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The Low‐Wage Conservationist: Biodiversity and Perversities of Value in Madagascar
Author(s) -
Sodikoff Genese
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01154.x
Subject(s) - biodiversity , agrarian society , slash and burn , deforestation (computer science) , value (mathematics) , wage , work (physics) , agriculture , geography , agroforestry , ecotourism , reforestation , natural resource economics , economics , ecology , tourism , forestry , biology , labour economics , mechanical engineering , archaeology , engineering , machine learning , computer science , programming language
In the early 1990s, donors began to implement “integrated conservation and development projects” (ICDPs) in Madagascar to stem deforestation, develop ecotourism, and promote forest conservation practices in rural areas. ICDPs recruited agrarian labor to groom and police parks and disseminate rules. In this article, I present a Marxian analysis of biodiversity's value in the global north, focusing on the role of manual workers in a Biosphere Reserve. I argue that ICDP's reliance on cheap local labor has maintained the historical interdependency of “slash‐and‐burn” agriculture, wage work, and forest conservation. By facilitating the discovery of species while unintentionally perpetuating the conditions of habitat endangerment, the conservation labor process creates forms of rain forest value.