Technocracy in black and white : nature, race, and nation in the management of Namibian uranium
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In the mid-2000s, the southern African country of Namibia experienced what many involved called a "uranium rush, " as high prices for uranium ore concentrate sparked a frenzy of exploration activities and mining development. In a bid to manage this development, Namibia's government joined with established mining companies, environmental NGOs, donors, and some activists to establish "good governance" of the industry. This dissertation examines how such "good governance" came to be constituted in the context of contested claims about the need to consider environmental protection, about Namibia's place in the world as a modern, industrializing nation, and about Namibia's post-apartheid racial transformation. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Namibia between 2009 and 2013, the dissertation examines the daily practices and discursive productions of environmental managers and technocrats in government and industry, as well as scientists and activists less directly involved in governance. Through this work, the dissertation describes how three at times conflicting projects came together in the uranium rush: industrial development, environmental protection, and racial transformation. The dissertation examines such conflicts first at the level of the bureaucratic tools and processes involved in environmental management. Then it considers the institutional context of environmental management in a time of racial transformation and, according to some, declining state "capacity." After this, the dissertation takes up the question of how uranium is a peculiarly political matter at the level of national politics. In a final substantive chapter, the dissertation takes up the question of uranium and the politics of belonging in the Central Namib Desert. The dissertation closes with a consideration of the reflexive practices of environmental managers.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2016 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Gardiner, Mark |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Anthropology. |
| Primary advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Ferguson, James, 1959- |
| Thesis advisor | Malkki, Liisa H. (Liisa Helena) |
| Thesis advisor | Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1945- |
| Advisor | Malkki, Liisa H. (Liisa Helena) |
| Advisor | Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko, 1945- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Mark Gardiner. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Anthropology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2016 by Mark Albert Christopher Gardiner
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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