UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT AND ACCUMULATION BY DISPOSSESSION IN NATURE CONSERVATION: COMPARING RECENT TRENDS IN THE AZORES AND TANZANIA

ABSTRACT This paper applies Harvey's concepts of uneven development and accumulation by dispossession to nature conservation, comparatively, in the contexts of whale watching in the Azores and wildlife conservation in Tanzania. In both contexts, nature conservation revolves around processes of de‐regulation, re‐regulation, and territorialisation, facilitating new forms of capitalist expansion. Adapting Bourdieu's arguments and the inter‐changeability of different forms of capital, we provide ethnographic insight on how these processes unfold. Our analysis reveals two recent trends in nature‐society relations in late capitalism: (1) these processes are less determined by ownership than the ability to render different kinds of capital commensurable with one another; and (2) they depend on specific types of ‘performances’, which are encouraged and rewarded by neoliberal forms of environmental governance.