Shifting Species in South Africa - Summary

The answer to the main research question on how wildlife is officially classified in South Africa lies in the process of boundary making. Within this work I have dissected boundary making into three particular types of boundaries, namely material boundaries, policy boundaries and imagined boundaries. I noted that the three boundaries are closely related and sometimes overlapping. Stemming from a social constructivist angle, I depart from the idea that boundaries, however natural they may seem, are imagined boundaries and are socially constructed. These imagined boundaries in nature, may lead to official boundaries by means of politico-legal agreements that are backed by state power. Official boundaries come in the form of wildlife classifications, which have underlying frameworks of incentives that may prescribe material boundaries such as fences, walls, signs or armed patrols. Vice versa; material boundaries may inspire new thinking about policy boundaries and can thereby both influence and shape them. In the case of wildlife in South Africa, I argue, a significant shift has taken place over the last few decades in this boundary trinity. The thinking about wildlife has been shifting, the policy categories have been shifting, material boundaries have been shifting, and all this has resulted in vast consequences to the way humans interact with each other, with animals, and with South Africa’s land. To scrutinize these alterations I delved deeper into four research threads: