köhler, axel. 2005. “of apes and men: baka and bantu attitudes to wildlife and the making of...

7/27/2019 Khler, Axel. 2005. Of Apes and Men: Baka and Bantu Attitudes to Wildlife and the Making of Eco-Goodies and B

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Of Apes and Men: Baka and Bantu Attitudesto Wildlife and the Making of Eco-Goodies

and Baddies

Axel KhlerAbstract:In this essay particular local attitudes to wildlife are comparedwith western representations of such engagement with the natural environ-ment. The ethnographic focus is on Baka (Pygmies) and their Bantu-speakingneighbours living side by side in the rainforest of the north-western Republicof Congo (Brazzaville). Their current attitudes to gorillas and chimpanzees,both CITES-protected species, seem to confirm western stereotypes of Pygmyhuntergatherers living in tune with their environment and caring for it, andof Bantu farmers as invading the forest with little or no conservation ethic.

How did these moral tales of proto-ecologists versus eco-baddies developand what is the history of such polarising ideology? How have these ideasbeen appropriated and used in environmental discourse, and how do they maponto current perceptions and attitudes on the ground? Heeding these ques-tions a specific history of representations is discussed, starting from an as-

sumed Pygmy aboriginality and a Bantu status as late-coming forestcolonisers and leading to a pervasively dichotomous view of their culturesand socio-ecological relations. A closer, anthropologically informed look at

contemporary Baka and Bantu perceptions and attitudes to wildlife, however

Axel Khler, Researcher and Lecturer in Social Sciences, Centro de Estudios Superiores deMxico y Centroamrica Universidad de Ciencias y Artes de Chiapas (CESMECA-UNICACH)[Centre for Mexican and Central American Studies-University of the Sciences and Arts of Chia-pas], Calzada Tlaxcala # 76 (esquina con Diego Rivera), Barrio de Tlaxcala, San Cristbal deLas Casas, C.P. 29230, Chiapas, Mxico.

Address for Correspondence

Axel Khler, CESMECA-UNICACH, Calzada Tlaxcala # 76 (esquina con Diego Rivera), Barriode Tlaxcala, San Cristbal de Las Casas, C.P. 29230, Chiapas, Mxico.Email: [email protected], [email protected]

Conserv at i on and Soci et y, Pages 407435Volume 3, No. 2, December 2005

Copyright : Axel Khler. 2005. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of theCreative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use and distribution of the article,provided the or iginal work is cited.


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brings home the need for historical contexts and in-depth research both intosocial and cultural configurations and into situated ecological and economicknowledges and practices to uncover subtle distinctions within local modelsand the complexities of behaviour.

Keywords: Central Africa, Pygmies, rainforest farmers, environmental per-ception, conservation

INTRODUCTION

An integral part of any forest conservation scheme is understanding

how city dwellers perceive the forest, its people and resources and re-lated activities. This is just as important as evaluating the socio-economic use of forest resources because perceptions influence useand use in turn leads to depletion. Analysis of perceptions thus consti-tutes a necessary step in the process of conceptualising action plansaimed at conservation.

(Theodore Trefon 1994)

This essay compares popular western perceptions of central African forestdwellers in relation to their natural environment and their attitudes to wildlife.I begin with a discussion of a pervasive academic portrayal of Pygmy huntergatherers as the (ab)original central African forest people and of their non-Pygmy farming neighbours as late-coming colonisers of the forest world. A

corollary of these views is a popular perception of Pygmies as archetypalecologists, of a people who are in perfect tune with their environment aftermillennia of co-evolutionary adaptation processes through which they have

become a natural, organic part of it. Forest-dwelling farmers, on the otherhand, are often depicted as relatively recent immigrants who imposed them-selves both on the forest environment and its indigenous population. In met-ropolitan discourses on rainforest conservation and development, there has

been a tendency to construct almost ideal-typical huntergatherer and farmerattitudes to nature, as if the two were in essential opposition. The huntergatherer approach has come to be seen as a pre-modern form of sustainableengagement with nature, some aspects of which happen to be highly congru-ent with currently held views, though no one seriously advocates hunting and

gathering as a sustainable subsistence practice.

1

Forest farming practices, onthe other hand, particularly slash-and-burn techniques have been cast as itsantithesis, a rather precarious form of subsistence with unsustainable conse-quences for the environment.

After an outline of the historical and ideological bases of these narrativeswith a particular focus on transformations in the discourse on Pygmies, I will

present some ethnographic observations from the north-western part of the Re-public of Congo (Brazzaville) (Figure 1) to find out how popular and aca-


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Baka and Bantu attitudes to wildlife /409

Figure 1

Baka and Bantu areas in th e Congo

demic perceptions match actual attitudes to wildlife. For this purpose I willconsider the attitudes of Baka (Pygmies) and of their Bantu2 neighbours to go-rillas, chimpanzees and elephants. My question is thus: How well does amoral tale of Baka friends and Bantu foes of the forest environment (eco-friendly Baka vs Bantu eco-baddies) fit the situation on the ground and forwhat reasons?

WESTERN PERCEPTIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICAN RAIN

FOREST INHABITANTS

Abori ginal Pygmy HunterGatherers

From the moment of their appearance in metropolitan consciousness, Pygmieshave been perceived and portrayed as aboriginal3 forest dwellers. The roots ofthis narrative lie in antiquity and in mysterious reports about an African forest

people of incredibly small stature.4 These tales originated in Egypt andGreece but spread across Eurasia and persisted throughout the ages (cf. Scobie1975; Bahuchet 1993b; Klieman 2003). Following the seventeenth centuryEuropean voyages to the coasts of Africa and to islands in south-east Asia,they got a new lease of life with the discovery of the great apes, and for a


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while the mythical Pygmies were thought to be real-life simians.5 In the nine-teenth century, however, they turned out to be human beingsundoubtedlyamong the most primitive of the speciesliving, as the myths had always in-dicated, in the recesses of the great central African rain forest. Fitting con-temporaneous scientific interests in the biological and cultural origins ofmankind, living representatives of a human form that matched the potent im-age of man in its evolutionary infancy had finally been found. When a groupof hunting and gathering peoples of comparatively small stature were discov-ered in the Heart of Africa (Schweinfurth 1878), they were quickly baptisedPygmies.6 They were identified as the aboriginal inhabitants of the forestenvironment, and it was their unique adaptation to it that was thought to have

stultified them (cf. Hiernaux 1977). Old myths thus absorbed new content.With the imperialist project of the conquest of the forest, the myth of thePygmies acquired another layer of meaning with the notion of a vanishing

people. First, there was simply the fear for an elusive subject of science, thatthese people were already disappearing at the moment of their discovery. Butthe notion of a vanishing people was also fuelled by social Darwinism and theconcept of superior and inferior races locked in evolutionary struggles. Fromthe turn of the century until the 1930s, there were speculations about the racialdegeneration of Pygmies, most evident in their small stature and their ubiqui-tous socio-political subordination. As a result their numbers were thought to

be declining naturally in favour of their taller and culturally superiorneighbours. Further into the colonial regime such concepts became more re-fined, and Pygmies were rather seen as Pleistocene relics whose traditional

lifestyle would have to give way to the thrust of modernity. Either way, theywere destined to physically die out or be culturally assimilated. More re-cently, the notion of a vanishing people has become an integral part of a dis-course on fragile and endangered ecosystems, among which tropical rainforests figure prominently (e.g., Bahuchet and De Maret 1995).7

Whatever the reasons apart from a supposedly endangered existence, it isevident both in the literature and for their neighbours on the ground, that sincetheir invention in the nineteenth century (Bahuchet 1993b), real-life Pyg-mies have sparked a disproportionately strong interest among missionaries,conservationists, development and aid workers, and of course among re-searchers, particularly anthropologists, geneticists and ecologists.

