Defending the environment, conserving social life: Global visions and local values in southern Madagascar

This thesis is a dual ethnography. It analyzes, on the one hand, the ideology, assumptions, actions and bureaucratic character of conservation groups operating today in Madagascar, specifically those of the WWF-Andohahela project located in the southern part of the country. On the other hand, it attempts to describe and analyze the ties to, and representations of the land held by a group of Tatsimo living adjacent to Andohahela. This study makes possible a comparison between the value-systems, ideologies and practices informing the two groups' competition to assert control over the same land.; A social history of the environment is only just beginning to be written for Madagascar. French colonial policies (1896–1960) had an enormous impact on the land and the people. A review of this history is provided, as it is still remembered by the local inhabitants but largely ignored by the conservation literature, which often explains deforestation as the result of local practices and beliefs.; For the Tatsimo of southern Madagascar, people are inextricably tied to the land, and the land to people. This thesis demonstrates how, through rituals and everyday occurrences the villagers of Belamonty derive their identity, in part, from their kinship and ceremonial associations with particular places in the landscape, moving over it as they reassert their kinship ties.; This thesis delineates the political aspects surrounding the Andohahela project. For WWF, the reserve land is largely defined by the percentages of biodiversity that it holds. Villages are viewed as being adjacent to the project and are depicted as “pressures” on its integrity. The intellectual and ethical content ascribed to the elusive term of biodiversity pulls together WWF's entire approach, masking the political nature of its mission and the practical problems following the lack of communication at the significant level of values and interests, with the local populations.; Maps, and especially those created with the new technology of GIS, are increasingly being used to fashion new policies for conservation. This thesis demonstrates how such images can be deceptive, and do little, in their current forms, to represent the reality on the ground, as experienced by villagers.