Why are there African huts at the zoo? The racialized spectacle of conservation

Abstract

ABSTRACT With 700 million annual global visitors, zoos transmit widely consumed stories about human relationships with nature and animals. In recent decades, zoos have framed their mission around wildlife conservation. Yet just as zoos pivoted to conservation, they simultaneously re-introduced ‘native village’ exhibits: African huts, thatched roofs, and Thai tuktuks. This article examines the Denver Zoo in Colorado, arguing that the zoo produces a racialized spectacle of conservation. Drawing on quantitative and photographic documentation of the zoo’s signage and architecture, I describe how the African and Asian exhibits at the zoo are the only sections representing human culture, and feature elaborate architectures, artwork, and descriptions of stereotypically rural and primitive people. These representations ‘naturalize race’ by portraying these cultures as closer to nature. Zoo exhibits simultaneously reproduce Malthusian narratives of environmental decline, blaming African and Asian populations for harming wildlife through overpopulation, deforestation, and illegal poaching. White Western conservationists are portrayed as educating local tribes in proper beliefs and scientific management. Meanwhile, exhibits erase how colonial exploitation, capitalism, and conservation itself have destabilized human-ecological relationships across the globe. This article contributes to broader literatures on the spectacle of neoliberal global conservation, demonstrating the racialization of this spectacle.