THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIG

productive space and different ecological areas, manifold and diverse agricultural and
extractive activities, family and kinships based labour practices and horticulture. 102 This
notion seems to do away with modern tenets preached by contemporary conservation models.
It denounces capital accumulation and the pressure of market forces. It is rather located more
into the traditional and egalitarian production systems, closely related to territory and culture.
The struggle for territory is above all a cultural struggle for autonomy and self determination.
Hence, ecological and cultural units are laboriously constructed through the daily practices of
the community. 103
The social movements’ notion also validates recent debates in social anthropology that
analyse the hegemony of western views of intellectual property based on notions of
possessive individualism, fully commercialised and commodatised social relations as well as
market transactions. Like Strathern points out, biodiversity discussions need to be
reconstituted in order to harmonise the divisions between Europe, North America, Asia with
other cultures especially in Latin America and Africa. 104
In reference to the above contemporary debates, we have examined four different notions
relating to biodiversity. However, it is imperative to point out that there is no single notion
that can be used to define Kenya’s biodiversity regimes. In Kenya, there obtains a multiplicity
of notions. The globalcentric, the African notion as well as the sovereignity orientations are
some of the varied and variegated facets that suffuse the biodiversity management regimes in
Kenya. The preponderance of these varied notions is replicated in the various formal regimes
relating to biodiversity management in the country. For instance, we note that the first three
notions are spread in the formal national regimes. While the last notion, (the social
movements), contains some features which relate to some aspects of the local communities.
These variations will aid our understanding of the different view points that obtain in Kenya’s
biodiversity enterprise. In a large measure, the variegated notions replicated in the national
institutional processes, form part of the building blocks that explain institutional dilemmas in
the management of the country’s natural resources. These shall be highlight in the subsequent
chapters of this work.
102
Seidman, A and F. Anang. 1992. 21st Century Africa: Towards a New Vision of Self-Sustainable
Development. Antalanta: Africa. In 21st century Africa: Towards a New Vision of Self-Sustainable
Development, edited by A. Seidman & F. Anang , 1-21. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
103
Blackwell, J. 1991. Environment and Development in Africa: Selected Case studies. Washington: World
Bank Publications.
104
Strathern, M. 2000. Environments within: An Ethnographic Commentary on Scale'. In Culture, Landscape
and the Environment: The 1997 Linacre Lectures, edited by K, Flint and H, Morphy, 72-110. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
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