This special issue, “Multispecies Encounters in Conservation Landscapes in Southern
Africa,” investigates the changing conditions of multispecies coexistence in conservation
contexts that transform entire ecosystems, including wildlife, plants, microbes and
humans. With this focus, we draw from the theoretical field of multispecies studies
to stimulate and promote scholarly discussion in this field in Southern Africa. Departing
from the postulate that human lives cannot be studied in isolation from other forms
of life (Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster 2016; Kirksey and Helmreich 2010; Locke and
Münster 2015), we focus on the dynamic ways in which human inhabitants in the conservation
areas of Southern Africa coexist with the plants, mammals, insects, microbes and other
non-human species. We do so whilst paying particular attention to the historical and
political contexts that shape and are constituted by transforming multispecies relations
and whilst reflecting local perspectives on the practicalities of multispecies coexistence
and conflicts. The contributions in this special issue are distinguished by considerable
diversity. First, they reflect a wide geographic range with research conducted in
Namibia, Zambia, South Africa and Botswana. Second, they include a wide range of non-human
actors, some of which are often not represented in scholarly social science and humanities
studies (including multispecies studies): mammals, from hippopotami to elephants,
but also donkeys, cattle and antelopes; plants (honeybush); insects and parasites
(tsetse flies and trypanosomes); and landscapes (wildlife corridors and rivers).
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This introductory chapter starts with an overview of the field of multispecies studies
and its criticisms to situate the special issue in this literature. Then, it goes
on to detail the overall contributions of this collection of articles. This special
issue adds to the field of multispecies studies by developing a distinct Southern
African perspective. The articles reflect the specificities of Southern African contexts
in three ways. First, they do so by historicising multispecies relations and tracing
their genealogies in the contested colonial and postcolonial histories of this region.
Second, they delve into local perspectives on the practicalities of multispecies coexistence
on the ground in conservation landscapes. Finally, influenced by political ecology
approaches, they politically contextualise multispecies relations by highlighting
how they connect to power imbalances inherited from the colonial contexts and from
socio-economic inequalities. Thus, the special issue rebuts the arguments raised against
multispecies approaches of being too abstracted and removed from local realities,
insufficiently embedded in historical and political dynamics and lacking actionable
knowledge to deal with (environmental) crises in practice (Hornborg 2017; Giraud 2019;
Büscher 2021).
The multispecies approach: situating our special issue
The field of multispecies studies points to the entanglement of human lives with processes
that involve and are set in motion by non-human beings — animals, plants, fungi, microorganisms.
Doing so, it challenges human exceptionalism and the boundaries of what it means to
be human (Ogden, Hall and Tanita 2013; Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster 2016) and redefines
human nature as an “interspecies relationship” (Tsing 2012, 141). Beyond the human,
the field of multispecies studies questions the categories with which we think about
species (Kirksey 2015) and organisms and how they enter relations with humans (Kirksey
and Helmreich 2010). It contributes, therefore, to thinking about the world beyond
the naturalistic dichotomy between nature and culture (in the wake of Descola 2005;
Latour 1993; and others). By decentring the human, multispecies studies shed light
on the agency of non-human beings and/or on the agency that emerges from multispecies
relations (on relational agency, see Bennett 2010). The multispecies field emphasises
the multiple, the emergent and the relational.