In continuity with colonial perceptions, this interest has often been acted

upon with a heightened sense of a vanishing world, both in research and inapplied terms. Indeed, from the moment of their appearance in metropolitanconsciousness, the notion of the Pygmies as a vanishing people has been en-tertained with changing undertones in tune with the times. The most palpablescientific construction of Pygmies as a disappearing (ab)original forest popu-lation and as a window on the evolutionary past of our species has been bygeneticists and behavioural ecologists. Here Pygmies continue to be investi-gated as the transmitters of human biogenetic material of the longest-standing


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adaptation to forest ecology and as the vanishing repositories of forest knowl-edge, which they have been accumulating over millennia (see, for instance,Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1991, 1994). In spite of a considerable lack of conclusiveevidence or precisely because of it, the mythologically inspired hypothesis ofPygmy forest aboriginality remains an almost axiomatic base line for investi-gation, and many researchers work from or around this central assumption.

A corollary of this widely accepted belief in Pygmy aboriginality and theirforever unchanging life waysunless disturbed from outsideis their natu-ralisation as an integral part of the forest ecosystem (e.g. Hecketsweiler et al.1991; Bahuchet and De Maret 1995). The dominant view is of a people living

both in social harmony with each other and in ecological harmony with their

forest environment, at least as long as they have not been forced out of it.When this is the case, and some Pygmy groups do live in miserable conditionsas an increasingly landless and marginalised rural proletariat in ramshackleroadside villages (see Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982; Mukito and Mbaya1990), it is usually linked to the corrupting influences of markets, money andthe modern world.8

The notion of Pygmies not only as the original but also as essential ForestPeople was popularised by Colin Turnbull (1962, 1965). His culture-sensitivestudy of the Mbuti in eastern Zaire fostered an iconic status of peaceful, envi-ronmentally tuned-in, eco-friendly primitives, particularly in a paperback edi-tion (1962) [1993] of his ethnographic work that was destined for a wideraudience. Here we find the classic anthropological account of Pygmies assemi-nomadic, egalitarian huntergatherers living in small groups in forest

camps, both in social harmony with each other and in ecological tune withtheir forest environment. Turnbull characterised Mbuti cosmology as foundedon trust in a benevolent forest, which they regarded as both mother and fatherto them (1965). From a Mbuti perspective the forest was thus a giving envi-ronment (Bird-David 1990), cool, shady, pleasant and the provider of all theMbuti really needed. The villages of their Bila farming neighbours, on theother hand, were cleared of trees, exposed to the sun and hot, unpleasant anddisease-ridden, but also full of attractive consumer goods. Bila cosmologywas centred in fear and mistrust of the forest (Bird-David 1990), and the mir-ror image of their battle against the natural world around them was a perma-nent distrust of the Mbuti and a social life punctuated by witchcraft andsorcery accusations.

Inverting earlier arguments about a hostile forest and a one-sided Pygmydependence on village produce, which had served to explain their inferiorstatus vis--vis farming neighbours (Schweinfurth 1878; Schmidt 1910;Schebesta 1936), Turnbull asserted, to the contrary, that it was indeed thefarmers who had a distinct economic need for various forest products whichthey usually obtained from the Mbuti. Subsequent anthropological, historicaland ecological studies suggest, however, that Turnbull probably overestimatedthe potential for Mbuti self-reliance and the possibility of an exclusively hunt-


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ing-and-gathering based subsistence independently and prior to the arrival ofagriculture (e.g., Headland 1987; Bailey et al. 1989; Headland and Reid1989). It has also become clear that Turnbulls notion of a basic structural op-

position between forest and village, and between Mbuti and Bila, reflected arather transient moment in colonial history. The Belgian administration hadresettled the Bila by the side of the roadbuilt, of course, by their colonialsubjectsand had forced them to grow cash crops. In order to have bettercontrol over them, the Bila were then forbidden to enter the forest (Kenrick1996).

Turnbulls ahistoric and romantic rendering of potential Mbuti autonomyhas since given way to interactionist models of a continuous and long-

standing socio-economic interdependency between Pygmy huntergatherersand forest-dwelling farmers. Despite paradigmatic shifts, however, Pygmieshave remained the original forest people by virtue of their long-term adapta-tion to forest ecology, whether independently and prior to the arrival of others(e.g., Bahuchet et al. 1991) or in complementary association with them (e.g.,Bailey et al. 1989). Only first steps in a new direction have so far been madein order to rethink Pygmy history. Roger Blench (1999), for instance, has pro-

posed a rather extreme revisionist hypothesis. Questioning the existing scien-tific bases for the common view on African Pygmies as the ancient denizensof the forest zone and exposing the substantial weaknesses of supporting lin-guistic, genetic and archaeological evidence, he suggests that the AfricanPygmies may well be the genetic inheritors of a specialised hunting-and-gathering caste of their Central Sudanic, Adamawa-Ubangian and Bantu-

speaking neighbours. Their origins in terms of a genetic adaptation to therainforest environment may date back only as far as 40005000 years, andtheir distinct ethnicity would then be the result of a relatively recent develop-ment.9

Turnbull not only made an important ideological contribution to the perva-sive idea of Pygmy aboriginality and once again evoked an image of noblesavages as a critique of western civilisation. His representation of Mbuti forestlife also has to be credited with being at the forefront of changing western

perceptions of rain forests, and his convincing rendition of the Mbuti perspectiveof the forest decisively countered prior western stereotypes of mythical junglesas a glaucous, impenetrable universe of ever-encroaching foliage, or simply asa green hell (see Vansina 1990:39), whose transformation into agricultural

space could then only be envisaged as something positive. Turnbulls classicethnography is the anthropological precedent to a different view of junglesand a now prevalent image of lush, evergreen rainforests, which have been re-evaluated as gene pools of rich biodiversity and the green lungs of the

planet.Fairhead and Leach (1995:1024, 1032) have pointed out how development

discourse has forged links between environmental and social conditions, be-tween original climax vegetation and African societies of a traditional func-


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tional order that was once harmoniously integrated with natural vegeta-tion.10 Although their argument concerns mainly deforestation and develop-ment narratives and focuses on western views of West African peasantsocieties, it is also applicable to the anthropology of Pygmies and their Cen-tral African farming neighbours. Concerning Pygmies and other huntergatherer societies, cultural and behavioural ecology, in particular, have pro-vided the theoretical foundation for the popular theme of socio-environmentalintegration, with optimum foraging theory as one of its hard science cor-nerstones. Being members of non-hierarchical, small-scale semi-nomadic so-cieties, Pygmies maintain collective access to forest resources and share intheir management and consumption. Their extensive land use practices and

flexible residential patterns have been identified as characteristic of a forag-ing mode of production (e.g., Meillassoux 1973), a co-evolutionary adapta-tion to the forest environment, which has ensured both human survival andecological sustainability.

