On Friday September 30th, Lisa Cliggett gave a Baraza presentation titled, “Chronic Liability: Living on the edge in a Zambian park buffer zone.” Dr. Cliggett is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. The talk focused on the cycles of access and alienation experienced by the Gwembe Tonga populations living along the lakeshore of Lake Kariba and next to Kafue National Park, Zambia, a research made possible by Dr. Cliggett’s examination of cyclical shifts in political ecologies over time.
Gwembe Tonga farming populations were moved to these areas after the 1958 Kariba Dam project displaced farming communities. Though the area in and near the park produces bountiful maize provisions, these populations experience livelihood insecurity, resource alienation (particularly in terms of land alienation), and violence in the area. In these cycles, the national government has never consistently enforced protected areas nor officially de-gazetted the land to designate it ‘customary lands’ and these cycles have thus produced Chronic Liminality. Cliggett defines Chronic Liminality as “a state of enduring confusion over rights to land, livelihoods, and life that results from intermittent attention from external agents (whether government, NGO or international organizations), occurring over long time horizons.” Overall, Cliggett finds that this state of affairs has directly contributed to increasing socioeconomic differentiation, livelihood insecurity, risk of violent encounters, and ever changing land cover and natural resource use.