Our Gigantic Zoo: A German Quest to Save the Serengeti
Autor Thomas M. Lekanen Limba Engleză Hardback – 9 apr 2020
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780199843671
ISBN-10: 0199843678
Pagini: 348
Ilustrații: 35 halftones
Dimensiuni: 239 x 163 x 31 mm
Greutate: 0.64 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States
ISBN-10: 0199843678
Pagini: 348
Ilustrații: 35 halftones
Dimensiuni: 239 x 163 x 31 mm
Greutate: 0.64 kg
Editura: Oxford University Press
Colecția OUP USA
Locul publicării:New York, United States
Recenzii
The biases and effects of Grzimek's work are an important, and illustrative, piece of this puzzle.
Lekan imparts in his reader a much greater understanding of how the Serengeti emerged as an internationally renowned conservation site....Lekan has set out to tell a complicated history that necessarily oscillates between transnational and local perspectives....Overall this work offers a welcome perspective on German-led conservatism in East Africa and the creation of the Serengeti National Park.
Lekan's monograph...skillfully weaves together German postwar history, decolonization, and Cold War dynamics....Our Gigantic Zoo showcases the unique potential of environmental history as a narrative tool....Readers learn an incredible amount about postwar dynamics, conservation efforts, and the real impact on communities on the ground. Discussions about framing Masai in light of conservation and their efforts to fit into broader visions of the region illustrate the complexities at the heart of this book.
It is to Lekan's lasting credit that he has pried apart the myriad layers that underpinned Grzimek's quest to save the Serengeti: from conservation's colonial origins to African demands for environmental sovereignty; from a global campaign to turn Africa's wildlife into a 'world heritage' to the African governments that had to foot the bill; and from Grzimek's illusion that nature conservation was above partisanship to the political tensions of decolonization and the Cold War....Lekan also opens the lens wide to capture the equally unexamined assumptions that international conservation organizations brought to the table.
A rich, elegant book full of insights for a variety of fields and subfields.... As Lekan shows with great skill, keeping lands like the Serengeti free for wild animals also meant keeping Africans from 'environmental sovereignty.'
Every page is brimming with ideas and facts and the argument has many threads and layers.
This is a richly-contextualized study, in which 'West Germans' anxieties about modernization and American influence in postwar Europe' and West German film censorship get interwoven with colonial mythologizing around Maasai and Tanzania's Cold War politics. Indeed, integrating these perspectives, themes, and historical frames together around Grzimek, Germans, and the Serengeti is what makes this book a distinct global conservation history.... Our Gigantic Zoo provides much for scholars of conservation in Africa, of decolonization, and of international activism, among others, to consider.
This monograph explores the complex legacy of West German TV personality and conservationist Bernhard Grzimek in present-day Tanzania....Lekan examines Grzimek's role in advocating for the creation of national parks in the Serengeti and encouraging German tourists to travel there to see the animals and support the parks. Grzimek's vision was realized at the expense of Maasai herdsmen..., who play an important role in the ecology of the Serengeti. Lekan places Grzimek's story within a multitude of contexts: post-war West German reluctance to confront the Nazi past, Germany's colonial history, African decolonization and neocolonialism, the Cold War, and the beginnings of ecotourism. Lekan also incorporates African voices,... illustrating leaders' engagement with and ultimate repudiation of Grzimek's program. Meticulously researched and accessibly written....Overall, Lekan highlights the dangers of 'thinking locally and acting globally,' as illustrated by Grzimek's story.
Lekan's substantial study of German-led conservationism in East Africa illuminates the vexed relationship between global north environmentalists on one hand and global south citizens and their living spaces on the other. Our Gigantic Zoo challenges us to be vigilant about the complex motifs and possibly devastating impact of environmentalism at a moment of global environmental crisis. The book reminds us that neoliberal capitalism draws on inequalities produced by centuries of domination, and that conservationism is embedded in a larger web of power relations.
In Our Gigantic Zoo, Thomas Lekan adroitly combines biography and history to show how Bernhard Grzimek, Germany's post World War II conservation zealot, created Africa's most iconic national park on the Serengeti plains of northwestern Tanzania. The 'zookeeper,' as Lekan calls him, championed the idea that only by consuming the Serengeti could the German public save it from destruction. Grzimek's vision became reality but only at great cost both to the zookeeper himself and to the dispossessed Tanzanians who lost their home in the name of conservation and tourism. Our Gigantic Zoo is a must read for students and conservation scientists alike.
Thomas Lekan's engrossing and highly original book is a history of vicarious West German nature conservation in East Africa during the Cold War years. It is consistently thought-provoking and illuminating on a wide range of issues--the shadow of the Nazi past, neocolonialism, human-animal relations, and eco-tourism. Elegantly organized and very well written, Our Gigantic Zoo is a major achievement.