Economic anthropologists have further developed sharing concepts as localmodel alternatives to other economies based on commodity and gift ex-changes (e.g., Mauss 1923/1924; Gregory 1982; Mauss 1990). The concept ofa much wider sociality, for instance, has been condensed by Nurit Bird-Davidin the notion of a cosmic economy of sharing (1992), in which the relationsamong humans, animals and plants are perceived and experienced as on anequal footing and within an undivided cosmos. Extended beyond interpersonalexchange relationships to include more or less the whole environment, thisconceptualisation of generalised and unconditional sharing strongly resonates

with conservationist values of collective responsibility and caring for the en-vironment. It also links up with current development discourse, in which lo-cal participation and sustainability have become key concepts forenvironmental protection in tandem with economic development.

With a growing public awareness of global environmental issues, the inter-national heritage and conservation movements have appropriated Pygmiesalong with other original forest dwellers as archetypal rainforest ecolo-gists. But as already highlighted in Turnbulls work, forest tales are alsomoral tales. In a familiar scenario of good and evil forces, the idyllic Pygmy

picture is complemented with the construction of their ethnically and pheno-typically distinct farming neighbours as antagonists of forests and wildlife.

Bantu Farmer-Coloni sers

In contrast with aboriginal Pygmies, Bantu forest dwellers are usually de-scribed as relatively recent colonisers. Their penetration of the forest startedwith the so-called Bantu expansion about 45000 years BP in an area north-west of the great forest, from where western Bantu-speakers gradually occu-

pied all of central Africa (Vansina 1990; Clist 1995). Coming from thesavannah they brought with them crops, livestock and a technology that were


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in many ways ill fitted to the requirements of their new environment. Theiroral traditions often confirm a self-image as intruders into a foreign world. In

particular, they reflect the difficulties involved in carving out and maintaininga patchwork of domesticated space within a physically and spiritually un-tamed forest landscape. The pervasive opposition between the forest and thevillage has been a central argument in Turnbulls work, where it became partof a series of other morally charged dualisms (hunting and gathering versusfarming, freedom vs constraint, health vs disease, egality vs competition, spiri-tuality vs witchcraft, etc.). However, over time the various inhabitants of thecentral African rain forest developed a new tradition, one that Vansina(1990) has called the equatorial tradition, merging ancestral savannah tradi-

tions with those of the fisher folk and forest dwellers they encountered, andassimilating various technological innovations and new food crops (banana,manioc). Thus emerged a single, special, and stable variant of the originalheritage in the lands of the rainforests (Vansina 1990:58). Although in manyareas interdependent with Pygmy groups specialising in forest products, theincoming cultivators had nonetheless become forest dwellers themselves.

Present-day migrant peasant populations often leave their former homes be-cause of landlessness, population pressure or (civil) war, and follow the in-roads made by logging companies into formerly less accessible forest areas. Indevelopment discourse, they tend to be characterised as land-hungry, and areeasily made scapegoats for deforestation by both logging companies and con-servationists, the former claiming that it is the migrant peasants who destroythe forest, and the latter arguing that they finish off the dirty work of forest

degradation with their destructive land-use practices.11 Fairhead and Leach(1995, 1996) have analysed popular western perceptions of African societiesand assumptions about deforestation and linear degradation. They have indi-cated how these became stabilised within a development narrative that in-volves growing populations of immigrant and indigenous farmers who havelost traditional values and organisational forms, and who are seeking and de-wooding forested land.

A quick look at the colonial and post-independence history of French Equa-torial Africa, and of north-western Congo in particular, shows us likewise thata vision of original forest people and subsequent forest invaders is rather theresult of colonial and post-colonial politics than a reflection of a clash of es-sential life ways, that is, of traditional and thus almost by definition sustain-

able hunting and gathering ways versus modern destructive agriculturalpractices and market-driven wildlife depletion.At the eve of the colonial conquest, the north-western forest zones of

Equatorial Africa were in a state of social unrest that was triggered not leastby a gradual involvement of the whole region in the Atlantic Trade. Large-scale migrations during most of the nineteenth century followed a kind ofdomino pattern. Groups either closer to the coast or with better access toEuropean firearms displaced their neighbours. The Baka Pygmies, for exam-

ple, most likely migrated in the late eighteenth century from an area east of


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likely migrated in the late eighteenth century from an area east of Bangui, thepresent capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), in order to escape theturmoil created there by slave-raiders coming up the Ubangi River (Bahuchet1993a). Early colonial concessionary rule saw the imposition of a pillageeconomy with virtually no constructive investment either from the state or

private sources (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1971). It thus only heightened alreadyexisting ethnic and social tensions.

When the French state finally assumed greater colonial responsibility in the1930s, existing ethnically specific social and political organisations and thedifferent roles played by indigenous groups in emerging markets did stronglyinfluence the perception, interaction and policies of the colonial administra-

tion vis--vis the local population. This led to different colonisation processesand distinct colonial histories. In general and notwithstanding their strong re-sistance to colonial forces, the Bantu population in French Equatorial Africawas more directly and more thoroughly colonised than their Pygmyneighbours. Building on the perceived subordination of the rather inaccessibleand demographically less important Pygmy population12by the Bantu, colo-nial policies focused on the latter to enforce resettlement, military and labourrecruitment, and taxation. From its inception the colonial taming policy ofthe Pygmies was intended as a watered-down version of the transformationsenforced upon the Bantu. It did not have any direct influence on the targeted

population, partly because the administrators quickly realised the futility oftheir instructions (Delobeau 1984). It was up to the Bantu to mediate the co-lonial impact, and for a long time, the Baka, like other Pygmy groups, re-

mained marginal to administrative control, corve labour and resettlementschemes, and their integration into the colonial economy lagged behind. Co-lonial pressure influenced, however, the ethnic division of labour, which hadformerly been based on an interdependent forest economy. Under pressure to

produce for the colonial economy, the Bantu began to rely more heavily ontheir Pygmy neighbours and sought to exercise more economic and politicalcontrol over them. The present marginalisation of Pygmies by more powerfulfarming neighbours most likely developed during the times of the AtlanticTrade and was consolidated during colonisation.

In pre-colonial times, the Bantu themselves lived in impermanent settle-ments that were spread out in the forest where they practised a subsistenceeconomy of shifting cultivation mixed with hunting and gathering. In the

1960s, after more than half a century of colonial rule and the imposition ofsevere transformations of their traditional life ways, Bakwele and Njem, forinstance, still made use of fifty non-domesticated forest plant species for nu-tritional, medical, hunting or building purposes (Robineau 1966).