This field, however, covers a wide range of approaches. In The Mushroom at the End
of the World, Anna Tsing (2015), for example, follows the matsutake mushroom from
the forests of Oregon in the United States of America to the forests of Japan. Tsing
shows that forests around the world are bound in global capitalist commodity chains
that ultimately destroy them. She investigates a “multispecies assemblage” where the
lifeways of the mushroom, the mushroom pickers and traders, the pines and the forests
where they grow, the scientists and many others encounter, entangle and transform
each other. Her ethnography works in a patchwork, across scales, following the trajectories
of human and non-human actors, to understand how they meet and friction, and what
emerges from their encounters (for more on the use of multispecies assemblages as
analytical and methodological frameworks, see Lacan et al. 2024). Other approaches
delve deep into local and/or indigenous understandings of the non-human world. In
his seminal work How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn (2013) conducts an “anthropology
beyond-the-human” that thinks from and with the ontologies of the Runa d’Avilà living
in the Amazonian forest. Building on the Runa ontology, Kohn develops a theory of
thought as multispecies communication, understood as the growth of living beings in
response to signs that exceed by far the symbolic realm of the human language. With
his theory, Kohn succeeds in conceptualising humans in the web of their relations
with other living beings. Deborah Bird Rose, too, thinks with indigenous philosophies
to situate humans in their connections with a living world that has agency and sentience,
in contrast, she argues, to (Western) thought that is dominated by dualities like
culture/nature and mind/body (Rose 2005; see also Plumwood, cited in Rose 2005, 302).
Immersed in aboriginal philosophy and aesthetics, Rose’s work calls for noticing the
multispecies worlds that have been trashed in the Anthropocene (Rose 2017) and for
establishing a decolonised environmental ethics that runs counter to the enduring
violent marginalisation of aboriginal people (Rose 1999, 2021). Other scholars have
also looked at the power imbalances underlying or even destroying multispecies worlds.
Eben Kirksey (2017) shows the overlaps between the destruction of multispecies worlds
and the creation and maintenance of (racialised) social injustices, calling for multispecies
justice (see also Chao, Bolender and Kirksey 2022). Maan Barua (2016) points to the
non-human labour of lions commodified and exploited in the Indian tourism industry.
Ursula Münster (2016) analyses the political ecology of human-elephant collaborations
in South India, which has been historically shaped by extraction and conservation
and continues to contribute to wildlife management, albeit often invisibly.
Multispecies studies involve contrasting and at times highly innovative methodologies
that cross over disciplinary boundaries (see Bubandt, Andersen and Cypher 2023). Multispecies
ethnographers are prompt to immerse in non-human worlds (Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster
2016). Some draw on methods from the biological sciences. For example, Heather Swanson
collaborates with biologists to explore the lives of individual salmons. With an anthropological
eye, she analyses their scales and otoliths, which represent a kind of fish diary,
to study the multispecies encounters that make up salmon worlds (Swanson 2017). Andrew
Mathews (2018), forester and anthropologist, also uses botanical methods to study
the forms of vegetation and landscapes and analyse them as records of the past, combined
with ethnographic data, to document the multispecies histories of Italian forest landscapes.
John Hartigan (2021) employs ethological methods to learn how wild horses in Galicia
interact with humans. He gives a convincing argument that anthropologists can learn
much from the observation protocols of zoologists studying the sociability and culture
of animals.
Drawing from multispecies studies, this special issue focuses on the ways in which
human lives are entangled with other lifeways, in dynamic multispecies assemblages,
at different geographical scales and in history. Without dismissing the importance
of studying how human lives are practiced, enacted and lived, we look at how they
unfold with and are shaped by other living beings — plants, mammals, insects, microbes.
The contributions in this special issue are not limited to the description of the
socio-economic or institutional impact of conservation projects on human livelihoods
and social organisations. They also attempt to document how humans are, to use Haraway’s
(2008) term, “becoming with” the other species, especially those whose populations
have increased through conservation projects and have come into greater contact with
human populations. Therefore, in this special issue, authors pay attention to the
intimacies, synergies but also conflicts between humans and other species in the past,
the present and the emerging futures, and in the political ecological context of conservation
in the region.
Ethnography is particularly well suited to describe the practical and locally embedded
ways in which more-than-human coexistence is taking place providing ground for empathetic
observation and immersion in local perspectives. Historiography is also helpful to
highlight multispecies histories. When archival sources are read against the grain,
animals often emerge as the topic of communication: they have been poached, need vaccinations,
are photographed by trophy hunters. Their histories, intertwined and part of human
histories, can be traced. Beyond archival methods, oral histories can capture rural
people’s often intense recollections of encounters, conflicts and cooperation with
animals. Coming from the anthropological and historical fields, the contributions
to this project draw heavily on ethnographic methods, based on in-depth studies that
emphasise local perspectives and on historical methods, especially archival research,
that situate multispecies relations in their historical depth. Contributions also
draw from different sources of data and materials — for example grey literature or
accounts from the natural sciences documenting the ways of life of non-human species.
