Revisiting social natures: People-elephant conflict and coexistence in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper examines human-wildlife conflict in and around protected areas to reflect on long-standing questions in conservation social science about protected areas and fortress thinking. It develops a more-than-human political ecology of human-elephant cohabitation and conflict in Sri Lanka to explore how changing socio-material conditions intersect to produce conservation and human-wildlife conflict in today’s world. The paper’s overarching argument is that fortress conservation is better understood as a relatively proximate cause of human-wildlife conflict and the other social impacts associated with the domain of conservation. Through its analyses, the paper deepens the critique of nature-society dualisms that is embedded in the appellation of ‘fortress conservation’ and offers insights that strengthen the reach and force of scholarship that tackles the persistent “appeal” of the “fortress” (Buscher, 2016, 115).