Once civilising mission, Christianity, money and new markets had madeenough inroads into Bantu practices and consciousness, new ideas of beingevolved and civilised took root on top of older cultural distinctions andmarkers of ethnicity. As a result, many Bantu began to model their Pygmy


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neighbours in the European image of the real primitive. Thus an existingideological gap between them widened, while their socio-economic interac-tion became more intense. For the Baka, this dynamic became particularlyacute from the mid-1960s onwards, when they began to sedentarise and tocatch up with a tentative integration into the cash economy through both de-

pendent and independent cocoa cash cropping.Since the 1980s, and with a total breakdown of the cocoa market, the

Souank area has, however, experienced a growing enclavation. A currentBantu development fantasy involves a second colonisation with the arrival ofEuropean entrepreneurs who provide work to locals, cutting down the forest,

ploughing the earth for mineral riches, building roads and setting up factories

and towns. In other words, Bantu expectations revolve around a fullycommoditised modern world of high-level production and consumption, verymuch in line with earlier colonial and post-colonial development schemes. Inthe early 1990s, part of the area was earmarked for future reserve status. Thisis largely unknown to the local population, but it would horrify most Bantuand could only be made appealing to them, if it offered employment, moderninfrastructure and opportunities to make money and to partake in the civi-lised world. The Baka, however, could easily be integrated into conservation-related research as knowledgeable trackers and guides to forest fauna andflora, as have Pygmies in other national parks. They would likewise fit wellinto low-level (eco)tourist projects of safari hunting, photo-safaris, and otherforms of guided tours.

BAKA AND BANTU ATTITUDES TO WILDLIFE

I will now turn to local attitudes to wildlife. How far do stereotypical andmoralistic images of authentic Pygmy ecologists and of forest and wildlife-destroying slash-and-burn farmers correspond to current environmental atti-tudes, subsistence practices and market production? I have chosen the exam-

ple of gorillas, chimpanzees and elephants to illustrate the differences in localattitudes and the way these are linked to ethnicity, interdependency and mar-ket involvement.13

Bantu think of Baka as meat-eaters par excellence, because it fits their ide-ology of gluttonous forest dwellers, and because Baka produce most of theavailable bush-meat. Exaggerating their demands on Baka exchange partners,

Bantu tend to display, however, a much stronger craving for meat and are alsoless particular in their choice of meat. Cases in point are the great apes. MostBaka neither eat gorilla nor chimpanzee meat, nor do they hunt these animalsof their own accord. A Baka hunter will only kill a great ape in defence orhunt it in the service of a Bantu patron. Among Bantu, it is up to individualtastes and morals, but some are indeed very fond of gorilla meat, and in Bantuvillages it is very common to see gorilla skulls attached to the central post ofthe mens meeting place as a sign of the prowess of resident hunters. Both


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Baka and Bantu are very aware of these animals propinquity to human beings,as we shall see below. The idea of eating a close relative of their own speciesdoes, however, not seem to bother many Bantu. Some even refer with eerie

pride to the period of the great war in the nineteenth century, in which can-nibalism occurred as part of the raiding practices against neighbouring groups.

Nowadays the successful confrontation and killing of a great ape furnishesBantu hunters with a reputation of bravery that was formerly associated notonly with hunter but also with warrior status. Baka on the other hand, deemthe great apes to be too person-like, too close to human beings both in shapeand in behaviour. To be on the safe side, one better leaves them alone. And

besides, great hunter status is firmly associated with the killing of elephants

and, to a minor degree, of wild boar.Bantu agree, however, largely with a Baka understanding of the great apesas sharing almost person-like qualities with human beings. A Baka hunterwould say: Just look at the way gorillas and chimpanzees stand upright andmove about, and the way they eat. That is the way of a person! Or: Look attheir body, their face and their hands; they bear the features of a person! Andwhen showing me the leafy beds of gorillas, Baka acquaintances commented,only a person makes a bed like that to sleep in.

Of Apes and Men

Bantu men are occasionally said to reappear in the shape of a gorilla aftertheir death, either for no other particular reason than for wanting to be

around a little longer, because they died in the middle of a rather good har-vest and want to enjoy some more of the fruits of their labour, or because theyare dissatisfied with the way their funeral and departure into the netherworldhas been arranged by their family. It is the coincidence of the recent death of a

person and the unusual behaviour of a particular animal that leads people torelate the two events and to conclude that the spirit of a deceased has reap-

peared in the shape of a gorilla. When a gorilla thus turns up in the vicinity ofa village soon after the death of an old man and starts to hang out behind thehouse of the deceased or in his fields, the animal is left alone, because peoplethink of it as a gorilla-revenant. In one case, such a rogue animal had beenobserved staying in a banana plantation a few miles out of the village eatingthe fruit on the dead mans field and sleeping in his hut on the plantation. An

animal identified as a gorilla-revenant is usually a silverback, an old malewith grey fur on its back that has been chased from his group by a younger ri-val and now lives on its own. It is thus not only the gorillas behaviour, butalso its age and social history that bear a certain analogy to the deceased.

In general, it is rather rare for a gorilla to venture into the close proximityof villages and to raid fields without concern for the presence of human be-ings nearby. Fearlessness of human beings is therefore an indicator that suchan animal may embody a human spirit. Gorilla-revenants are not shot, and vil-


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lagers simply try to chase them away or wait until they leave on their own ac-cord. An aggressive animal that attacks people and does not distinguish be-tween the fields it raids is, however, likely to be identified as a rogue animaland to be shot by a courageous villager.

The post-mortem transformation of a deceased person into a gorilla is inter-preted as the manifestation of the dissatisfied spirit of a dead person or a trickplayed by the spirit to make his discontentment known to the family by haunt-ing his former possessions. This kind of metamorphosis is different fromshape-shifting, which is a technique that witches are said to use for attackingan adversary or for damaging his crops. Hunters in the possession of secretforest knowledge and mystic powers will also shape-shift into certain animals

while out in the forest either in order to escape situations of imminent dangeror to kill game. It is, of course, not good to kill a gorilla embodying a deadmans spirit. The spirit will take revenge and cause unforeseeable damage.But it is equally dangerous to try and kill a witch in animal shape, as the fol-lowing story reveals:

A Bantu man was out in the forest hunting, when he encountered a fe-male gorilla. Happy at the prospect of bringing home a good supply ofmeat he shot the gorilla once but didnt succeed in killing her. Un-wisely he pursued her into a cave-like hideout, where she attacked andbadly injured him. She repeatedly bit him, tore a sizeable chunk of

flesh out of his buttocks and left him with broken arms and hands.Shortly after, an elderly woman confessed on her deathbed that she had

changed into a gorilla as part of a village conspiracy against thehunter, who was the most successful cultivator of plantains in the village.

This story is as much a reminder of the dangers involved in hunting gorillas,as it is part of a local discourse on witchcraft. Killing a gorilla is always dan-gerous and the successful hunter has to protect himself and his family throughmedicine from the revenge of the deceased animals spirit. Killing a humanshape-shifter in the guise of a gorilla is, after all, an involuntary homicide andmay have even more unpredictable results.

When asking whether Baka men also reappeared as animals after theirdeath, the immediate answer was: Yes, some do as chimpanzees! This beliefin the post-mortem reappearance of Bantu and Baka men in the shape of goril-

las or chimpanzees respectively, corresponds to a pervasively used imagery,which highlights analogies and links between the great apes and men. Bantudraw on the image of the fierce and powerful gorilla in a variety of ways.They did so particularly in pre-colonial ritual societies associated with leader-ship in politics, trade and warfare, for instance, in the so-called Gorilla DanceSociety (Siroto 1969). The circumciser and instructor in a ritual for the initia-tion of young men into adulthood is significantly named after the male gorillain both Bekwil, the Bakwele language and in Li-Baka.