Doing so, they place different knowledges in dialogue with each other, reaching across
disciplinary boundaries, whilst remaining firmly rooted in the anthropological and
historical fields.
Nevertheless, the field of multispecies studies has also been deeply criticised. Alf
Hornborg (2017) argues that multispecies studies reflect the gaze of an urban elite
and romanticise the relations between humans and non-humans, far removed from local
realities and glossing over socio-economic and political inequalities. Scholarship
on the “more-than-human” and multispecies relations have also been criticised for
reflecting mostly Western voices and lacking in-depth consideration for indigenous
perspectives, even when the ideas developed in this field resonate with indigenous
ideas and worldviews (TallBear 2011; Todd 2016; Adams 2019). For Bram Büscher (2021,
6), studies of the non-human turn have been “selectively ahistorical”: they emphasise
entanglements between beings but do not analyse thoroughly enough the historical conditions
and political contexts that brought about these multispecies relations. Kopnina (2017)
deplores that multispecies ethnography does not adequately consider violence against
and exploitation and extinction of animals and exaggerates companionship and conviviality.
Lastly, multispecies studies have been criticised for their inability to deal with
crises (see Hornborg 2017). Giraud (2019) points out that, by emphasising complexity
and entanglements, these studies might hamper the neat identification of culprits
and responsibilities and therefore risk paralysing political action. This special
issue offers a counterpoint to these criticisms as it proposes to think with multispecies
and political ecology approaches from the Southern African context, situating multispecies
relations distinctively in their local histories, socioecological settings and political
dynamics.
A Southern African perspective
The opportunities and challenges of conservation in Southern Africa have raised considerable
interest amongst social scientists. Their publications have covered a wide range of
twentieth and twenty-first century conservation models, from national parks to community-based
natural resource management, investigating their impact, prospects and limitations.
These conservation initiatives have been studied from the angle of changing human
socio-economic conditions of living; shifting local social institutions, politics
and power dynamics in colonial and postcolonial contexts; and contestations of knowledge
and identities in globalised settings (see, for example, Murombedzi 1999; Magome and
Murombedzi 2003; Beinart 2008; Matose and Watts 2010; Mavhunga 2014; Mosimane and
Silva 2015; Matose 2016; Carruthers 2017; Ramutsindela, Miescher and Boehi 2016; Mosimane
and Breen 2020; Ramutsindela, Matose and Mushonga 2022). Political strife, impoverishment
and loss of access to land and natural resources have been constant themes in social
science publications dealing with conservation in colonial and postcolonial Southern
Africa (Bollig et al. 2023; Bollig and Krause 2023, 240–260). In these conservation
contexts, shifting relations between people and other species have only been scrutinised
in limited ways, mostly focusing on human-wildlife conflicts, their impact on human
livelihoods and the institutional mechanisms to tackle them (see, for instance, Munang’andu
et al. 2012; Naidoo et al. 2018; Schnegg and Kiaka 2018; Stoldt et al. 2020; Störmer
et al. 2019). In short, most of these valuable publications are centred on the human.
This special issue develops a distinctively Southern African perspective to the field
of multispecies studies. There is an emerging scholarship of multispecies research
in Southern Africa. Within this scholarship, Marcus Baynes-Rock and Elizabeth Marshall
Thomas (2017) investigate the social engagements between Ju/’hoan and lions in the
Kalahari in the 1950s. They show that human communities are more-than-human, and they
redraw the contours of what constitutes the social. In his study of the conservation
of white lions in South Africa, Harry Wels (2018) attempts to understand and take
the subjectivities of lions seriously. His approach to multispecies ethnography is
immersive, spending time with white lions, and inspired by San tracking techniques
(Wels 2020). In the Kalahari Desert, Pierre du Plessis’s (2022) work also engages
with San practices of tracking to understand the multispecies relations that make
the landscape. This special issue builds on this scholarship by focusing on multispecies
relations as they unfold in Southern African contexts. Beyond applying a multispecies
approach, the collected contributions think with the specificities of these contexts
and from a Southern African point of view.
