240527 SE "Conservation in African Borderlands" (and its visual representation) (P4) (2021W)

The main focus will be on local communities’ perspectives on their strategies, participation processes and agency in community-based conservation management, including the marketing of "traditional culture". The seminar will also account for the complex forms of interaction with national and international NGOs claiming to help or assist in this process and state agencies. The main aim is to view the entire spectrum of chances and potential benefits of transfrontier conservation and cultural performances along with some less convenient or even unwanted consequences of 'Ethno-marketing'. Ethnotourism and nature-tourism tend to transform ethnic or indigenous life-ways over time into what may be coined "simulacra of indigeneity". Cultural villages in wilderness areas (or parks promoted as such) offer a "menu" to visitors suggesting possible consumptions of nature and culture with fixed prices. Such items include "Bushmen walks", imitations of former hunting trips, healing dances and even traditional weddings meaning ceremonies modelled on San rituals of manifesting marital bonds for the visiting tourists.

Visual representation shall be discussed and practiced in a decolonizing way, i.e. with a key focus on local views and experiences, thereby following the aim of de-exoticizing so called indigenous cultures from the outsider’s gaze. Empirical examples of the field practice may be used in this regard.