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Contested State Spaces: African National Parks and the State

Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, New York , USA

Since the ‘linguistic turn’ in International Relations, it is assumed that agents like the state are always effects of discourse and should be ‘decentered’ rather than made the starting point for theory. Yet, most postmodern IR scholarship implicitly assumes a particular conception of the state. This article provides an explicit elaboration of that conceptualization, positing that the state is a discursively produced structural/structuring effect that relies on constant acts of performativity to call it into being. The constituting discourses on the state are never complete or closed, but are always contested, offering spaces for maneuver and resistance. Employing the example of African national parks, this article examines ‘contested state spaces’, those places where officially sanctioned state-making practices are successfully challenged, resisted and replaced by alternatives. The example of African national parks provides a useful way of interrogating state-making practices in the everyday life of international relations.

Key Words: Africa • parks • performativity • sovereignty • states

European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 15, No. 3, 423-446 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1354066109338233


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