Koot, Stasja and Walter van Beek. “Ju/’hoansi Lodging in a Namibian Conservancy: CBNRM, Tourism and Increasing Domination.” Conservation & Society 15, no. 2 (2017): 136-46. doi:10.4103/cs.cs_15_30.
Following Ingold’s dwelling perspective, the world comes into being because an organism/person is continuously interacting with his/her environment through bodily activity. Ingold contrasts dwelling with building; in the latter, people construct the world cognitively before they can live in it. In this paper, we add the concept of “lodging” to refer to a situation in which people live in an environment that contains increasing dominating powers. Under the influence of conservation and the implementation of a Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programme, with a strong focus on tourism, the environment of the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen of the Nyae Nyae Conservancy in Namibia has changed dramatically. In this paper, we use various examples to show how the environment has become more dominant, often in very subtle ways. We argue that the Ju/’hoansi do not dwell as they used to, but lodge instead in an environment that is increasingly influenced by CBNRM and tourism activities. Some of the Ju/’hoansi’s agency has become limited to acquiescing; they passively adapt to and cope with the changes in their environment, while others have shown a more active adaptation strategy. (Text from authors’ abstract)
© Stasja Koot and Walter van Beek 2017. Conservation & Society is available online only and is published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 2.5).