Parks and People: Expropriation of Nature and Multispecies Alienation in Nthongoni, Eastern Kenya

Abstract

This article uses Marx's concept of alienation in theorising the everyday estrangement encountered by people living in areas adjoining Tsavo and Chyulu Hills National Parks, in eastern Kenya. It focuses on how colonial and post-colonial conservation initiatives served to expropriate and alienate people from indigenous land that once provided livelihoods and lifeways that were central to people's spiritual wellbeing. Ethnographic fieldwork shows that those living at the edge of the parks and of their subsistence strategies, endeavoured to reconstitute their lives and eke out a living, but conservationists saw most activities as incompatible with conservation, and branded the residents aberrant and lawless. This heightened conflict between residents and wildlife, and between residents and wildlife managers, increasingly making the residents feel like aliens in their own land. The context allows us to see alienation not just as proletarianisation, but as a process through which people are estranged from their land, cultural heritage and the socioeconomic gains that parks produce, and subsequently from their own humanity. This alienation includes non-human beings and should be considered a more-than-human process.