Gatekeeping practices in global environmental politics: African biopolitics and oil assemblages in Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Frederick Cooper’s concept of the gatekeeper state is a useful model for thinking about colonial and post-colonial continuities in African statehood. Yet the concept has a number of weaknesses or pitfalls: including treating states as singular, homogenous entities, a tendency to economic reductionism, and reinforcing a pathological view of African politics. In this article I make the conceptual case for focusing on gatekeeping practices which, although they may produce certain ‘state effects’, have more flexibility and malleability than is sometimes imagined. A Foucauldian approach to the state, with attention to modes of biopower and governmentality, enables researchers to examine capillary forms of state action which sometimes play out very differently than neo-patrimonial approaches suggest. This is illustrated through the case of the Niger Delta: despite appearing a ‘best case’ example of a Nigerian gatekeeper state, it is possible to observe the governance and resistance of territories, subjectivities and economies in much more diverse ways. Ultimately, this enables a form of politically engaged, closely historical, theoretically nuanced style of analysis, which is quite close to Cooper’s broader approach to African politics and imperial/colonial history.

KEYWORDS:

• Environment
• comparative politics
• West Africa
• resources
• IPE

Notes

1. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 109.

2. Dunn, “Madlib #32”; See also Allen, “Understanding African Politics”; Bayart, The State in Africa; Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works; Clapham, Africa and the International System; and Jackson and Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist.”

3. Abrahamsen, “Research note – Africa and International Relations”; and Death, “Governmentality at the Limits of the International.”

4. Beresford, “Power, Patronage, and Gatekeeper Politics in South Africa”; Cheeseman, Democracy in Africa; and Hillbom, “Botswana: A Development-Oriented Gate-Keeping State.”

5. Bayart, The State in Africa; Booth, Governance for Development in Africa; Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works; Cooksey, Public Goods, Rents and Business in Tanzania; and deGrassi, “’Neopatrimonialism’ and Agricultural Development in Africa.”

6. Booth, Governance for Development in Africa, 3.

7. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 202.

8. Gibson, Politicians and Poachers; and Cooksey, Public Goods, Rents and Business in Tanzania.

9. Death, The Green State in Africa.

10. Abrahamsen, “Research note – Africa and International Relations”; Dunn, “Madlib #32”; Dunn, “Contested State Spaces”; Jessop, “From Micro-Powers to Governmentality”; and Watts, Silent Violence.

11. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 5.

12. Ibid. See also Allen, “Understanding African Politics,” 304; Bayart, The State in Africa, 87; and Jackson and Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist,” 21–2.

13. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject.

14. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 156.

15. Ibid., 180.

16. Bayart, The State in Africa; and Mbembe, “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony.”

17. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 3.

18. Ibid., 26.

19. Ibid., 48–9, 157.

20. Cooper, “Networks, Moral Discourse and History”; see also Poole, “Ransoms, Remittances and Refugees,” 72.

21. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 31.

22. Ibid., 3–4.

23. Ibid., 26.

24. Hillbom, “Botswana: A Development-Oriented Gate-Keeping State,” 88.

25. Ibid., 76.

26. Ibid., 89.

27. Büscher and Fletcher, “Accumulation by Conservation,” 2.

28. Brockington, Duffy and Igoe, Nature Unbound, 13.

29. Brockington, “The politics and Ethnography of Environmentalism in Tanzania,” 105–6; see also Brockington, “Corruption, Taxation, and Natural Resource Management in Tanzania.”

30. Duffy, “Non-governmental Organisations and Governance States,” 737 and 744.

31. Gibson, Politicians and Poachers, 2.

32. Cooksey, Public Goods, Rents and Business in Tanzania, 5.

33. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 201.

34. Cooksey, Public Goods, Rents and Business in Tanzania, 66.

35. Ibid., 31.

36. Ibid., 66.

37. Ibid., 54.

38. See also Death, “Environmental Mainstreaming and Post-Sovereign Governance in Tanzania.”

39. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 197.

40. Ibid., 48–9.

41. See Death, “Governmentality at the Limits of the International”; and Death and Gabay, “Introduction.”

42. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 98.

43. Moore and Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees.

44. Rahmato, “Littering the Landscape,” 214–5; see also Keeley and Scoones, Understanding Environmental Policy Processes; and McCann, Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land.

45. Beinart, The Rise of Conservation in South Africa; and Death, The Green State in Africa.

46. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 48–9.