Our Gigantic Zoo offers a compelling and readable portrait of Bernhard Grzimek, West Germany's first celebrity animal expert, from his years as a Nazi agricultural expert to his wildlife conservation efforts in Julius Nyerere's Tanzania. Thomas Lekan looks beyond the spectacle of animal television to tell a story about Cold War geopolitics, decolonization, and colonial and post-colonial dispossession.
Lekan imparts in his reader a much greater understanding of how the Serengeti emerged as an internationally renowned conservation site....Lekan has set out to tell a complicated history that necessarily oscillates between transnational and local perspectives....Overall this work offers a welcome perspective on German-led conservatism in East Africa and the creation of the Serengeti National Park.
Lekan's monograph...skillfully weaves together German postwar history, decolonization, and Cold War dynamics....Our Gigantic Zoo showcases the unique potential of environmental history as a narrative tool....Readers learn an incredible amount about postwar dynamics, conservation efforts, and the real impact on communities on the ground. Discussions about framing Masai in light of conservation and their efforts to fit into broader visions of the region illustrate the complexities at the heart of this book.
It is to Lekan's lasting credit that he has pried apart the myriad layers that underpinned Grzimek's quest to save the Serengeti: from conservation's colonial origins to African demands for environmental sovereignty; from a global campaign to turn Africa's wildlife into a 'world heritage' to the African governments that had to foot the bill; and from Grzimek's illusion that nature conservation was above partisanship to the political tensions of decolonization and the Cold War....Lekan also opens the lens wide to capture the equally unexamined assumptions that international conservation organizations brought to the table.
A rich, elegant book full of insights for a variety of fields and subfields.... As Lekan shows with great skill, keeping lands like the Serengeti free for wild animals also meant keeping Africans from 'environmental sovereignty.'
Every page is brimming with ideas and facts and the argument has many threads and layers.
This is a richly-contextualized study, in which 'West Germans' anxieties about modernization and American influence in postwar Europe' and West German film censorship get interwoven with colonial mythologizing around Maasai and Tanzania's Cold War politics. Indeed, integrating these perspectives, themes, and historical frames together around Grzimek, Germans, and the Serengeti is what makes this book a distinct global conservation history.... Our Gigantic Zoo provides much for scholars of conservation in Africa, of decolonization, and of international activism, among others, to consider.
This monograph explores the complex legacy of West German TV personality and conservationist Bernhard Grzimek in present-day Tanzania....Lekan examines Grzimek's role in advocating for the creation of national parks in the Serengeti and encouraging German tourists to travel there to see the animals and support the parks. Grzimek's vision was realized at the expense of Maasai herdsmen..., who play an important role in the ecology of the Serengeti. Lekan places Grzimek's story within a multitude of contexts: post-war West German reluctance to confront the Nazi past, Germany's colonial history, African decolonization and neocolonialism, the Cold War, and the beginnings of ecotourism. Lekan also incorporates African voices,... illustrating leaders' engagement with and ultimate repudiation of Grzimek's program. Meticulously researched and accessibly written....Overall, Lekan highlights the dangers of 'thinking locally and acting globally,' as illustrated by Grzimek's story.
Lekan's substantial study of German-led conservationism in East Africa illuminates the vexed relationship between global north environmentalists on one hand and global south citizens and their living spaces on the other. Our Gigantic Zoo challenges us to be vigilant about the complex motifs and possibly devastating impact of environmentalism at a moment of global environmental crisis. The book reminds us that neoliberal capitalism draws on inequalities produced by centuries of domination, and that conservationism is embedded in a larger web of power relations.
In Our Gigantic Zoo, Thomas Lekan adroitly combines biography and history to show how Bernhard Grzimek, Germany's post World War II conservation zealot, created Africa's most iconic national park on the Serengeti plains of northwestern Tanzania. The 'zookeeper,' as Lekan calls him, championed the idea that only by consuming the Serengeti could the German public save it from destruction. Grzimek's vision became reality but only at great cost both to the zookeeper himself and to the dispossessed Tanzanians who lost their home in the name of conservation and tourism. Our Gigantic Zoo is a must read for students and conservation scientists alike.
Thomas Lekan's engrossing and highly original book is a history of vicarious West German nature conservation in East Africa during the Cold War years. It is consistently thought-provoking and illuminating on a wide range of issues--the shadow of the Nazi past, neocolonialism, human-animal relations, and eco-tourism. Elegantly organized and very well written, Our Gigantic Zoo is a major achievement.
Our Gigantic Zoo offers a compelling and readable portrait of Bernhard Grzimek, West Germany's first celebrity animal expert, from his years as a Nazi agricultural expert to his wildlife conservation efforts in Julius Nyerere's Tanzania. Thomas Lekan looks beyond the spectacle of animal television to tell a story about Cold War geopolitics, decolonization, and colonial and post-colonial dispossession.
Notă biografică
Thomas M. Lekan is a professor at the University of South Carolina with a joint appointment in the Department of History and the School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment. He is the author of Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945 and the co-editor of Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History.