Seeking ‘Telos’ in the ‘Transfrontier’? Neoliberalism and the Transcending of Community Conservation in Southern Africa

In Southern Africa the last ten years have seen a rather dramatic shift in donor and state interest and funding from ‘community conservation’ to ‘transfrontier conservation’. The new trend broadens the aim of conservation–development interventions to also include interstate cooperation. The article critically analyzes this development within a wider shift in neoliberal politics. It is argued that this broader shift helped create the right ‘enabling environment’ for the transfrontier conservation discourse to be presented as an all-embracing and unifying ideological ‘model of meaning’. Moreover, underlying neoliberalism's contemporary political conduct is a strong reassertion and the actual neo-liberalisation of the state. It is this move that has truly enabled the ‘transfrontier’ to revive the telos of conservation in Southern Africa.