First of all, specificities of the Southern African context include the long history
of state-led conservation in the region, rooted in colonial visions and practices
and embedded in enduring power imbalances at local, national, regional and global
levels (Murombedzi 2003; Mavhunga 2014; Koot, Büscher and Thakholi 2022; Ramutsindela,
Matose and Mushonga 2022; Thakholi, Koot and Büscher 2024). Thinking multispecies
relations from a Southern African perspective therefore cannot leave aside this politically
laden historical context. Thus, many contributions draw not only on multispecies approaches
but also on political ecology. Moreover, Southern Africa is particular for standing
at the forefront of conservationist initiatives, where conservation holds promises
of both human development and the preservation of ecosystems. In this context, conservation
is also laden with hope and aspirations for the future, not only for national governments
but for international organisations, practitioners operating at the local level and
local communities who see new opportunities and challenges emerging with conservation
projects implemented in their backyards. With this collection of articles, therefore,
we scrutinise the concrete changes at local level in the multispecies relations that
make up human lives in these conservation areas and situate them in this highly political
context.
Historicising multispecies relations in Southern Africa
Animals, insects, parasites and plants have histories too, histories that are not
reducible to evolutionary changes and adaptation to changing environmental conditions,
as demonstrated by the emerging scholarship on African multispecies histories (see
Swart 2010; Gibson 2018; Glover 2021; Jacobs 2021; Aderinto 2022). Several contributions
to this special issue propose a historical analysis of multispecies relations in Southern
Africa. Sandra Swart reconsiders human-baboon relations within a historical longue
durée. Doing so, she prompts us to look at history as more-thanhuman and highlights
the necessity of thinking at the interface of two changing cultures, of humans and
baboons, to develop conservation approaches that consider baboons (and more widely
animals) as “creatures of history.” Léa Lacan focuses on the historical emergence
of a more-than-tsetse assemblage in the gaze of colonial experts in Zambia from the
late nineteenth century until 1959. She explores the complexity of multispecies relations
underlying the tsetse and trypanosomiasis “problem” mediated by colonial stakeholders
to trace the intertwined history of wildlife conservation and tsetse control. Hauke-Peter
Vehrs focuses on the history of local and trophy hunting of the hippopotamus in north-eastern
Namibia. He combines a historical perspective on hunting as mediated by colonial actors
with empirical material on local hunting to scrutinise current conservation policies
and the colonial continuities that continue to shape the lives of the residents. Luregn
Lenggenhager and colleagues focus on the intertwined histories of humans and donkeys
in and around Etosha in central Namibia. They investigate the ambiguous position of
the domestic donkey, a neglected species yet one that followed humans in their travels
and influenced their relations with other livestock and wildlife species. All four
contributions trace the genealogies of multispecies relations, and examine how humans
become with animals, whether wildlife or livestock, or insects and parasites. They
situate current multispecies relations in the context of colonial and postcolonial
visions, knowledge, practices and policies that have shaped them.
Situating multispecies relations in their local socioecological contexts
Thinking from and with local and indigenous knowledge and philosophies is crucial
for decentring Western views on the environment (Rose 2005; Mavhunga 2018; Adams 2019;
Ferdinand 2021) and for reframing conservation and environmental governance in ways
that support local multispecies communities (Mabele, Krauss and Kiwango 2022). In
conservation landscapes of Southern Africa, this requires understanding and immersion
in the local realities of multispecies relations. Against the criticism that asserts
that multispecies studies are often too far removed from practical realities on the
ground, the contribution by Romie Nghitevelekwa and colleagues focuses on the interactions
between a Khwe community and antelopes in the Bwabwata National Park in north-eastern
Namibia. It explores the sociocultural significance of antelopes in the Khwe lifeworld
and their call for community-based conservation that considers wildlife beyond its
ecological and economic importance. The contribution by Sthembile Ndwandwe and colleagues
investigates the case of honeybush cultivation in Haarlem, South Africa. The authors
adopt an interdisciplinary perspective that combines anthropology with plant ecology.
