Lectio Praecursoria: “This is a good place”: Tsimihety place making, knowledge hierarchies and intensifying conservation efforts in rural northeastern Madagascar

Abstract

This lectio introduces the thesis ‘This Is A Good Place’: Tsimihety place making, knowledge hierarchies and intensifying conservation efforts in rural northeastern Madagascar. The study is concerned with the rapid rearrangement of nature and the intensification of land use in rural northeastern Madagascar. The author argues that despite intensive efforts of imposed environmental conservation based on notions of biodiversity loss and deforestation, the Tsimihety, a group of swiddeners and rice and vanilla farmers, claim that their environment is a good and viable place to live in. This thesis consequently weaves together an ethnographic account of how the Tsimihety interact and intertwine with environmental conservation efforts and how they transform and are transformed by them in a broader context of commercial interests in land.