00:06:30.600 --> 00:06:34.650 indigenous Forest but at this potted history I NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:06:34.650 --> 00:06:42.800 just gave you now shows this is not the case at all, rather this is a heavily used landscape and in 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:53.150 fact the kind of force that you see here quite similarly to the case of the episode last week has 00:06:53.150 --> 00:07:01.200 grown back since the 1950s when people were forcibly removed from this area much of what 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:04.600 is now forrest used to be grazing lands and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:07:04.600 --> 00:07:14.400 and when the apartheid authorities who moved people in the 1950s onwards it started to grow back, so 00:07:14.400 --> 00:07:22.500 this Forest is really a sign of dispossession rather than an old ancient forest now being destroyed by 00:07:22.500 --> 00:07:33.100 by squatters. In South Africa also since the end of Apartheid you have had a land reform 00:07:33.100 --> 00:07:34.600 process so what I studied NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:07:34.600 --> 00:07:43.100 in the book was the contestation between land reform i.e. people who had 00:07:43.100 --> 00:07:50.200 been displaced from this area and claimed it back and the conservation Authority that wanted to re- 00:07:50.200 --> 00:08:00.299 store the land and contrasted those two strategies what struck me after having finished that work 00:08:00.299 --> 00:08:04.550 and that was the starting point for this NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:08:04.550 --> 00:08:13.800 article is that time and temporality was really important to what is going on here and I hadn't 00:08:13.800 --> 00:08:22.000 really caught on to that as I wrote so these are my article it is my reflections afterwards on 00:08:22.000 --> 00:08:29.600 the importance of time and temporality so I begin by noticing some general aspects of climate 00:08:29.600 --> 00:08:34.600 temporality in relation to conservation first and foremost how NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:43.200 conservation areas such as the wetland park perhaps best exemplified by this slide 00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:51.000 are often portrayed as timeless they are outside time outside history this as some conservationists 00:08:51.000 --> 00:09:00.500 used to say this is what Africa is supposed to look like that. That timelessness involves a lot of what I 00:09:00.500 --> 00:09:04.550 called a temporal contradictions in one NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:09:04.550 --> 00:09:11.700 quote on this Wetland Parks homepage which they later removed they actually said that 00:09:11.700 --> 00:09:19.700 what you're trying to do when we remove the science of industrial forestry is to try to restore the 00:09:19.700 --> 00:09:30.500 landscape to what it would be like before the first colonialists came so, i.e. nature is assumed to be a 00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:34.599 point back in time before white settlement NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:09:34.599 --> 00:09:41.600 that everybody realizes it's extremely problematic statement, so that was since removed. But when you 00:09:41.600 --> 00:09:51.200 look at conservation plans and conservation aims especially in post-colonial situations like South 00:09:51.200 --> 00:09:59.200 Africa what is what is taken as nature what you want to restore is often seen as an invisible point 00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:04.500 in time time as it did nature as it was before Colonial relations NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:10:04.500 --> 00:10:13.200 before white settlements, but without having black people living in it. So there's a time of temporal 00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:21.500 contradiction I argue built into conservation itself what I try to conserve what kind of idea are 00:10:21.500 --> 00:10:30.300 you trying to conserve where in history does that landscape exist right, and I go into much more 00:10:30.300 --> 00:10:34.650 details about that as you can see in the article. I also then point out NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:10:34.650 --> 00:10:43.900 that the alternative use of this land land reform i.e. people wanting to take the land back and 00:10:43.900 --> 00:10:53.100 use it as they had until the 1940s also involves a set of contradictions which several authors have 00:10:53.100 --> 00:10:59.500 pointed out when it sounds self-evidently right that after apartheid and people they dispossessed of 00:10:59.500 --> 00:11:03.150 the land you need to restore land to people NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:11:03.150 --> 00:11:12.800 but again the restoring bit here has a temporal element it's not just turning back the clock to a 00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:20.300 predispositioned situation and giving people that land back, one problem with that solution is that in a 00:11:20.300 --> 00:11:31.800 case like Saint Lucia the people have been moved in several stages and in several waves so that many 00:11:31.800 --> 00:11:33.100 people could actually NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:11:33.100 --> 00:11:41.100 claim the same piece of land another important contradiction is that land isn't what it was in the 00:11:41.100 --> 00:11:48.400 1940s, in the 1940s you could easily or not easily but it was at least possible to live off the land 00:11:48.400 --> 00:11:56.100 as a small-scale farmer that is completely a different situation in South Africa today and it's also 00:11:56.100 --> 00:12:03.000 trying to undo but for conservation and for supplements the idea of restoration NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:10.000 which I argue has a temporal element to it, is also implicitly an argument for trying to do away with 00:12:10.000 --> 00:12:15.800 all the temporal unfoldings all that has happened to this landscape between the point you want to 00:12:15.800 --> 00:12:26.400 restore to and now. So the whole article is basically a reflection of the fact on the kind of work 00:12:26.400 --> 00:12:32.750 I did when I wrote about and published about this area and it tries to show some NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:12:32.750 --> 00:12:39.900 hidden temporal assumptions assumptions about time that often goes in conservation circles and in 00:12:39.900 --> 00:12:47.600 conservation work as well as in social justice work such as land restitution, and the fact that we 00:12:47.600 --> 00:12:56.050 are not aware of these contradictions I argue is a problem for what we want to actually try to 00:12:56.050 --> 00:13:03.050 to do, so that was just an example of the new debates and newer anthropological NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:13:03.050 --> 00:13:08.950 takes on the kind of issues that we talked about when we when we discuss anthropology and 00:13:08.950 --> 00:13:10.800 conservation.