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Among themselves, Baka usually refer to their Bantu neighbours as ebobo,gorillas, and underlying this metaphorical association is a Baka perceptionof the Bantu as being boisterous, aggressive, loud and assertive. For Baka,

both Bantu and gorillas display a strong sense of territoriality and hierarchy,their tempers flare up easily, they tend to be rough and bad mannered, and are

prone to use brutal force rather than a subtle touch.Bantu oral traditions, on the other hand, liken Pygmies to chimpanzees.

These myths illustrate the Bantu perception of the closeness of the Pygmies tothe forest world and their near-animal status. They relate that two brothers,the Pygmy and the chimp, split company after they had been forced out oftheir village and had to retreat into the forest. The Pygmy maintained contact

with the villagers who had expelled him, whereas the chimp refused all humanrelations, lost fire and culture and turned into a savage beast. When they meetin the forest, the chimp is known to get very cross and aggressive with his

brother who, although treated badly by the villagers, refuses to join him andprefers to return periodically to the village (Bahuchet 1993a:33). A Baka storyrelates the original transformation of a Baka man into the chimpanzee. Thisman was savage, crazy, destructive and unpredictable, jumping around intrees, shouting and annoying everyone else. One day he stole the child of aBaka woman and took it up into a tree. When Komba, the Creator-God,

passed by and heard the women crying and begging for the man to return herchild, he told him to come down and subsequently transformed him into thechimpanzee (Brisson 1995).

Baka and Bantu are aware that they mutually project these images of great

apes upon each other. Although this form of representation tends to havestrong aspects of caricature, it is accepted on both sides and, in some ways, itis even seen as a fair representation of their respective status within the animalworld. There are a number of phenotypical and behavioural differences betweengorillas and chimpanzees, which make the great ape metaphors a useful toolto express ethnic difference. Gorillas are taller and of darker complexion thanchimpanzees, and the same phenotypical distinctions are perceived to character-ise Bantu and Baka. The analogy also holds in some behavioural aspects.Hunting pressure affects both primate species, which have subsequently leftareas of extensive human activity. Still, gorillas seem to be more at ease withhuman co-presence. They are bolder and rather curious about humans, but alsomore likely to challenge them in their territory. Chimpanzees, on the other hand,

are a rare sight and tend to keep out of human territory. This compares withthe unobtrusiveness and shyness of Baka and the rather low profile they main-tain both in the forest and in villages. Chimpanzees also display musical skillsin the drumming of their chests or of tree trunks, a musical ability that Baka andother Pygmy groups are famous for. Like the Baka, chimps also have a well-developed taste for honey and are very proficient at opening beehives. An-other uncanny affinity for the elephant-hunting Baka is that chimpanzees have

been observed taking the tusks out of elephant skeletons and to scatter them around.


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A modern metaphor, this time going the other way, is the Baka comparisonbetween gorillas and soldiers, which says as much about the (Bantu) soldiersas it does about gorillas. Examining the footprints of a gorilla, a Baka com-

panion told me that we had now entered gorilla territory: The gorilla is a sol-dier, man! When you enter his area and meet him, he is going to ask you foryour passport. And you better have your papers in order, because he doesntlike to fool around. If you havent got a laissez-passer, he will go after you,slap you in the face and kick you out of his territory.

The image used here is one of a policemen or border patrol, administrativestaff who are all non-local Bantu and professional soldiers. They use their

power to control the movement of people and goods across the Congo-

Cameroon border in a rather autocratic fashion. Not uncommonly, they extortmoney and services, lock people up overnight in a prison cell in town and areknown for beating them up. For their part, gorillas are competitors for wildforest fruit, and occasionally raid fields and feed on agricultural produce.They thus tax human efforts in a different way than do policemen, but in afashion that Baka experience as similarly unsubtle and arbitrary.14

Although the great ape metaphors of Bantu and Baka seem to be alike, theyare so only on the surface. The Bantu use of the chimp metaphor for Baka

posits a similarity in terms of phenotype, behaviour and habitat which linkstwo beings that are essentially distinct. Although Baka are clearly human,they are perceived to be wild, gluttonous, smelly, unpredictable, uncivilisedand at home in the forest rather than in the village. The chimp metaphor drawsattention to these similarities and thus implicitly questions the essential hu-

manity of Baka. It is used as a symbolic device to denigrate them and to jus-tify the deprivation of basic human rights. When Baka talk metaphoricallyabout humans and animals, in this case Bantu and gorillas, their use of meta-

phor is ambivalent and, in a sense, dialectical. It indicates as much the gorilla-ness of Bantu as the Bantu-ness of gorillas. The change of the polarity con-cerning source domain and topic domain (Bird-David 1993:112, fn. 1)

points to an important difference in Baka perception concerning distinct spe-cies and their interrelations. There is an underlying essential continuity, a vitalenergy or life force which unites all living beings, and against which their par-ticular phenotype and context-specific behaviour stands out as figure toground. Non-human primates not only share the forest world and a generalis-able life essence with human primates, but also striking similarities in pheno-

type. Moreover, both Bantu and gorillas display behavioural commonalitiesthat elicit metaphorical association: they make territorial claims and attemptto control others, which basically violates the sharing ethic of the forestworld, and they tend to be loud and aggressive, etc.

Any kind of metaphorical construction involves the combination of similarityand difference, or of continuity and separation. There is, however, an impor-tant distinction between Baka and Bantu metaphoric perception of the worldand of each other. The former focuses on context-specific affordances which


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agents share beyond a generalisable essence of life. The latter essentially dis-criminates, for instance between species and between social agents, and it jux-taposes them in dialectical opposition. There are animals and there arehumans, Pygmies and Bantu, chimps and gorillas, parents and children, etc.

Baka Hunting Elephants

Gorillas and chimpanzees are two of the wildlife species currently classifiedas endangered and on the list for the CITES (Convention for InternationalTrade of Endangered Species) ban on international trade in wildlife products.While Baka and Bantu attitudes to these primates seem, on the surface, to

confirm a currently popular image of eco-friendly Pygmies versus Bantu eco-bruisers, we need only look at their attitudes to other animal species, in par-ticular to elephantsanother highly debated species on the Appendix I listingof the CITES banand the picture is further qualified. Baka have, for in-stance, no qualms about knocking down big forest trees in order to get to bee-hives too high up for them to climb, and they have made themselves a greatname as elephant hunters, who managed to bring elephants to the brink of ex-tinction in some parts of the forest during the early days of this century.

