Primitive Ideas: Protected Area Buffer Zones and the Politics of Land in Africa

This article critically evaluates participatory, integrated conservation and development programmes in Africa, focusing on protected area buffer zones. I argue that, despite the emphasis on participation and benefit‐sharing, many of the new projects replicate more coercive forms of conservation practice and often constitute an expansion of state authority into remote rural areas. I suggest that the reasons for this state of affairs can be traced in part to the persistence in conservation interventions of Western ideas and images of the Other. These stereotypes result in misguided assumptions in conservation programmes which have important implications for the politics of land in buffer zone communities.