Wild views on sale: commercialization of visual encounters in Namibian wildlife conservation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nature conservation in Namibia today depends on the commercialization of wildlife, which combines conservation efforts with touristic and thus market-oriented targets. In our paper, we frame this trade as an economy of the visual, in which the production of visual encounter value and the sale of particular visual experiences with wild animals are essential. Employing a ‘posthuman political ecology of the visual’ we critically analyze guided game views and forced presentation of animals, and elucidate how the powerful constitution and reproduction of colonial, predominantly male, and bourgeois imaginaries is involved in the commercializing process. We conclude that commercialization of visual wildlife encounter leads to the hegemonic creation of a standardized and exclusive nature worth seeing and, hence, worth conserving. Besides, we expound the problems that commercializing visual encounter entails for the animals, their daily (and nightly) routines, their privacy and their freedom not to be seen.