They engage with the multispecies relations that make local honeybush ecologies and
the socio-economic relations between Haarlem honeybush harvesters and the plant, to
examine the impact of honeybush domestication and commodification on these relations.
The authors delve into perspectives of Haarlemers to analyse how their ways of relating
to honeybush have changed along with these transformations.
These contributions focus on multispecies relations as they unfold in practice on
the ground, from the perspective of those who are living with the antelopes or the
honeybush. They analyse how these multispecies relations transform in dynamic socio-economic
contexts, whether it be community-based conservation in north-eastern Namibia or the
establishment of honeybush plantations to support the plant’s commodification in Haarlem,
South Africa.
Politicising multispecies relations in Southern Africa
In reaction to Hornborg’s and Büscher’s criticisms, this special issue demonstrates
that a focus on multispecies relations does not preclude an analysis of their political
dimensions. It builds on a scholarship that has shown the overlaps between the domination
over local and indigenous groups and the domination of nature following both colonial
and capitalist logics (Plumwood [1993] 2003; Rose 2004; Ferdinand 2021). All contributions
highlight the politics of conservation that underlie multispecies relations in Southern
Africa. A Southern African perspective on multispecies studies necessarily considers
the political legacies of the colonial history and its enduring effects in the region
(see especially the contributions by Lacan, Vehrs, and Lavelle). It also considers
the current negotiation of policies, knowledge and practices in conservation landscapes
and questions of environmental justice (see the contribution by Ndwandwe and colleagues
on the impact of honeybush cultivation on the historical and ongoing socio-economic
marginalisation of Haarlemers). Michael Bollig focuses on wildlife corridors, key
instruments to support wildlife mobility, ecosystem connectivity and tourism in the
Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. By combining multispecies studies
and political ecology, he explores the contested nature of wildlife corridors that
engage complex multispecies relations. The contribution by Jessica-Jane Lavelle investigates
human-river entanglements amongst the Mayeyi people in the Kwando-Linyanti wetlands
in northern Namibia. Her case study traces the formation of multispecies entanglements
of the Mayeyi in a riverine environment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
and analyses their violent disruption as a consequence of colonialism. Finally, the
contribution by Paula Alexiou and colleagues discusses the ethics of conducting multispecies
ethnography in conservation landscapes in Southern Africa. The authors reflect on
three ethical issues that emerged from their research in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier
Conservation Area (specifically Namibia, Zambia and Botswana). These include how to
deal with the historical legacies of conservation, their positionalities as researchers
and the marginalisation of subjects, human and non-human, who are involved in their
studies. This contribution raises key questions about multispecies justice in the
practice of research.
Multispecies encounters in conservation landscapes: thinking from Southern Africa
Overall, by historicising multispecies relations in the conservation landscapes of
Southern Africa, situating them in their local socioecological contexts and highlighting
their political significance, this special issue provides two main perspectives. First,
it explores new possibilities for the field of multispecies studies that consider
its main criticism, namely an ahistorical and apolitical romanticising of multispecies
entanglements. It departs from the acknowledgement that multispecies approaches from
a Southern African perspective, one which remains rarely represented, necessarily
means conducting politicised multispecies enquiries. Second, this special issue contributes
to the movement towards decolonial approaches to environmental, conservation and multispecies
studies. It does so through contributions that are committed to unveiling the colonial
contexts within which conservation and realities of multispecies coexistence in conservation
landscapes have emerged and developed and that are intent on highlighting enduring
colonial legacies. It does so as well by making local realities of conservation and
multispecies interactions visible. Ultimately, the special issue calls for thinking
further from and with Southern African perspectives to enhance scholarly understandings
of multispecies worlds.