The relationship between society and the nature existing within its area is entangled with ideas that dominate the ordering of society. The relationship between the state and its people as well as how different groups of people relate with each other within the state has an impact on the way nature is treated. Dominant ideas that govern the relationships between people inevitably determine how nature is viewed, used, and conserved. Nature is colored by the dominant ideas existing within the state sometimes by choice when people want to achieve their ends as well as by chance when the impact of the dominant ideas changes the way nature is treated within an area. The following essay examines how relations and ideas prevalent amongst people impact nature. Specifically, the narrative about nature that is adopted within racially ordered societies such as Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa. These nations chose to organize society based on ideas of dominance and superiority and seemed to use nature to reflect and further these ideas. The ideas of race determined the interactions with nature that transformed the usage of nature. However, it also seems to be the case that those concerned with the treatment of nature at times bought into the prevalent racial ideology to further their purposes.

How the racially ordered societies impacted the relations with nature in Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa were different in many ways. In Germany, the belief of the superiority of the Aryan Race didn’t directly impact the conservation policies that emerged within the nation. “To the contrary, ideologically charged statements remained surprisingly rare in the conservation literature, (Uekoetter, 40).

The antisemitism that existed within Nazi Germany didn’t have any obvious links to the nature that existed within the nation. The people within Nazi Germany, while involving nature as a dialogue in German Nationalism didn’t hold the Jews responsible for the treatment of nature in Germany. They were not a majority of the population so holding them directly responsible for any interactions with the nation. On the other hand, the racial order of Apartheid South Africa and its ideology directly impacted how nature was conserved. The creation of national parks that alienated the Africans rested on the belief that they were barbarians who were inadequate custodians of nature within South Africa. The people were removed from the land and not allowed to enter. Poaching was used as an excuse to prevent them from using the natural resources within the parks that they were entitled to and had been using for many years. Simultaneously these parks allowed the white population to hunt on the land as well as use the parks to attract tourists. The racial order of the two nations that rested on dominance, superiority, and oppression, resulted in a divergent interaction with the nature that existed within the land.

However, the dominant racial order within the two nations did impact how nature was viewed in similar ways. The ideology of a particular kind of nationalism, an idea of the superiority of the Germans seeped into the position nature held within Germany. There was an attempt to sell a particular image of the nation in the form of nature. The intense nationalism that permeated Germany rested on the belief that its people and its nation was superior. Radkau argues that nationalism rested on the idea of an imagined conception of the nation. Its nature in the form of land and natural features gave it a concrete property to tie these nationalistic sentiments. It allowed the people a sense of ownership of large tracts of land that would bind them together. Therefore, there were multiple attempts to create a unique German nature that would unite the people. However, nature within Germany was extremely diverse and there were no obvious symbols that would bind all of the population. This gave rise to multiple regional nationalism that allowed people to feel a part of the larger nation as well as have individual links to the environment. The idea of the homeland and the fact that it would inspire patriotism and sacrifice used nature and land as imagery. The conception of the superiority of the people also convinced them to seek a reflection of the same within the nature in Nazi Germany and German nationalism that preceded the emergence of Nazi’s.

In South Africa also the dominant ideology of racism changed the usage of nature within the nation. The national parks were an attempt to create and revert to a particular image of untouched nature that depended on exclusionary politics. “Leonard (2013) observed that the idealization of Africa as a Garden of Eden has strongly influenced the management and use of natural resources by local communities through prescribed notions which view local people as threats to their resources, widening environmental injustice,(Leonard, 138). This took the form of what can be referred to as “conservation racism” during apartheid that negatively impacted people of color while benefitting the white population. Not only did this racism exist within the way the state dealt with wildlife but it also impacted agricultural practices in South Africa. Ownership of land was allocated on a highly racial basis where the white population owned most of the land and yet much of the work done on the land was by the colored people. There was the relocation of Black people to rural settlements that had the worst lands. The creation of Bantustans led to the demise of smallholder agriculture. “Indigenous African livestock production also intensified in South Africa, although African people lost extensive areas of land”, (Beinart, 94). The expanding pastoral economy decimated the wildlife that was existing within South Africa. The interactions of the state with the nature in the racially ordered South Africa treated the relationship between the white population and nature through the lens of incentives for the African people it was through coercion.

The state also begins to play a major role in any decisions regarding the treatment of nature in racially ordered societies instead of depending on people's participation. A society that is ordered based on hierarchy and superiority of one people over another depends on securing its continued dominance on the people, whether it is in Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa. Therefore, any questions or criticism of the state and its directives is seen as a direct challenge to its power. It was inevitable that any conservation policies that were adopted within these nations had to fit in with the narrative of domination. In Nazi Germany even if conservationists didn’t subscribe to the dominant politics of oppression, they adopted the Nazi rhetoric to achieve their ends. They tried to correlate German Nationalism to protecting nature even if these characterizations were weak. In South Africa, the exclusionary politics settled well into the narrative of the civilized white settler and the barbarians who were living on the land previously. They also relied on science to justify their actions that reinforced the divide between the sections of the population to benefit the white people. The Soil erosion act had its basis in the scientific management of resources, which led to the creation of large commercial farms that were inevitably white owned lands. The control over nature and natural resources automatically led to control over the people and their lives. In both cases, it would be the state and the dominant elite that transformed the narratives about nature to benefit their holds of power. Conservation practices that would depend either on a protest or independent forms of thinking that were contrary to state decisions were not encouraged to ensure the superiority of the state. In racially ordered societies it was a control that dominated the relations with nature and its people.

Racially ordered ideas shaped nature within these states and societies in both Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa in different ways. Yet it was narratives of dominance, superiority exclusion that ordered the relations amongst people that also spilled over into the way the people related to nature in these states. There was a need to prove that their way of organizing society was the best way possible because they were the best possible race. This ensures that they were a superior race and the rest were inferior, which was reinforced by characterizing themselves as the best possible custodians of the land or as emerging from the best possible land that made them the best possible race. In both cases, it was the rhetoric of superiority that determined the relations, conceptions, and inventions of nature within racially ordered societies.

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Bibliography:

• Beinhart, William.’ State, Science and Environmental Management in South Africa, c.1870 to the Present’. The Great Divergence. Page 91-109
• Khan, Fareida. ‘From Conservation to Environmental Justice: Trends in the Development of Environmental Civil Society Organisations in South Africa.’ The Great Divergence. Page 200-221.
• Musavagne, Regis and Leonard, Llellyn. When Race and Social Equity Matters in Nature Conservation in Post-apartheid South Africa. Conservation and Society. [Downloaded free from http://www.conservationandsociety.org on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, IP: 120.57.14.46].
• Swart, Sandra. ‘South Africa’s Environmental History: A Historiography.’ The Great Divergence. Page 318-347.
• Radkau, Joachim. Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment. Translated by Thomas Dunlap. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2008.
• Uekoetter, Frank. The Green and the Brown: A History of Conservation in Nazi Germany. Published by Cambridge University Press, 2006.