47. Comaroff, “Reflections on the Colonial State, in South Africa and Elsewhere,” 328–9.

48. See Büscher, “Derivative Nature”; and Büscher, Transforming the Frontier.

49. Dunn, “Contested State Spaces,” 437.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 439.

53. Whitehead, Jones and Jones, The Nature of the State, 2.

54. Dunn, “Contested State Spaces,” 424.

55. Ibid., 430.

56. Ibid., 431.

57. This is a tendency shared by Cooper, but less explicit in his work (see Cooper, Africa since 1940, 180).

58. Hillbom, “Botswana: A Development-Oriented Gate-Keeping State – A Reply to Ian Taylor,” 479.

59. Brown, “A Question of Agency,” 1897.

60. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works, 17.

61. See note 58 above.

62. Gibson, Politicians and Poachers, 14.

63. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 11.

64. Chabal and Daloz, Africa Works.

65. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 160.

66. See note 24 above.

67. Cooper, Africa since 1940, 193–4.

68. Beresford, “Power, Patronage, and Gatekeeper Politics in South Africa,” 229.

69. Frynas, “Political Instability and Business.”

70. Büscher and Fletcher, “Accumulation by Conservation.”

71. Bayart, The State in Africa, 220.

72. Mbembe, “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony,” 3–4.

73. See also Whitehead, Jones and Jones, The Nature of the State.

74. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 277.

75. See Abrahamsen, “Research Note – Africa and International Relations.”

76. Mitchell, “The Limits of the State,” 95.

77. Jessop, State Theory, 233.

78. Ibid., 360.

79. Hansen and Stepputat, “Introduction: States of Imagination,” 14 and 37.

80. Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 121.

81. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 76–7.

82. Jessop, “From Micro-Powers to Governmentality,” 36.

83. Jessop, State Theory, 342.

84. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 77.

85. See note 1 above.

86. Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 6.

87. Ibid., 116 & 270.

88. Jackson and Rosberg, “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist,” 3.

89. Amunwa, Counting the cost; Branch and Mampilly, Africa uprising; Ndjio, “Overcoming Socio-Economic Marginalisation”; and Watts, “Green Capitalism; Green Governmentality.”

90. Agbiboa, “Have we heard the last?”; Haynes, “Power, Politics and Environmental Movements in the Third World,” 236–8; Obi, “Structuring Transnational Spaces of Identity, Rights and Power in the Niger Delta of Nigeria”; Osaghae, “The Ogoni Uprising”; Watts, Silent Violence, 476; and Watts and Peluso, “Resource violence,” 188–91.

91. Watts, Silent Violence, xiii.

92. Watts, “Green Capitalism; Green Governmentality,” 1316.

93. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security beyond the State.

94. Osaghae, “The Ogoni Uprising”; and Watts, Silent Violence.

95. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security beyond the State, 2.

96. Amunwa, Counting the cost; and Frynas, “Political Instability and Business.”

97. Watts and Peluso, “Resource violence,” 189.

98. Branch and Mampilly, Africa uprising, 87.

99. Associated Press, “Nigeria Restores Fuel Subsidy to Quell Nationwide Protests”; and Watts, Silent Violence, xiv.

100. UNFCCC, “Nigeria’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution.”

101. Anugwom, “Beyond Oil”; Ikelegbe, “Civil Society, Oil and Conflict in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria”; and Iwilade, ‘“Green” or “Red”?’.

102. Obi, “Structuring Transnational Spaces of Identity, Rights and Power in the Niger Delta of Nigeria.”

103. Klein, This Changes Everything, 306.

104. Osaghae, “The Ogoni Uprising.”

105. Doherty and Doyle, Environmentalism, Resistance and Solidarity, 106.

106. Ndjio, “Overcoming Socio-Economic Marginalisation.”

107. See note 46 above.

108. See note 100 above.

109. Salau, “Nigeria is set to Implement the Paris Agreement with the launch of Green Bonds.”

110. Standard Chartered, “Measuring Sustainable Development.”

111. Watts, Silent Violence, lxv.

112. Klein, This Changes Everything.

113. See note 9 above.

114. Mitchell, “Rethinking Economy.”

115. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 20, 48–9, 157.

116. See note 20 above.

117. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 242.

118. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 93 and 95.

119. Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 236; and Cooper, Africa since 1940, 204.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carl Death

Carl Death is a Senior Lecturer in International Politics, whose work addresses the intersection of environment, development and social movement politics in Africa. He has mainly worked on and in South Africa and Tanzania, and his books include The Green State in Africa (Yale University Press, 2016), and Governing Sustainable Development: Partnerships, Protests and Power (Routledge, 2010).