Elephant meat is culturally highly valued food, both among the Baka andthe Bantu. It preserves well, and since the devaluation of the Franc CFA in1994, it also enjoys a rising popularity in urban communities where it can oc-casionally be found on the black market.15 Despite their sedentarisation and anincreasing participation in roadside agriculture, Baka hunters are still famous

for their skills in tracking elephants, and these giant lords of the forest haveremained both a culturally and an economically valuable resource providingfood, ivory and prestige. Elephant meat and fat are highly appreciated as awelcome change from a more regular diet of small and medium-sized gameand constitute prestige food items. Elephant tusks were formerly used astools, and are nowadays mainly gifted and exchanged in Baka bridewealthtransactions. Ivory, and to some extent elephant meat, have also remainedcentral for exchange relationships with the Bantu, through which many Bakaobtain cash money and imported consumer goods. Ivory tusks are thus itemswhich combine the values of conceptually distinct economic modes dependingon the situation and the exchange partner. They are shared and given amongBaka themselves, gifted and exchanged among Baka and with Bantu patrons,

and traded and sold to immigrant Muslim merchants. The status of a greathunter, tuma, is likened by Bantu to that of a chief, and although it car-ries no formal political power, it conveys prestige and authority among Baka.There is, for instance, a correlation of polygamy and wa.tuma status that islinked to the salient position of great hunters in the local economy and in in-ter- and intra-ethnic exchange relationships.

Elephants are mainly hunted, however, in the service of local Bantu patronsor immigrant Muslim merchants, who provide a commissioned Baka hunter


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with a shotgun and the necessary ammunition, as well as with food and to-bacco. An elephant hunt can take up to a few weeks at a time, and relativelyfew Baka hunters own a gun and/or are capable of saving up for the initial in-vestment to embark independently on such an enterprise. This is partly due toan egalitarian social organisation and demand-sharing among Baka, but alsoto a Bantu control of the means of production and an endeavour to keep Bakain dependent relations.

Baka men have probably hunted elephants for centuries, formerly withspears, and they have long been producers of ivory for exchange networksconnecting intra-continental trading spheres. They certainly produced ivoryfor the Atlantic trade, that is, from the early sixteenth centuries onwards.

Here, ivory made its way from the interior to the coast through a number ofAfrican middlemen to be exchanged for European imports, predominantlyguns and powder. By the second half of the nineteenth century, when Euro-

pean demand for ivory reached its peak, Baka had become highly specialisedelephant hunters, and they have continued in this profession until today.

The whole of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique quatoriale Franaise,AEF) exported, for instance, more than 100 tons of ivory per year in the pe-riod from 1899 to 1910 (Bruel 1918, cited in Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982),which was the equivalent of about a third of its export value (Austen andHeadrick 1983). During 1896 and 1905, Kamerun (Cameroon) ranked firstamong the German colonies in terms of its exports: rubber, palm produce, co-coa and ivory. The European demand for ivory was notorious: The amount ofivory shipped abroad increased rapidly up to 1905 but then declined abruptly

because elephants had been hunted to extinction in large parts of the country(Stoecker 1986:72). The German administration of the Ngoko area directlynorth of Souank reported in 1905 that the second most important export itemof this region after rubber was ivory. Ivory production, however, was in seri-ous decline due to the mass murder of elephants committed by the Pygmy

populations, i.e. the Baka, who were said to kill the animals as much for theirmeat as for their tusks. The report concluded that there were still large quanti-ties of old ivory that could be exported from the area. The local populationhad apparently amassed great amounts of ivory over time, which they wereusing as money (Archives Nationales de Yaound, FA 1/65: 214). Ivory ex-

ports from AEF dropped from 29% of total export value in 1905 to 6% in1927 and do not figure any more in Austen and Headricks (1983) trade statis-

tics from 1937.World demand and supply of African ivory apparently increased again dra-matically during the 1980s, and a western-run campaign pressuring for theconservation of the African elephant quickly led to the implementation of the1989 CITES ban on trade in elephant products.16 There were, however, still anestimated number of 25,000 elephants in the Congo (Brazzaville) in 1989(Cumming 1989, cited in Kreuter and Simmons 1994)17 and there has been alimited but steady flow of Congolese ivory to black market centres in


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neighbouring Cameroon and Gabon. Most ivory is now traded on the blackmarket, and although prices have dropped with the CITES ban, this drop hasenabled new, or previously excluded consumersfor instance traditional Af-rican chiefs and bureaucratsto buy ivory (Barbier et al. 1990).

Baka involvement in ivory trading as producers of this valuable commoditythus presents a different side of their engagement with the forest environment.Elephants represent ancestral figures of the forest and are salient in Baka rit-ual and eco-cosmology. Despite their ancestral status, the positive effects oftheir ecological agency, and the links between humans and elephants inmythical, spiritual and cosmological relations, Baka nevertheless got involvedin a murderous trade of elephant products. The dilemmas of this trade and the

perceived Baka exploitation of elephants have, however, entered into currentversions of stories about hybrid elephant-men, so-called mokila, who arethought to engage in organised insurgency against Baka communities. Tak-ing revenge for murders committed amongst their own kind by the Baka, theyare said to kill Baka hunters and to kidnap their women and children in theforest in order to replenish their own communities.

DISCUSSION

To conclude: how do western perceptions map onto local attitudes to wildlifeand how do we interpret apparent congruencies? Bantu have a comparativelygreater and longer-standing involvement in the market, a more direct experi-ence of the modern state and its agents, and, in pronounced distinction to

Baka, they have a history of actively participating in its institutions. It is thusnot surprising that Bantu environmental attitudes appear to be more akin toours in their dualisms of bush vs farm, forest vs village, wild vs cultivated,and savage vs civilised. In a sense they reveal themselves as much closer toours, especially in comparison to those of the Baka who are relative newcom-ers to the world of settlement and formal education, Christianity and capital-ism. After colonial transformations had successfully taken place, most Bantuwere finally embracing market-oriented practices of resource exploitation in away that used to be an unquestioned dogma in the West until two or threedecades ago. At present, however, their distinctly modern attitudes to cashcropping and the commoditisation of wild forest resources make them looklike the bad guys. My contention is that Bantu forest farmers have become the

embodiment of our bad conscience within a currently fashionable discourse ofconservation and sustainable development. Conversely, Pygmies are seen asthe aboriginal population of an environment that is now deemed highly worthyof conservation or preservation.18 Due to their unique co-evolutionary adapta-tion to it, including sharing and extensive land-use practices by characteristi-cally small numbers of people, they have refrained throughout time from theoften destructive transformation of the land that has been attributed to theirfarming neighbours. Pygmies thus find themselves at the other pole of our at-


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tention and consciousness, especially with increasingly politicised interna-tional debates on marginalisation and indigenous rights. Conservation effortsnow extend not only to the biodiversity of forest environments, but also to thevestiges of a human culture that supposedly originated in it.

This is not to belittle real problems with Pygmy marginalisation and pres-sure on forest environments in areas with a steady influx of immigrant farmersfrom savannah or forest-fringe zones. But living museum approaches to theconservation of ancient human cultures consolidate existing politics of ex-clusion rather than counter them.19 Furthermore, concerning the soundness oftheir ecological attitudes, it is not that Baka are closer to nature than others.It is rather the nature of their engagement with the environment that makes

them more likely stewards of it. The Baka cosmic economy of sharing andtheir continuing emphasis on an egalitarian social organisation make it moredifficult to embrace the principles of a profit-motivated economy that tends to

be individualising and alienating. At least for the time being Baka are moreinvolved, both in cosmological and practical terms, with a forest environment.The forest directly provides a greater part of Baka subsistence than it does formost Bantu. It forms a more important part of their life-world and, in markedcontrast to their Bantu neighbours of today, Baka experience it as a home. Theforest is shared with other agents, fellow humans, animals, plants, and spirits,all of which engage in specific forms of subsistence, but by relating to eachother. Although the forest holds dangers, it is the source and sustenance of lifethat unfolds in the ongoing exchanges between these agents. Humans are but a

part of the forest and, most importantly, they are not its owners, nor can they

make legitimate claims to its ownership. Baka are thus less likely to go for thekind of alienated resource exploitation, which Bantu so happily seem to en-visage and which treats the world as human property.

