1st Edition

The Conservation of Violence Statecraft, Forests, and Coloniality

By Tafadzwa Mushonga Copyright 2025
186 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

186 Pages 5 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

The Conservation of Violence explores the governance of protected forests in Zimbabwe, highlighting the structural and operational mechanism through which violent tactics are produced, employed, and sustained to promote nature conservation. Drawing on political ecology, geography, and environmental politics, it examines the central role of the state in conserving conservation violence. The book... Read more

Introduction  1. Naming Violence  2. Colonial Forest Administration and the Inheritance of Violence  3. The Militarisation of Conservation: Production and Mobilities of Violence in State Forests  4. The Concessionaire Industry and Continuities of State Violence  5. Constitutional Environmental Rights, the State, and Violence  Conclusion

Biography

Tafadzwa Mushonga is a Research Fellow and co-leader of the Environmental Humanities project at the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria. Her research focuses on the political ecology of conservation, with particular attention to people-state relations in the governance of protected forests. Mushonga is the co-editor of two volumes: The Violence of Conservation in Africa: State, Militarization and Alternatives (with Maano Ramutsindela and Frank Matose), and the Environmental Humanities of Extraction in Africa: Poetics and Politics of Exploitation (with James Ogude). Her work engages with themes of environmental justice, state power, and the intersection of conservation, militarisation and environmental governance.