Competing Epistemologies
Conservationist Discourses and Guji Oromo’s Sacred Cosmologies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.20055Keywords:
Sacred Cosmologies, Environmental Cosmologies, Nature-Culture RelationsAbstract
Due to the ecological challenges faced by many around the globe, environmental conservation has now become an important priority among politicians, academicians, practitioners, and local communities in different cultural and livelihood contexts. Nevertheless, there is no clear consensus about the place of human beings in the environment and the best approach needed to avert ecological problems that arise from anthropogenic factors. While most mainstream Western notions of environmental conservation emphasize a human–nonhuman dualism, most indigenous cosmologies holistically embrace human, nonhuman, and supernatural beings as integral parts or ‘societies of nature’. Moreover, most conceptualizations of nature among indigenous peoples are deeply rooted in their beliefs, norms, values, and customs, which are performed and enacted in rituals that convey profound interconnectedness between humans and nature. Taking Nech Sar National Park in southern Ethiopia as a case study, this paper examines the conmicts and collaborations of different environmental epistemologies, namely the government’s conservationist discourse and local sacred cosmologies. Based on data from ethnographic research conducted among the Guji Oromo of southern Ethiopia, I argue that the Guji Oromo living in the Nech Sar National Park negotiate and/or appropriate governmental conservationist rhetoric as a pragmatic strategy to maneuver the government’s conservation practices for their advantage.
References
Berisso, Taddesse. 2004. ‘Planning Resettlement in Ethiopia: The Experience of the Guji Oromo of Nech Sar National Park’, in A. Pankhurst and P. Francois (eds.), People, Space and the State: Migration, Resettlement and Displacement in Ethiopia (Addis Ababa: Bole Printing Press): 93-101.
Berisso, Taddesse. 2006. ‘The Pride of the Guji-Oromo: An Essay on Cultural Contact and Self-Esteem’, in I. Strecker and J. Lyddall (eds.), The Perils of Face: Essays on Cultural Contact, Respect and Self-esteem in Southern Ethiopia (Berlin: Lit Verlag): 207-26.
Berkes, Firket. 2008. Sacred Ecology (London: Routledge).
Briggs, Philip. 2006. Ethiopia: The Bradt Travel Guide (London: Bradt Travel Guides).
Brockington, Dan, et al. 2008. Nature Unbound: Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas (London: Earthscan).
Callicott, Baird. 2008. ‘Contemporary Criticisms of the Received Wilderness Idea’, in Michael Nelson and Baird Callicott (eds.), The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great Wilderness Debate (Athens: The University of Georgia Press): 355-77.
Campbell, Bell. 2005. ‘Changing Protection Policies and Ethnographies of Environmental Engagement’, Conservation and Society 3.2: 280-322.
Debelo, Asebe. 2016. Wilderness or Home? Con?icts, Competing Views and Claims of Entitlement Over Nech Sar National Park, Ethiopia (Berlin: Lit Verlag).
Dowie, Mark. 2009. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Con?ict Between Global Conservation and Indigenous Peoples (Boston: MIT Press).
Escobar, Arturo. 1999. ‘After Nature: Steps to an Antiessentialist Political Ecology’, Current Anthropology 40.1: 1-30. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/515799.
Escobar, Arturo. 2008. Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life, Redes (Durham: Duke University Press). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822389439.
Godana, Getachew. 2007. ‘Do People and Their Culture Matter in the Conservation of Natural Resources? A Study of Impacts of Conservation Policies in Nech Sar National Park and Yayo Forest in Illubabor Bora Zone’ (MA thesis, Addis Ababa University).
Huxley, Julian, A. Gille, T. Monod, L. Swift, and E. Worthington. 1963. ‘The Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Ethiopia’ (unpublished Report UNESCO/NS/NR/47).
Igoe, Jim. 2004. Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota (Belmont, WA: Wadsworth/ Thomson Learning).
Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment (London: Routledge).
Li, Murray, T. 1999. ‘Compromising Power: Development, Culture, and Rule in Indonesia’, Cultural Anthropology 14.3: 295-322. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1999.14.3.295.
Long, Norman. 2001. Development Sociology: Actor Perspectives (London: Routledge). Doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203398531.
Markakis, John. 2011. Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers (London: James Currey).
Mitchell, Laura. 2012. ‘Appraising Nature’, in T. Falola and B. Emily (eds.), Landscape, Environment and Technology in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (London: Routledge): 42-61.
Neumann, Roderick. 1998. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles Over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press).
Scott, James. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Scott, James. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press).
Snodgrass, Jeffrey G., and Kristina Tiedje. 2008. ‘Introduction: Indigenous Nature Reverence and Conservation—Seven Ways of Transcending an Unnecessary Dichotomy’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2.1: 6-29. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v2i1.6.
Tiedje, Kristina. 2007. ‘The Promise of the Discourse of the Sacred for Conservation (and Its Limits)’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1.3: 326-39. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v1i3.326.
Tiedje, Kristina. 2008. ‘Situating the Corn-Child: Articulating Animism and Conservation from a Nahua Perspective’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2.1: 93-115. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v2i1.93.
Turton, David. 2002. ‘The Mursi and the Elephant Question’, in Dawn Chatty and Marcus Colchester (eds.), Conservation and Mobile Indigenous Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development (Oxford: Berghahn Books): 97-118.
Turton, David. 2011. ‘Wilderness, Wasteland or Home? Three Ways of Imagining the Lower Omo Valley’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 5.1: 158-76. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2011.544546.
