Introduction

In many ways, the designation of some Zambian landscapes as game management areas (GMAs) distorts and masks the profound nature of the cultural and economic changes taking place within them. Within the Luangwa Valley, outside attention and assistance are directed primarily at protecting wildlife, which foreigners assume is this region's most visible and valuable asset. These strangers and their national allies tend to stymie local agricultural production and improvements as well as other economic developments aspired to by the longer term human residents who continue to live here. Building upon colonial ideas and exotic ideals of ‘wilderness’, capitalism, individualism, and history, most state and donor projects promote external tourism as the prime revenue generator, banking their goals (gold) on foreign objectives rather than on local initiatives or needs. As project proponents defensively claim technical and ‘apolitical’ ideals, their promotions silence other prevalent visions, particularly those of residents struggling to live within these strangely truncated landscapes.

Restricted by their views of conservation as an exclusively economic or self-supporting enterprise, wildlife and resource officials are further blinkered in their roles by primarily pandering to distant audiences rather than brokering resource regimes appropriate to the changing cultural and ecological environments within this valley. Whereas donor assistance and revenues generated from wildlife exploitation have constructed some schools, clinics, roads, wells and even provided casual employment, these outlays are basically incentives to purchase compliance to alien goals and to build local dependency upon outside expertise. Moreover, local employment and assistance have never been sufficient to affect sustainable alternatives to pre-existing and customary livelihoods. Managers misinterpret local resistance in benign monetary terms (‘transaction costs’ and ‘externalities’) and talk in terms of gross revenues generated, some of which are supposedly handed back in unknown quantities to ‘local communities’ through state and safari functions. These administrative groups also lecture on the need to strengthen their compliance mechanisms through ‘anti-poaching’ manoeuvres, equipment, and forceful displays.