Ecotourism and natural resource extraction may be seen as contradictory pursuits, yet in reality they often take place side by side, sometimes even supported by the same institutions. Existing academic and policy literatures generally overlook the phenomenon of ecotourism in areas concurrently affected by extraction industries, but such a scenario is in fact increasingly common in resource-rich developing nations. This edited volume conceptualises and empirically analyses the 'ecotourism-extraction nexus' within the context of broader rural and livelihood changes in the places where these activities occur. The volume's central premise is that these seemingly contradictory activities are empirically and conceptually more alike than often imagined, and that they share common ground in ethnographic lived experiences in rural settings and broader political economic structures of power and control. The book offers theoretical reflections on why ecotourism and natural resource extraction are systematically decoupled, and epistemologically and analytically re-links them through ethnographic case studies drawing on research from around the world. It should be of interest to students and professionals engaged in the disciplines of geography, anthropology and development studies.

Ecotourism and natural resource extraction may be seen as contradictory pursuits, yet in reality they often take place side by side, sometimes even supported by the same institutions. Existing academic and policy literatures generally overlook the phenomenon of ecotourism in areas concurrently affected by extraction industries, but such a scenario is in fact increasingly common in resource-rich developing nations. This edited volume conceptualises and empirically analyses the 'ecotourism-extraction nexus' within the context of broader rural and livelihood changes in the places where these activities occur. The volume's central premise is that these seemingly contradictory activities are empirically and conceptually more alike than often imagined, and that they share common ground in ethnographic lived experiences in rural settings and broader political economic structures of power and control. The book offers theoretical reflections on why ecotourism and natural resource extraction are systematically decoupled, and epistemologically and analytically re-links them through ethnographic case studies drawing on research from around the world. It should be of interest to students and professionals engaged in the disciplines of geography, anthropology and development studies.

This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation is ready for revolution. Heated debates about the rise of the Anthropocene and the current 'sixth extinction' crisis demonstrate an urgent need and desire to move beyond mainstream approaches. Yet the conservation community is deeply divided over where to go from here. Some want to place 'half earth' into protected areas. Others want to move away from parks to focus on unexpected and 'new' natures. Many believe conservation requires full integration into capitalist production processes. Building on a razor-sharp critique of current conservation proposals and their contradictions, Buscher and Fletcher argue that the Anthropocene challenge demands something bigger, better and bolder. Something truly revolutionary. They propose convivial conservation as the way forward. This approach goes beyond protected areas and faith in markets to incorporate the needs of humans and nonhumans within integrated and just landscapes. Theoretically astute and practically relevant, The Conservation Revolution offers a manifesto for conservation in the 21st century - a clarion call that cannot be ignored.

Engaged Encounters: Thinking about Forces, Fields and Friendships with Monique Nuijten is a festschrift celebrating the scholarly, professional and personal contributions and insights of Monique Nuijten. As a creative scholar, Monique is known for her theoretical contributions to the study of development, social movements, the state, organizations, and corruption - to name a few topics. She inspires many senior and junior colleagues, as well as students, with innovative concepts like 'force fields' and development as a 'hope-generating machine'. Nuijten grounds her theoretical interventions in fine-grained ethnographic observations with a keen and sympathetic eye for the diverse actors that inhabit the structures of power and patterns of inequality she encounters. For Nuijten, theoretical and ethnographic endeavors are deeply interwoven with personal and political engagements, most recently illustrated through her research on social movements in urban settings in Brazil and Spain. The intersection of these three integrated dimensions in Monique Nuijten's oeuvre and life - the theoretical, collegial and personal - are brought out clearly in the forty contributions that each in their own way, acknowledge her unique combination of intellectual sharpness and personal warmth. As such, Monique Nuijten's scholarly life embodies an exemplary model of engaged scholarship.

ln Transforming the Frontier Bram Buscher questions why peace parks - large areas that protect biodiversity while stimulating international development through ecotourism - have become such a popular conservation model. Drawing from extensive fieldwork in the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Project (MDTP), Buscher looks at the reasons and ways transfrontier conservation has been touted as a global solution. While frontier politics previously focused on ecological preservation, Buscher claims that the discourse has drastically shifted away from preservation, and instead transfrontier conservation has become an integral mechanism of neoliberal political economies. Moreover, Buscher argues that the grandiose diplomatic presumptions of peace park initiatives and community-based conservation efforts fail to take into account the limited resources and leadership of local groups, as well as the complexities of everyday life that inhibit the implementation of this `global solution'. Buscher begins by situating conservation within South Africa's colonial and postcolonial history and tracing how that history affected the political mobilisation and Iegitimation of transfrontier conservation. He examines how struggles over consensus undermined the Maloti-Drakensberg's twofold goals of conserving biodiversity and pursuing development through ecotourism. Buscher then studies the people and actors centrally involved in the implementation of these efforts -the South African and Lesotho Project Coordination Units (PCUs) -and the difficulties they encountered as they tried to govern these policies and convince outside stakeholders to fund and support transfrontier conservation. Buscher shows how neoliberal conservation became less about on-the-ground developments and instead centered on politics, power and governance in a political ecology reframed by geography and conservation practices.

International peace parks--transnational conservation areas established and managed by two or more countries--have become a popular way of protecting biodiversity while promoting international cooperation and regional development. In "Transforming the Frontier," Bram Buscher shows how cross-border conservation neatly reflects the neoliberal political economy in which it developed.

Based on extensive research in southern Africa with the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Project, Buscher explains how the successful promotion of transfrontier conservation as a "win-win" solution happens not only in spite of troubling contradictions and problems, but indeed because of them. This is what he refers to as the "politics of neoliberal conservation," which receives its strength from effectively combining strategies of consensus, antipolitics, and marketing. Drawing on long-term, multilevel ethnographic research, Buscher argues that transfrontier conservation projects are not as concerned with on-the-ground development as they are purported to be. Instead, they are reframing environmental protection and sustainable development to fit an increasingly contradictory world order.