Conservation and Community in Kenya

Carolyn K. Lesorogol is professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Carolyn K. Lesorogol convincingly argues that the hope of successful community-based conservation lies not just in encouraging greater disbursement of funding but also the nurturing of the value of wildlife protection and pride in a conservation enterprise that is felt as 'owned' by the communities. Her work reflects two elements of scholarship: a systematic study using explicit methods, and an ethnographic study resting on her own background knowledge and her ear-to-the-ground exploration of what is actually happening below the surface. The result is a rich and valuable contribution to the literature on an important and globally significant experiment in trying to reconcile environmental protection and community livelihoods through the creation of community-based wildlife conservancies. --John Galaty, McGill University In this detailed and readable ethnography, Lesorogol, an anthropologist specializing in social change, examines and evaluates the interaction of community-based wildlife conservancies (CBCs) with traditional and contemporary institutions governing land management in three communities in the pastoral Samburu region of northern Kenya. Lesorogol proposes a more general application of "institutional layering" as a viable framework for acknowledging the needs of multiple social structures within pastoral cultures engaged with land management and promoting effective planning among them for wildlife resources. A useful addition to the literatures of economic anthropology, the anthropology of development, and the evolving issues associated with the implementation of community-based wildlife conservation projects in Africa. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. -- "Choice Reviews"