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Hydrology of hope: Farm dams, conservation, and whiteness in Zimbabwe
Author(s) -
HUGHES DAVID McDERMOTT
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1525/ae.2006.33.2.269
Subject(s) - ephemeral key , entitlement (fair division) , rhetorical question , wildlife , environmental ethics , human–wildlife conflict , sociology , geography , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , mathematics , mathematical economics , biology
In Zimbabwe, many whites have affiliated themselves with the land rather than with surrounding societies. Theories of settler culture—which emphasize ethnic conflict—often overlook this environmentalist form of identity. As conservationists, white, large‐scale farmers sought to belong to the landscape, and they modified it in ways that facilitated that sense of belonging. On the semiarid highlands, they manipulated the most manipulable of environmental variables: water. In the 1990s, their new landscape of dams and reservoirs provided habitat for wildlife and irrigation for tobacco. Whites justified their land ownership on grounds of both conservation and development—a considerable rhetorical feat. Engineering, then, fostered an unstable, ephemeral feeling of entitlement and belonging.