The Conservation of Violence: Statecraft, Forests, and Coloniality

by Tafadzwa Mushonga

Overview

The Conservation of Violence explores the governance of protected forests in Zimbabwe, highlighting the structural and operational mechanism through which violent tactics are produced, employed, and sustained to promote nature conservation. Drawing on political ecology, geography, and environmental politics, it examines the central role of the state in conserving conservation violence. The book presents contemporary cases studies of violence in conservation and introduces the concept of conservation of violence as an alternative framework for understanding the tenacity of violence in conservation areas across Africa. It also delves into the constitutionalisation of environmental rights, illustrating how these rights have been leveraged to enable and preserve conservation violence, as well as the ways in which militarisation fosters and circulates violence. By offering new ways for investigating violence in conservation, the book interrogates the complexities of dismantling entrenched systems of violence and provides insights into the theoretical and practical obstacles of transforming conservation ideologies. The explored include coloniality, nature-culture dichotomies, resource governance, extraction, capitalism, sustainability, policy and conservation law, regulation and policing, environmental rights, and environmental justice. The Conservation of Violence will be a significant contribution to the fields of political ecology, geography, development, environmental justice, and the broader environmental humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040378120
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/14/2025
Series:	Routledge Studies in Environmental Justice
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	186
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Tafadzwa Mushonga is a Research Fellow and co-leader of the Environmental Humanities project at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria. Her research focuses on the political ecology of conservation, with particular attention to people-state relations in the governance of protected forests. Mushonga is the co-editor of two volumes: The Violence of Conservation in Africa: State, Militarization and Alternatives (with Maano Ramutsindela and Frank Matose), and the Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa: Poetics and Politics of Exploitation (with James Ogude). Her work engages with themes of environmental justice, state power, and the intersection of conservation, militarisation and environmental governance.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Naming Violence 2. Colonial Forest Administration and the Inheritance of Violence 3. The Militarisation of Conservation: Production and Mobilities of Violence in State Forests 4. The Concessionaire Industry and Continuities of State Violence 5. Constitutional Environmental Rights, the State, and Violence Conclusion