The Concessionary Regimes of Gabon, Central Africa: Corporate Sovereignty, Forest Governance, and the Post-Colonial State
Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Forestry and Environmental Studies
First Advisor
Dove, Michael
Abstract
In this dissertation, I examine the arrangements and consequences of concessionary governance in Gabon, Central Africa. By “concessionary governance,” I refer to both the state’s performance of government by delegating public duties and responsibilities to the private concessionary company, as well as the concessionary company’s enactment of its own forms of government over conceded lands and peoples. Considering concessionary governance not as neoliberal innovation but imperial solution, I draw upon archival records in France, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon to trace the contested emergence of concessionary governance at the turn of the 20th century, as the French metropolitan state charged private companies with the colonization and development of its recently acquired Congo territories. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2020, I examine contemporary forms of concessionary governance in post-colonial Gabon, and consider how flawed ambitions for the concessionary realization of sustainable forest management and rural development are challenged by the arrival of new corporate actors from Asia. Finally, I follow the extension of the logics of concessionary governance to the novel institutions of community forestry in rural Gabon, posited as a rare – and ultimately impossible – opportunity for self-governance, premised on the transformation of rural peoples into corporate bodies.
Recommended Citation
Zhou, Wen, "The Concessionary Regimes of Gabon, Central Africa: Corporate Sovereignty, Forest Governance, and the Post-Colonial State" (2024). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1324.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1324