One of the paradoxes of conservation is the claim to a world shared by allorganisms, in which the decisions about a hierarchy of values and forms of re-source exploitation are, however, made by humans and ultimately in humaninterest. Moreover, conservation in its current form is based on metropolitanscience, be it biology or economics, and dominated by western interests. Thiswas particularly evident in the controversy over the conservation of the Afri-can elephant (see Freeman and Kreuter 1994). The decisive campaigns to im-

plement a world-wide ban on ivory were all run outside the African continent,mainly by western conservation agencies in the US and the UK (Bonner

1994), and sound conservation efforts by some African countries have beenplayed down with reference to global interests. The situation only changedin 1997, although many restrictions and tight control prevail.20 As Shiva(1993:152) points out, however,

[t]he erosion of biodiversity is another area in which control hasbeen shifted from the South to the North through its identification as a

global problem. ... But biodiversity is a resource over which local


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patible with sustainable exploitation of the forest than are sedentarizingprogrammes. ... The value of a nomadic lifestyle should be recognised asan effective strategy for exploiting the tropical rainforest in a sustainableway and as vital to the economic, social, and psychological well-being offorest peoples.

2. For the purpose of this chapter, the term Bantu is used as a shorthandreference to the Bantu-speaking neighbours of the Baka living in theSouank District of the Congo. Li-Baka, the Baka language, has beenclassified as a Ubangian, that is, a non-Bantu language from theSere/Ngbaka/Mba group in the Adamawa-Ubangi branch of the Ni-ger-Congo language family (Equipe National du Congo 1987; Boyd

1989), whereas the Bakwele, Njem and Fang speak languages which bycurrent linguistic classification, following Guthrie (1953, 1971), belongto the A 80 or Makaa-Njem language group and A 70 or Bulu-Beti lan-guage group, respectively. Bakwele, Njem and Fang are linguisticallyand ethnically distinct peoples and the use of a generic term such asBantu to distinguish them as a group from the Baka does not imply alink between Bantu languages, cultures and phenotypical traits, particu-larly since there are both Bantu-speaking Pygmy groups and non-Pygmy,Bantu-speaking huntergatherers.

3. The Oxford English Dictionary defines aboriginal as first or earliest asfar as history or science gives record and aborigines as the original in-habitants of a land and their descendants who are usually distinguishedfrom subsequent colonists. In the political rhetoric of African statesmen,

Pygmies have often been appropriated as the living proof of the antiquityand longevity of African traditions. To give but one example, in the1970s the then president of Za re, Sese Seko Mobutu, launched a so-called authenticity campaign, also known as la Za rianization, that wasinspired by both the eighteenth-century French and the twentieth-centuryChinese Cultural Revolution. He declared the Pygmies to be the aborigi-nal population of the country and the original citizens (primaires ci-toyens) of the republic.

4. The term Pygmy has its origin in the Greek word pugme (), ameasure of length from the elbow to the knuckles (Waehle 1989:4; Bahu-chet 1993b:153).

5. Eighteenth-century naturalists and philosophers were puzzled by ques-

tions concerning the essence of humanity and the continuities and con-trasts existing between humans and other animals. In his SystemaNaturae from 1735, the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus brought peopledown from the angels to join the apes (Tobias 1994:33) by classifyingman as a part of the animal kingdom. The Scottish judge James Burnet,also known as Lord Monboddo, tackled the question from another angleand became indeed firmly convinced that the anthropoid apes, then gen-erally referred to as orang-outanman of the woods in Malay


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belonged to our species and were human beings that had not yet reachedthe stage of being human (Ingold 1994:20). They are exactly of the hu-man form ... they use sticks for weapons; they live in society; they makehuts of branches of trees ... it appears certain, that they are of our species,and though they have made some progress in the arts of life, they havenot come the length of language (Burnet 1773:174175, cited in Ingold1994:20). After dissecting the first cadaver of a chimpanzee that had

been brought to England, Edward Tyson in his Orang-Outang, siveHomosylvestris: or the Anatomy of a Pygmie from 1699 declared thatthe Pygmies of the ancients were apes and not humans (Tobias 1994:34).In 1760, Linnaeus disciple C. E. Hoppius classified the orang-outan as

Simiapygmaeus, and at present the scientific name of this particular spe-cies is still Pongo pygmaeus (Bahuchet 1993b:161). As Tobias informsus, [i]t is interesting, too, that the zoological name given to the chim-

panzee by Oken in 1816 was Pan [now Pan troglodytes]for Pan wasthe theriomorphic Grecian deity, part human, part animal (1994:34).

6. Georg Schweinfurth actually proposed to use the name Pygmy for thispeople of immortal myth (1878, Vol. II:66-67). His conjecture was thatthese people, like the Bushmen of South Africa, may be considered asthe scattered remains of an aboriginal population now becoming extinct;and their isolated and sporadic existence bears out the hypothesis(Schweinfurth 1878:78).

7. This 1995 report to the European Community edited by Serge Bahuchetand Pierre De Maret is particularly committed to the notion that all pre-

sent-day tropical forests are the direct result of thousands of years ofhuman history and that there is no such thing as virgin forest (Bahu-chet and De Maret 1995:11). Various of the contributing authors to thereport elaborate on how egalitarian forest societies have adapted and thusbelong to the forest ecosystem that they have contributed to shape (Ba-huchet and De Maret 1995:54). Their livelihood (even their essence) isthreatened by the possible disappearance of the rainforest ecosystem(Bahuchet and De Maret 1995:11). Notably, these authors do not make acategorical distinction between traditional swidden cultivators andnomad hunter-gatherers, but group them together as indigenous peo-

ples in contradistinction to surrounding non-native populations whosehigh fertility rates and lack of adaptation to the forest environment make

their intrusion potentially very harmful (Bahuchet and De Maret 1995:54;see also Bailey et al. 1992:207).8. Commonly this influence is described in terms of an acculturation proc-

ess, which proceeds through successive stages of transformation (Bahu-chet and De Maret 1995:18) and has significant socio-economic andcultural ramifications.

9. Blench (1999) uses, in particular, the absence of conclusive data formatching ancient hunter-gatherer sites with human phenotypes, and thus


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for identifying these sites as those of the ancestors of present-day Pygmygroups. He also reviews the ambiguities concerning the genetic trees thathave been established so far, and points out a complete lack of singularityin contemporary Pygmy hunting technology and practices which all havetheir parallels outside the forest zone. Last, but not least, there is no proofof a significant linguistic substrate in contemporary Pygmy languagesthat could not be more efficiently explained by intergroup contact.

