Conservation, control and ecological change: the politics and ecology of colonial conservation in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe

Focusing first on official discourse and the conflict which accompanied the passage of early conservation legislation, this article then looks at the different interpretations of the effects of implementation in the Shurugwi communal area. Shurugwi was the testing ground for early state interventions and was upheld as a model of successful state "development'. Policies justified as conservationist provoked some of the most widespread rural resistance and also created new environmental problems. Disputes over conservation were at the same time struggles over local authority. Such disputes drew on notions of the relationship between nature, community and ancestors which differed significantly from the "autonomous' view of nature enshrined in natural science. Local as much as official representations of ecological change are embedded in a political, economic and cultural context, and are neither shared nor uncontested. -from Author