Territorialization, violence, and repression

The focus on the spatial dimension of property provides a more nuanced

understanding of how authorities operationalized regulatory rules governing property on the ground and its differential consequences on people’s access to resources or property.

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In addition to regulatory rules, the rearrangement and reordering of spaces and people have been the key practices of the state to control land and resources (Vandeergest and Peluso 1995; Peluso and Vandeergest 2001; Neumann 2001; Corson 2011; Holmes 2014). Vandergeest and Peluso (1995) used “internal territorialization” to examine how states use spatial strategies to control internal land and resources. They claim that the modern state divides complex and overlapping spaces into simplified abstract spaces, uses cartographic and scientific techniques to classify land and resources, rearranges people and resources, regulates by laws and policies, and administers by agencies or institutions. Theorizing state-building processes through conservation practice, Neumann (2004) argues that “proprietary claims and the process of mapping, bounding, containing and controlling nature and citizenry are what make a state a state. States come into being through these claims and the assertion of control over territory, resources, and people" (2004, 185). Similarly, Li (2002) argues that the state intensified control over people and place primarily through spatial strategies such as the legal demarcation and mapping of forest reserves. The central government also controls decentralization of the forest by inscribing spatial limitations and the supervision of resource use and access (Ribot et al. 2006). Similarly, Neumann (2004) pointed out that state and non-state surveyed,

classified and demarcated buffer zone boundaries, and local councils and forest guards were employed in monitoring and enforcement of bounded territories to control

communities access of wild animals in the buffer zone of the Selous Game reserve. Spatial strategies partition complex landscapes into zones of differential access and use. In addition, authorities strictly protected resources that are within off-limit zones from non-members or certain people or groups represented as unfit to use. That is, spatial

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strategies determine who has access, when and where people have access, and under what conditions people have access to land and resources. In other words, territorial practices and boundaries create zones of exclusion and inclusion in a broad sense, where only some are allowed to get access for a particular activity or to get certain types of

resources. Most frequently, access to and exclusion from bounded land and resources are guided by certain ideas, social relations, identities, and material and discursive practices Thus territorialization not only shapes access to and control over resources, but creates subject categories such as environmental and non-environmental subjects (Peluso and Lund 2011; Neumann 2001; Peluso and Vandeergest 2001; Ybarra; 2012; Mahli 2012).

As the establishment of conservation territories includes the legal and material classification of space into zones of exclusion and inclusion and the enclosure of land and resources within a bounded space, the spatial practices are associated with the violent act of evicting people from the place of belonging and curtailment of resource access and control, and subjugation of local practices, knowledge and history. Furthermore, the maintenance of boundaries and claiming of land and resources within the bounded space requires continuous monitoring, surveillance and enforcement by authorities. More important, memories and ongoing fear of violence are vital for the efficient enforcement of boundaries and the control of resources. Thus, violence and memories of violence are also related with the constitution of subject, spaces, property and authorities (Peluso and Lund 2011; Neumann 2001).

Vandeergest and Peluso (1995) claim that there are always misfits between abstract space and lived space, which contribute to the instability of the modern state’s territorial strategies. Therefore, as this lack of fit generates local resistance,

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territorialization always involves second order state practices such as violence and subtle forces to establish or maintain territorial claims. Similarly, Holmes (2014) points out that the state along with non-state agencies used territorial strategies such as mapping,

demarcation of boundaries and monitoring and enforcement of boundaries and further used conservation discourses to legitimate state and non-state physical violence and violent control of access of resources. Likewise, Mahli (2012) shows how territorial strategies that limited the use of and access to land and land control was vigorously contested through a discourse of resistance that draws from Muslim moral land use practices and resource entitlement. Local communities used global Islamic discourses of moral land use, law and authority to resist against colonial land enclosure. She describes the ways colonial enclosure has also produced "radical anti-enclosure politics" including violent uprisings and also violent colonial suppression. 

Although the state has a monopoly on violence, the use of violence to control people and resources also requires justification or rationalization. Scholars argue that discourse and the representation of people, nature and practices play an important role in the rationalization of violence and violent control of people and spaces (Peluso 1993; Li 2007). For instance, Neumann (2004) examines popular media representation of people as "Others" and claims that their discursive production of the African people represents them as different and morally and culturally inferior to white Europeans and wild animals. For instance, the media represents African people's practices and culture as violent, cruel and uncivilized based on the comparative treatment of wild animals by brutal and uncivilized Others and civilized European. In addition, this representation discursively humanized wild animals that placed poachers on the lower rung below wild

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animals on a moral hierarchy. These discursive practices, he argued, normalized and justified war, violence and militarization in conservation in Africa. Similarly, Ybarra (2012) argues that the military counterinsurgency campaigns, which aligned with

conservation practices, controlled people and spaces not only through spatial strategies of dividing, delineating and enforcing forest boundaries, but they also used discursive representations of nature and people. The jungle - a base of guerilla fighters - was represented as “wild and savage” and a “guerilla haven” with a binary representation of society as safe and civilized and nature as a dangerous jungle. She further writes most military from the east view Petans as an "unhealthy place populated by dangerous Indians" and the Maya indigenous people were looked at as suspect citizens.

Likewise, scholars have also emphasized the ways Western ideas about non- Western Others, their place, and practices in CBC projects’ conceptualizations continued to shape outcomes related to CBC initiatives including the access to and control of resources, conservation outcomes and state expansion (Peet and Watts 1996). For instance, Neumann (1997) emphasizes the ways the Western non-state agencies and donors have conceptualized the integrated conservation and development projects (ICDP) in Africa. He shows that the new conservation practices backed by Western authorities include similar representations of non-western people as primitive Others and their places as full of "danger, darkness, and irrationality" (1997, 567). In particular, he argues that despite its rhetoric of local participation and empowerment, the involvement of people is limited by authorities' assumptions of the idea of primitive Other. The traditional

indigenous people living in harmony with nature who are thus uneducated and incapable, and the representations of local people and practices as destructive and backward enable

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or legitimate authorities to intervene and expand their role and power. Likewise,

Schroeder (2005) reported dismissive and condescending attitude towards rural Gambian people in the report and plans of the German forest projects (GGFP) of the Gambia. The project documents also represented community people as ignorant and inept in

environmental management and in need of guidance and training by the state and forest experts. It established the authority and hierarchy of state and non-state agencies and hindered participatory governance. Similarly, Sundberg (2006) examined participatory conservation in Guatemala and asserted that the emphasis on democratization and institutional reform in natural governance without social change would have little effect because daily practices and cultural imaginaries may present barriers to the inclusion, participation, and empowerment specific social groups. More specifically, she notes that the presence of structural inequalities among groups and the state and NGOs narrows visions or their deep-seated cultural imaginaries of groups such as indigenous people as backward, inferior, culturally incapable of making a decision, and illiterate limit or hinder active participation of peoples. As a result, she points out the persistence of centralized decision making, the exclusion of people and the lack of democratic practice in

Guatemala. She says that these perceptions and cultural imaginaries in conservation not only limited the success of community conservation but reproduced long-standing racial and cultural hierarchies in Guatemala.