10. Within the wider discipline of ecology, climax vegetation refers to aclimatic climax, i.e. the maximum vegetation which a regions climatecould support, and the equilibrium to which vegetation would returnthrough succession following disturbance (Clements 1916, in Fairhead

and Leach 1998:165). Terms such as primary, pristine or virgin for-est (fortvierge in French literature) refer to the climax vegetation offorests. They are based on the fundamental notion of a balance in nature,which is established and re-established following disturbance throughsuccessional stages of growth. Being thought of as an integral part of thenatural ecosystem, the culture and social organisation of forest peoplesare thus likewise easily seen to be striving for equilibrium, or social andecological harmony. Unless disturbed, both their evolution and their his-tory are then naturally limited by the parameters of such equilibrium.

11. Cf. the view expressed by the International Workgroup for IndigenousAffairs (IWGIA): As logging companies, plantations (coffee, cocoa, oil-

palm, rubber) and mining companies moved in and constructed roads andrailways, the forest was opened up to colonization ... by land-hungry

peasants from the savannahs in the north. Without the infrastructure andservices provided by the companies undertaking the industrial exploita-tion, such a large scale colonization could not have taken place (Waehle1991:205). For similar views on high population pressure in surroundingnon-native populations as a precondition to their intruding on the terri-tory of indigenous populations and thus of poor migrants pouring in enmasse, see Bahuchet and De Maret (1995:33-34), and also Peterson(1989).

12. The total population of the Central African forest block is currentlyaround 12 million people, of which an estimated 60, 000 to 150, 000(Bahuchet and de Maret 1995:18) or even 200, 000 (Waehle 1991:206)are Pygmies.

13. Joiris (1997) discusses the distinct views on nature held by local forestdwellers and western conservationists, and the consequences of their di-vergence for protected area management in central Africa. Grouping to-gether, on the one hand, traditional swidden cultivators and Pygmyhunter-gatherers from a variety of ethnic groups and, on the other, Euro-

pean and African park personnel qualified by locals as Whites, shesummarises the following prevalent distinctions in faunal categories. Inlocal taxonomy, there are animals that are good to eat, animals that are


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not to be consumed, and animals that are good to think with. The latterhave symbolic value and often carry food taboos, but are not necessarilydeemed improper for consumption. People working in protected areamanagement, on the other hand, tend to share a different view of wildlife,distinguishing principally between protected species, non-protected spe-cies and pests (Joiris 1997:99). Since actors from the two parties doshare neither the same interests nor the same reality, conservation pro-

jects are largely irreconcilable with local aspirations, unless they arebased on compromises, local participation and a more profound westernattempt at understanding local reality (Joiris 1997:95, 103).

14. In response to one of the anonymous readers queries, I should add that

there is other great ape behaviour that supports the analogy and mapsnicely onto local (self-)perceptions. As the reader rightly points out goril-las are herbivores, whereas chimps are also known to be skilful huntersadding meat to their plant and fruit diet. Furthermore, gorillas preparethemselves beds made of leaves, while chimps tend to look for naturalshelter. This compares to a Bantu preference for a more permanent do-mestic architecture in roadside villages versus a Baka dwelling perspec-tive (cf. Ingold 1995) that makes them feel and be at home in the forest(see Khler 1999).

15. Concerning urban perceptions and consumption patterns of all types ofbush meat in large central African cities, see Trefon (1994).

16. The Ivory Trade Review Group (ITRG), an organisation funded by Wild-life Conservation International (WCI) and the World Wide Fund For Na-

ture, formerly World Wildlife Fund (WWF), released a preliminary andprobably exaggerated report stating that the number of African elephantshad decreased from 1,343,340 in 1979 to 631,930 in 1989 (ITRG 1989,cited in Kreuter and Simmons 1994:43). The massive decline of the ele-

phant population during the 1980s has been directly correlated with thegrowth in ivory exports from Africa (Barbier et al. 1990). These exportswere thought to have exceeded 1.000 tons per annum at their peak (Bon-ner 1993, cited in Kreuter and Simmons 1994:43). The figures concern-ing the dramatic decline in elephant populations point to a problem withwidely used authoritative forest resource statistics. Fairhead and Leach(1998:114) have shown in detail that these statistics are often inaccurateand contain significant interpretive margins depending on the methods of

assessment and the kinds of definitions used. Derived mainly from con-temporary observation, they tend to make little or questionable use ofhistorical sources and to work on unsubstantiated assumptions about flo-ral and faunal pasts. Once published, however, the data issued by prestig-ious international organisations are recycled by other globally importantorganisations and institutions, and enter, for instance, into model buildingto predict future environmental degradation. Model-dependent extrapola-tion then becomes in turn the basis for national and international devel-


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opment and conservation policies and the funding of projects.17. It is worth noting that this figure, like the others given for 1979 (10,800),

1984 (59,900) and 1987 (61,000) did not derive from a census, but fromother methods of assessment that produced such highly divergent ele-

phant population numbers. The same is true concerning neighbouringcountries to the Congo. Either no census or a single one were the basisfor the extrapolation of figures showing a 594.0% increase of elephantsin Gabon and of 60.5% in Cameroon over the same period, from 19791989. In the same decade, elephant numbers in Za re and the CAR sup-

posedly decreased by 72.6% and 60.6% (Cumming 1989, cited in Kreuterand Simmons 1994:58).

18. The two notions imply distinct views on resources. As Sugg andKreuter (1994:27) point out, conservationism allows both consumptiveand non-consumptive use of resources ... the ethical issue is whether theresource can sustain usage over time. ... Preservationists, by contrast, aregenerally opposed to consumptive use of natural resources, and thus tothe very concept of resources. ... Preservationism can thus be regardedas the antithesis of conservationism. For a discussion of the implicationsof intrinsic value versus instrumental value in environmental ethics, seeCheney (1992); Hardgrove (1992); Norton (1992); Jacorzynski (1998).

19. The freezing of an historically obsolete lifestyle is particularly obviousin the zoning of national parks which allow, for instance, local Pygmiesto hunt with traditional technology, i.e. not with guns, in a clearlydemarcated area of the park, not the core, but either in the buffer or the

transition zone.20. Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwes proposal to downlist the elephant to

Appendix 2 in their countries was overwhelmingly accepted at the 10thCITES conference in Zimbabwe in 1997. These three countries may re-sume international ivory trade under the following conditions: To sellonly their existing stockpiles of ivory; to trade exclusively with Japan,the recognised world wholesaler; not to trade internationally withineighteenth months of the conference decision; and to have all salesclosely monitored by CITES and other international committees (Crace1997:10).

21. For an informed combination of both, see Leach and Mearns (1996), aswell as Fairhead and Leach (1996, 1998). For a review of some of the

cutting edge of ecological, anthropological and historical thinking, seeEnglund (1998).

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Bahuchet, S. 1993a.La Rencontre des Agriculteurs. Les Pygmes parmi les Peu-ples dAfrique Centrale. Histoire dune Civilisation Forestire. Tome 2.Ethnoscience 9. Peeters-SELAF, Paris.

Bahuchet, S. 1993b. Linvention des Pygmes. Cahiers dtudes Africaines,XXXIII, 129(1):153181.

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