Can the center hold? Boundary actors and marginality in a community-based natural resource management network

Abstract

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) seeks to align the interests of local communities and conservation institutions. A significant challenge to this realignment is that CBNRM is often implemented in locations with colonial histories of oppression, persecution, and dispossession that have left legacies of inequity and marginalization. Social networks are one method for discerning how marginalized CBNRM actors can negotiate entitlements and agency. Through the lens of social networks, marginalization can be viewed as insufficient connectivity between the center and the periphery of the network. One possible remedy to this dysfunction are boundary actors, which are thought to be vital to connecting parts of social networks that would otherwise be poorly connected. Using social network analysis to visualize interactions between the Topnaar community and CBNRM institutional actors in Namibia’s Namib-Naukluft and Dorob National Parks, we find a number of individuals well-positioned to serve as boundary actors. Although our results suggest these individuals can be effective in sharing and translating key knowledge, supporting transfers of benefits, and enabling or negotiating entitlements, we also found that social, political, institutional, and geographic constraints limited their effectiveness. In particular, the Topnaar Traditional Authority, adopted a “neo-traditional,” top-down, gatekeeper role, while their community wanted them to be more responsive and engaged in directly addressing the communities’ problems. In general, the boundary actors were the focus of much discontent and conflict, in large part because of unclear pathways of accountability. We recommend the co-creation of boundary objects that specify responsibilities and thus reduce conflict and support effective boundary actors.